Kristen Hadeed
Kristen Hadeed
Early Life and Education
Kristen was born in Gainesville but moved to Flagler Beach, Florida when she was 2-years-old. [15] Her first entrepreneurial venture was setting up a lemonade stand with her younger sister, Lauren. [15] For 18 years, Kristen danced at a professional studio. [15] In 2006, She graduated from Flagler Beach High School. [13] She went on to attend the University of Florida where she studied finance, mass communications, and entrepreneurship. [10] An active student, Kristen was a part of several organizations including Gator Creators, Finance Club, International Business Society, Future Women In Business, Entrepreneurship Organization. She completed her studies in 2010. [10]
Entrepreneurship and Success
Student Maid
In 2009 during her junior year of college, Hadeed wanted an expensive pair of Lucky Brand Jeans and asked her parents if they could buy it for her. [14] They responded to her request by telling her to get a job. At the time, Kristen was in the middle of completing difficult courses for her finance major and did not want to put on anything that would stress her schedule even more. Instead, she put an ad on Craigslist to clean houses to pay for the jeans as well as her Spring Break Trip to Panama City, FL. [21]
Her operation started off small and she would grow through referrals from happy customers.
Kristen began to hire students to help her clean after school and on weekends.
The turning point for her cleaning operation when a local property management group, Paradigm Properties, approached her to clean houses after their student tenants moved out for the summer.
In order to complete the task within the required 3-month span, Kristen had to expand her team from 4 people to 60.
As a requirement, she only hired people who had 3.5 GPAs to attract students who were dependable, disciplined, and goal oriented.
Kristen's services were a huge success and she was asked to come back the following summer.
Kristen would continue with running her cleaning service, Student Maid, throughout her senior year and expanded it even more after college.
[21] Her company became known in the cleaning industry for their people-centric culture and high employee retention rate.
[10] As a result, Student Maid leaders frequently offer seminars and coaching to others in the industry.
[10] In 2015, Student Maid was the 61st fastest-growing UF Alumni company in the country.
MaidSuite
Alongside her colleague Josh Greenberg, Kristen started MaidSuite as a solution for scheduling for cleaning services.
[10] The cleaning industry has several challenges such as if a employee is allergic to cats to make sure that they do not clean a house with one.
[14] It took over a year to build the software that was necessary for it.
MaidSuite has cut down the amount of time to schedule employees from 14 hours to 10 minutes.
Influences
Community Engagement and Media Appearances
Since graduating from the University of Florida in 2010, Kristen has remained extremely active in the Gainesville community.
[14] [15] She serves as a Chamber Diplomat, is Chair of the Small Business Advisory Council, is an Ambassador for the Builder's Association, and is a Board Member for the Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce. Kristen now lends her experience to help other local startups succeed. She is the Transition and Progression Planning Resource at the Center for Innovation and Economic Development business incubator where she helps other startups plan for growth and expansion. [1]
Kristen was named a recipient of HOME Magazine's, "13 Going on 30" award and was also named one of the "25 Most Interesting People in Gainesville" by Insite Magazine.
She has gone on to speak at multiple TED conferences including in Gainesville and St Louis and continues to give lectures around the country about women and entrepreneurship. [16] [17] Her debut book that tells her life and business story, Permission to Screw Up: How I Learned to Lead by Doing (Almost) Everything Wrong, is slated to be released in October of 2017. [19]