Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, right? Carina Glover certainly thinks so. That's why she founded HerHeadquarters, an innovative service to help connect women entrepreneurs in the fashion, beauty, entertainment, events, and public relations industries. The collaborative app, which is active in big cities like L.A., New York, and Miami, recently launched in Houston.

The goal is to digitally connect women-owned businesses and freelancers and to speed up the process for securing brand partnerships, events, and campaigns. It sounds reasonable: Traditionally, introductions and discussions about potential partnership opportunities can easily take weeks if not months of back-and-forth interactions; meanwhile, HerHeadquarters streamlines everything by making a brand's relevant information available at-a-glance in one place and facilitating direct conversations via the app. 

And why stop at launching in Houston? Glover is taking her headquarters here (see what we did there?) with plans to officially relocate the company to the Bayou City this spring. "Houston talent and women owned-businesses, we are coming for you!" Glover says. We sat down with her to learn more. 

How exactly does the app work?

The user-brand provides information up-front about the specifics of a collaboration, what they are offering in exchange for the partnership, how long the partnership is for, and the location. Once posted, it will appear on the news feed of all users; by clicking on it, they can see all the details and determine if they're interested. If yes, they will use a collaboration credit to communicate with the brand. The brand will accept or deny the request, and both parties continue communicating via the app if accepted. A brand can quickly assess if the partnership will be in exchange for services, compensation, or other perks as opposed to the traditional method where you could have invested months only to find out later that the benefit is not worth the time.

Do you have to be a member to use it?

A free account level that comes with three collaboration credits, and a premium account level ($8.99/month) comes with four monthly collaboration credits and also allows access to user collaboration ratings and reviews. Users can purchase single collaboration credits for $5 each as well.

What kind of partnerships are most common?

Events, fashion, and PR are three top categories for collaborations right now, and 90 percent of women find a partnership within a week of use.

What are other benefits of this technology?

Women can talk founder to founder without having to go through several layers which helps to speeds up the process. Also, users can find partnerships in other cities besides their own since face-to-face communication is no longer required for the partnership to come to fruition—a bonus when trying to scale brands on a national level. Another one is that both parties can rate the partnership to continue to improve and make better experiences for the user community.