THE PERSON BEHIND THE PURPOSE
Hi, I’m Courtney.
Post-Exit Tech Founder. NFL Mom. Patent Holder. Award-Winning Entrepreneur.
Experience earned.
Perspective shared.
Courtney Wiley is the post-exit co-founder and CEO of ShearShare, the beauty-tech startup that became the largest provider of on-demand salon and barbershop space rentals worldwide — a 2022 Fast Company World-Changing Ideas App, 2018 Google Demo Day winner, and YC Fellowship and 500 Startups alum.
Before ShearShare, Courtney managed an award-winning salon — the genesis behind the company — and ran a boutique consulting firm fast-tracking international sales and marketing for brands like Zendesk, Zenefits, and Qualtrics. Over three decades in tech marketing, she held leadership roles including global director of Oracle’s worldwide digital marketing strategy and head of digital demand generation at RightNow Technologies, where her leadership was instrumental in the company’s $1.45B acquisition.
She is the 33rd African-American woman to raise $1 million in venture funding, and her honors include Inc.’s Female Founders 100, Ernst & Young’s Women in Innovation, the L’Oréal Women in Digital NEXT Generation Award, Cosmopolitan’s New C-Suite Honoree, the Ada Lovelace Female Tech Founder of the Year, BPM Global 100, induction into the Texas Military Institute Hall of Fame, the first African-American female named SMU Cox School of Business Outstanding Young Alumna, and an honorary doctorate from Miracle University.
She serves on the boards of Performance on Purpose, Texas Military Institute, and the UT-Dallas Entrepreneurship Council. She is mom to Trey — a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate and NFL athlete — and recently summited Mount Kilimanjaro in five and a half days.
MY CURRENT RESEARCH
Entrepreneurial resilience.
DBA Doctoral Candidate
A qualitative study examining burnout and the operational strategies women technology founders use. My research reflects a question at the heart of my work: how can founders build enduring businesses without losing themselves along the way?
BEYOND THE BIO
10 things you didn’t
know about me.
- 01 /I summited Mount Kilimanjaro in five and a half days.
- 02 /I’m the proud mother of a Jim Thorpe Award recipient for best defensive back in college football.
- 03 /I’m a DBA doctoral candidate researching entrepreneurial resilience.
- 04 /I’ve traveled to six of the world’s seven continents.
- 05 /I pioneered the first on-demand salon and barbershop space-rental marketplace.
- 06 /I heard 143 “no’s” before raising $8.8 million in venture capital.
- 07 /I used to run track — long before building businesses or cheering from NFL sidelines, I was an athlete myself.
- 08 /Years ago, I worked in full-time ministry and helped to plant mega churches.
- 09 /As a startup founder, I won every pitch competition I entered.
- 10 /I’m plant-based — and serious about peak performance, from nutrition to recovery to the science of showing up at your best.