Jenny Leung and her family emigrated from China when she was just three years old, squeezing into a small apartment on top of a steep Daly City, California hill. "I always wanted to succeed," she says, "but I knew nothing mattered more than family." It was their perseverance to overcome poverty that inspired her to become the first college graduate in her family. With a steady job and determination to make her family proud, Jenny began to climb the corporate ladder.
From answering guest requests and translating for tour groups at the Hilton when she was 19, to overseeing contracts for Fortune 500 clients a decade later, Jenny delighted in the innerworkings of every business. But she also felt the pressure of being a working woman—to choose between motherhood and a career. This itch only grew stronger and a few years later, Jenny found herself asking ‘Is this it? It can’t be. I want to build something that can make a difference for working women.’ With that she applied to UCLA’s business school and took her first leap into entrepreneurship.
Once she was back on the campus, Jenny felt some relief. When she wasn’t juggling her full-time job or full slate of classes, she was roaming huddle rooms to talk entrepreneurship and reenvisioning her career.
A few months later, Jenny heard a voice come through on the radio: "15 million tons of textile waste are produced from clothes and other fabric goods every year." Jenny was stunned—and her attention was piqued. "We throw away 75 pounds of clothing annually," he continued. "That’s so wasteful!" Jenny exclaimed. She thought about how much fashion she and her friends consumed. These days, most of their complaints were about maternity clothes and justifying the price of clothing you’d only wear for a few months. "I know there’s something here" she thought "what about a rentable maternity wardrobe!" BellaNove (beautiful nine) was born.
A few weeks later, after class, a professor told Jenny about the Knapp Venture: "It’s a competition held every year for business ideas. Why don’t you enter your idea there?" Jenny thought back to her favorite story about her grandmother who is 97 years young this year. She was supporting her family by hauling buckets of water up from the river to sell in a small town in China. On her route, noticing discarded wood, she decided to sell not just water, but firewood too. Soon she had made her trip twice as profitable with one simple idea.
Over the next two days, she immersed herself in a crash course on business-plan writing until she emerged with her own strategy for the Knapp Venture competition. Unfortunately, the idea didn’t make it past the second round, but a fire had been ignited inside of her.
Over the next few months, surrounded by the tall brick campus buildings and the blazing LA sun, she often thought back to her grandmother’s hardships. This was a woman who raised five children on her own after her husband passed away; working long days on her food cart or later in her flower shop. Jenny got out her phone and starting searching for resources and supports that could help her get to the next level. There were entrepreneurship classes, there were pitch competitions, there were fellowships, there were accelerator resources. One by one, she applied, but when she heard back, they were all variations of the same story: she wasn’t ready yet.
But that didn’t stop her.
After countless hours convening a team of classmates and creating a new business plan, Jenny went back to each and every resource that had previously said ‘not now.’ Slowly, she built up her idea until she felt that her pitch was ready.
This year, when the Knapp Venture competition was held, Jenny went back. Nervously, Jenny walked up to the podium in a bright conference room on the UCLA campus. In front of her sat judges and investors from both startups and well-established companies, ready to scrutinize her plan. As she began to tell her story, she felt a new sense of calm. This was something she truly cared about, and she felt so lucky to share it with others. “BellaNove, which translates to ‘beautiful nine,’ is a sustainable, affordable solution that helps pregnant women continue moving forward in their careers and their personal lives," she explained to the judges. Despite the thrill of her presentation, she was in awe as they called her company’s name for second place. Finally, she had won.
Soon after, Jenny received the coveted UCLA Anderson Wolfen Fellowship and was accepted into the Startup UCLA/Blackstone Launchpad accelerator, awarding her with startup gold: ten weeks of working space, support and mentoring, and access to some of the best business minds around. Jenny spent nearly the whole summer in the accelerator’s large collaborative office, scribbling ideas and notes on the whiteboards and talking to peers. She met with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists from the startup and investor community, listening to their critical feedback and refining her idea along the way. By the end of the term, she had a story to tell about her business—one that anyone could relate to, pregnant or not.
In just ten weeks, BellaNove built up inventory, conducted photoshoots with real soon-to-be-moms, organized operations and logistics, connected with customers, and launched a website. Since the October launch, Jenny’s days and nights have been busy and exhilarating, but she wouldn’t change a thing: "I want to help redefine what motherhood means. BellaNove is starting in e-commerce today, but I know we will be more than that in the future."
Jenny reflects, “2016 was a tough year, I was rejected so many times. But I knewBellaNove would help so many pregnant women maintain their confidence throughout all the changes—from morning sickness to kicking ass at work. I wasn’t going to let a few no's stop me, and it shouldn’t stop you either.”
If you’d like to join Jenny and the BellaNove team on their mission, please reach out to Jenny on LinkedIn.
