Today's Entrepreneur: Dolly Singh

Today's Entrepreneur is Dolly Singh, Founder and CEO of Thesis Couture.

Thesis is the world’s first performance driven, fashion footwear brand. Using structural engineering, advanced material science and with a keen focus on human factors, their expert team has created a patent-pending internal architecture of core components to replace the century-old parts and processes still used in today’s painful high heels.

Singh got her degree in Psychology at University of California last 2002. She builds wicked-smart, diverse, high performing teams that solve big problems and disrupt market paradigms.

Thesis Couture won the Vator Splash Oakland 2015 startup competition. 

Thesis Couture self-categorizes itself in Fashion and Product design.

Here's a little about Singh: 

I am a(n): Entrepreneur

Companies I've founded or co-founded: Thesis Couture, Synergy Solutions

Companies I work or worked for: Thesis Couture, SpaceX, Oculus VR, Synergy Solutions, InfoQuest Networks

If you are an entrepreneur, why? I want to change the world.

My favorite startups: SpaceX, Tesla, Oculus, GoPro, Beats By Dre, Rent the Runway, Warby Parker

What's most frustrating and rewarding about entrepreneurship/innovation? The most rewarding element of innovation is the chance to create the world you want to see; the most frustrating is that innovation usually requires you to swim against the current, and swimming against the current is exhausting- you have to accept and embrace that you're going to hit a ton of roadblocks, some you can anticipate and many which you can not.

What's the No. 1 mistake entrepreneurs make? Placing too much importance on 'experience' when hiring a team; experience is as limiting as it is beneficial; it's far more effective to focus on raw drive and talent.

Full bio

Dolly Singh is the Founder and CEO of Thesis Couture; a fashion-tech company bringing together a remarkable team of technologists and experts from fashion, architecture, medicine and engineering to reinvent the iconic stiletto. Offering high-end aesthetic looks with an advanced internal architecture developed using structural design and advanced materials the team is creating the world’s first high-performance + high fashion, high heels.

Dolly was formerly the Head of Talent at Oculus VR, a disruptive gaming and virtual reality technology company which was recently acquired by Facebook for $2B+.  She worked directly with the company founders to help build a best in class team and talent practices to support the business in preparation for the launch of the revolutionary digital platform, the Oculus Rift.

Previously she was the Head of Talent Acquisition at SpaceX, where she was responsible for talent across all engineering (software, hardware, electronics, propulsion, structures, launch and test), operations, and business teams; and worked closely with the company CEO, Elon Musk, to grow the company from ~200 to almost 4000 in 5 years.  

Prior to SpaceX, she was the owner and managing principal at a boutique consulting firm with Fortune 100 clients in the aerospace, defense, and biotechnology sectors.  Her experience spans all aspects of human capital with an affinity for disruptive entrepreneurship models.

She is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, and currently resides in southern California with her husband and their four children.