Meet the Greenpoint duo that’s designing sex toys to empower women

Alexandra Fine and Janet Lieberman, the founders of Dame, want to empower the sexual experiences of women by designing sex toys for them.

Their latest product, Fin, was the first ever sex toy to be allowed on Kickstarter, catching the attention of major media outlets, such as Refinery29, Elle, Business Insider, and Forbes. With nearly 5,000 backers pledging more than $394,000, Fin shipped in time for the holidays. (The vibrator’s pre-order price was $50.) Their first sex toy, Eva, was crowdfunded on Indiegogo in December 2014, garnering rave reviews.

The duo aims to “close the persistent ‘pleasure gap,'” Fine told Forbes, “especially in what is largely a male-dominated industry.”

Fine graduated from Columbia University with a masters in clinical psychology in 2011. She has always had an interest in sexuality. “I was a really horny kid,” she said. “When I was six, my aunt took me to a drag queen party where I learned a lot about the fluidity of gender, sex and sexuality.” During a show and tell, she shared this information with her class, which led to a phone call home. “I didn’t understand why that was an inappropriate conversation for a six year old. Honestly, I still don’t understand what the problem was.”

Lieberman, on the other hand, received her mechanical engineering degree from MIT in 2007. She kickstarted her career in product development with companies, such as Z Corp, Quirky and Brooklyn’s own Makerbot, where she designed everything from dustpans to 3D printers. After designing products for many years, she wanted to start a sex toy company because she realized she was not getting the same value for her money from sex toys on the market.

“I was a consumer of a product category that didn’t seem to have a lot of design engineering going into it,” she said.

Fin, Dame’s newest vibrator. (Courtesy photo)

Both of them had a chance encounter when they met after being mistaken for each other as they were both starting sex toy companies. With the same passions and skill sets, they banded together to work on Dame.

Dame HQ is located in Greenpoint because it is where both founders were living when they first met. “Brooklyn has a small-but-scrappy startup scene that’s been really welcoming to us,” Lieberman said.  “It has the highest percentage of female founders out of any city in the US. There’s even a fair number of cool startups in our space in the NYC area: Unbound, MakeLoveNotPorn, NY Toy Collective, etc.”

A typical day in Dame HQ consists of task management, team brainstorms and lots of sex puns. “I think it is mostly like any other company, but with a lot more genitalia,” Fine said.

To ease the workflow, Lieberman suggests reading emails carefully, both yours and the other party’s because miscommunications take longer than actually re-reading an email. She is also a firm believer in responding as soon as possible as it will take the same amount of time regardless. “The only difference you can make is in how many ‘touches’ the interaction takes,” she said. “You can save the time you would have otherwise spent reminding yourself to answer or explaining why you’re too busy to talk now.”

Although it is a fun job, the founders mentioned that the most challenging aspect of sex toy development is the user testing. “It’s a lot easier when you can get ten people in a room to test the same prototype and give immediate worked-or-didn’t-work feedback,” Lieberman said. “Our user testing is time-intensive, resource-intensive and qualitative.”

The best work advice that Fine received is that “starting a company is a marathon not a sprint.” To succeed in a male-dominated field with your own company, she believes that you should know your mission. “Know why you started the company and allow that mission to be malleable, but don’t forget your purpose. Have a smart, organized filing system. It will save you so much time.”

As for Lieberman’s work advice? “Document things because whoever writes the agenda owns the meeting.”