Archive for the 'entrepreneur' Category
October 2, 2008
Woo Hoo! I submitted a panel idea for the 2009 SXSW Interactive extravaganza a couple of months ago and I was just informed that it was selected! It will be called Building A Web Business After Hours. Although I have several panelists lined up, we have been asked not to finalize the panel yet — probably to make it oh so hugely compelling for all of you to attend!
One of the cool things about being selected is that I get a free Gold Badge pass to attend SXSW interactive and so do the panelists! I probably won’t have much time to party late into the evening unless my husband doesn’t mind watching the kids for 5 days/nights in a row. 
Thank you to all of you who voted for the panel idea during the open voting period. It wouldn’t have been selected without your support!
September 27, 2008
I co-write articles for university alumni magazines with my fabulous writing partner Pam Losefsky. You can also see more of our write-ups on the article page of this blog. The last article that we did for the Self Starter series for The University of Texas at Austin’s alumni magazine, The Alcalde, is on Kirby Allison (gif). Kirby is a recent graduate and the founder of The Hanger Project. He built the business nights and weekends in school and even after graduating while he held a day job!
Sadly, interviewing these interesting entrepreneurs and writing about them with Pam was one of the things I had to remove from my very full plate of things to do. Both Pam and I took on other commitments ranging from my day job and her additional writing work, that we decided we couldn’t to do it and do it well. We’ve been doing articles for The Alcalde for over 3 years now and we really enjoyed working with each other and the editor, Avrel Seale. Life is full of hard decisions and this was one of them. Who knows, we might write for them again when it works for all of our schedules…
I’ll do full posts on past articles we’ve written that I haven’t done one for yet…so keep an eye out for those. An image of Kirby’s article is below and an interesting highlight from his article follows.
“Last fall a confluence of opportunities - a complimentary product review in the Wall Street Journal and a major order from a luxury men’s store in Guatemala - propelled the popularity of Allison’s hangers. He found himself scrambling to air-freight new inventory to meet the Christmas demand. His little side project had become The Hanger Project, a recognized leader in premium hangers.”
September 16, 2008
A friend of mine, Robb Lanum, recently sent me a link to an article on The Onion called Day Job Officially Becomes Job. For those of you who haven’t heard of The Onion, it’s a hilarious publication that makes fun of everything and everyone. Most of the articles I’ve read from them make me laugh or say repeatedly “eww, that’s gross!“ Take for instance a recent, funny article called Woman Always Really Excited To Be In Whatever Relationship Status She’s Currently In.
Robb did an impromptu guest post on my blog a while back about the writer’s strike. He blogs at The Robblog and has been trying for years (probably over a decade) to make it big in the California screen writing scene. He’s made progress and slowly but surely moves his writing career forward or at least makes it more visible by blogging about his experiences.
Robb sent me the link to the article on The Onion because he himself took a day job over four years ago, and he knows the plusses and minuses of having a day job and trying to build your business, your brand, your writing career, etc. He knew I could relate. I’ve been at my day job for not yet 3 ½ months (seems longer) and so far overall it has been a good decision for a variety of reasons, one of which being my husband struck it out on his own to consult and someone had to have the stable job with benefits in the family.
But this day job article by the Onion is not funny. It was written back in February 2004 and begins with “Another human dream was crushed by the uncompromising forces of reality Monday, when the restaurant day job of 29-year-old former aspiring cartoonist Mark Seversen officially became his actual job.“
It then goes on to say “When I was younger, my attitude was ‘Never give in,’” Seversen said. “Nowadays, my attitude is ‘Get real, dumbass.’ If I have any advice for all the young aspiring painters, novelists, and rock musicians out there, it’s probably that they should quit following their dreams before they rack up a lot of credit-card debt. The sooner you accept your real job, the sooner you can start to build up seniority and get on board with the pension plan.”
I expected to be laughing at the end of the article, but found myself frowning instead. Then I thought, “Phew, I’m sure glad being an entrepreneur trying to build a web business after hours is not like trying to be a writer, painter, rock musician, or actor on the side! And working for The University of Texas at Austin isn’t like working in a restaurant.”
Or is it?
September 9, 2008
I’m sure many of you have noticed that I haven’t been blogging as much recently. It’s not due to lack of desire, but due to lack of time and mental energy. I have a full list of topic ideas I want to blog about, but by the end of the day after interesting and bureaucratically taxing events, kids, dinner, husband, baths, teeth brushing, catching up on Babble Soft stuff and personal emails, I feel pretty dazed.
I have blog posts floating around in my head with rarely enough thoughtful time to get them down in a post. Fortunately, I have had some timely guest posters who have filled in some of the gaps.
I can’t say I’ll be able to get to a blogging pace (in the near future) that can keep up with my blogging ideas given my current schedule and life situation, but so far I’ve done a better job at posting than Marc Andreessen, founder of Ning and formerly Netscape, who hasn’t consistently blogged since May 2008! But he’s running a heavily venture backed company so I’m guessing he has just a few more people breathing down his neck than I do.
I’m glad I’m not in his shoes right now in this economy, with the news constantly talking about the questionable results of social networks from a business model perspective, and with some of the widget partner issues his company is facing. But Marc’s a tried and true entrepreneur so I’m sure he and his team will figure something out. If not, he is a millionaire and married to a millionaire so chances are they won’t be out on the streets any time soon.
Yep, it’s all relative and I’m thankful for the opportunities I’ve been given and the opportunities yet to come. Thank you to all of you loyal readers for sticking around!
UPDATE: On an interesting note, Seth Godin, the famous author and blogger on marketing tips & ideas, did a post on September 10 called How often should you publish? and in it he says: “Key assertion: you don’t publish it unless it’s good. You don’t write more blog posts than you can support, don’t ship more variations of that software than your engineers can make marvelous.” So I guess my haphazard blogging is OK because it fits what I can support!
August 29, 2008
The Summer 2008 Olympics are now over. The national conventions for the Democrats and Republicans are happening. Democrats just wrapped up theirs and Barack Obama is the official candidate. The Republicans are up soon and John McCain just announced his VP, Sarah Palin. School has started for all kids across the country. Summer vacations are over. And life goes on.
Like many I watched the Olympics when I found the time in the evening and was fortunate enough to see some of the men and women’s gymnastics, swimming, track and field, and volleyball. I saw the US women’s beach volleyball team win. I saw the women’s gymnastics team win and saw Nastia Lukin win gold. I saw Michael Phelps win several of his gold medals for swimming. One weekend I even caught the Chinese synchronized swimming team. Wow, that was impressive! My husband stayed up later and saw the women’s and men’s volleyball teams as well as the men’s basketball team.
I actually think I was able to watch more of the events during this Olympics than any other Olympics in my life. I’m not sure why that is given that my life is so much busier than it used to be. It’s probably because my husband was watching it and it was a nice (often nerve wracking) way to end the day and see several of the events “live.”
What struck me was how hard all of these athletes have been preparing for the vast majority of their lives for this one shot at gold, fame, and potential sponsorship opportunities from big name brands/companies. All their preparation comes down to a single point in time to succeed or fail. The pressure and mental stress must be extreme, and yet they get up every day to prepare for that one moment in time.
Every individual who competes tries hard, practices hard, prepares hard and only 1 receives the gold medal. The same is true for entrepreneurs but fortunately there aren’t hundreds of little kids competing to win in one particular business (e.g., selling widget X). There may be several competitors in a space but it’s doubtful that the leaders of your competitors started practicing to compete to sell “widget X” when they were 10 or even 5 years old!
However, there seem to be many more factors way out of the control of the entrepreneur that determine their company’s success or failure (e.g., the economy, people issues, product issues, market timing, etc.). An athlete has much more control on whether they get up and practice every day with the major big unknown being a devastating injury. They are rarely blindsided by a last minute entry who ends up being a well-funded Superman/Superwoman athlete!
Building a successful business is extremely hard, costs money, and is time consuming, but after watching the Olympics, my guess is that preparing and then winning a gold medal is harder, requires more discipline, and is more time consuming but with more defined parameters. Even more so if you happen to be a Chinese Olympic team member who are often taken from their parents at a very young age.
People expect athletes to take years or even a decade to train to even make it to the Olympic games, but many expect entrepreneurs to make it big in just a few years and in the process they often burn themselves and others out. I’m guessing that fewer entrepreneurs earn ‘gold medals’ than individuals and teams do every four years in the summer Olympics.
August 17, 2008
I co-write articles for university alumni magazines with my fabulous writing partner Pam Losefsky. You can also see more of our write-ups on the article page of this blog.
Our most recent article for The University of Texas at Austin’s alumni magazine, The Alcalde, is on Bart Knaggs (gif). Bart is the founder of Capital Sports and Entertainment which brings us the annual, highly popular Austin City Limits Festival. Here is an interesting quote from his interview:
“There are ways you want to manage opportunities, but mitigating risk, I think takes you down the wrong path.” Instead of thinking that you might lose so you’d better prepare for the crash, Knaggs says you must believe you’re going to take off, so you’ll only prepare to fly. “You have to commit 100 percent to powering the engines and getting up to speed. You have to rally your people, you just have to know you’re going to fly.”
Bart has two kids. After getting his undergraduate degree, he became a competitive cyclist - “a form of self-employment in which the sacrifice is monumental and the payoff only accrues to an elite few.”
One more article in the Self-Starter series will be coming out soon, so sign up for free email updates and you won’t miss it!
July 26, 2008
I co-write articles for university alumni magazines with my fabulous writing partner Pam Losefsky. You can also see more of our write-ups on the article page!
One of our latest articles for The University of Texas at Austin’s alumni magazine, The Alcalde, is on Gay Gaddis. Gay is the founder of T3 - The Think Tank, the largest women-owned advertising agency in the US!
Here is a thought provoking quote from Gay’s interview:
“You get knocked down a couple times and your confidence gets busted and you draw back a little bit,” she says, “but you have to allow yourself the mistakes and the rejection and not let them eat you up.”
I agree with Gay that many entrepreneurs give up is when they let their mistakes eat them up instead of learning from them and moving forward. I struggle with limiting thoughts often.
Gay has 3 kids and came from a long line of entrepreneurs so she saw the reality of how it is to build a business. She started helping her mother with her kindergarten program when she was 13 years old after her father died!
There are more articles to come, so sign up for free email updates to get them right in your inbox!
June 25, 2008
Photo by: Unknown - could not find link to original creator
So continuing on the fortune cookie blogging escapade, I recently got a fortune (for some reason I eat at a lot of Chinese restaurants) that said “Look forward to great fortune and a new lease on life!“ Of course I saved that one. I still have a few others on my home office desk that are a little more realistic, but who’s to say a great fortune and a new lease on life isn’t around the corner for me!
I can definitely say that a new lease on life is definitely in the process of happening just by the sheer fact I’m doing something different day-to-day than I have before. Whether it’s a good lease or a bad lease depends a lot on my landlords. 
The Austin American Statesman (the main newspaper for Austin) mentioned my new position today in their Up The Ladder are in the business section. They happened to use a picture of me that’s probably 7 or 8 years old which was when I weighed 10 to 12 lbs more than I do now. (Of all my New Year’s resolution goals, I have achieved the ‘lose 5 lbs’ goal and ‘take yoga classes’ goal but I’m still working on all of the rest - Sigh). For a more recent picture of me, you can check out the page where I show the articles I’ve co-written on the topic of success and entrepreneurship or even the About page.
If you were too lazy busy to click through the Up The Ladder link above, my new day job is running Operations for the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI). I am acting as the COO/CFO of this small organization (5 to 6 full time employees) that is part of the University of Texas at Austin (and yes subject to the positives of great HR benefits yet at the same time monumental bureaucracy). It’s a very unique initiative in the university because it supports 15 or so technology companies by helping them get to market, find funding, and build their professional support network.
The companies get access to student help, consulting support from the directors, flexible space allocation, senior advisors/talent, discounts from ‘incubator friends,’ etc. ATI is supported by rent and membership fees it collects from the companies as well as grants it receives from various government related entities that are interested in creating companies (thereby jobs) and furthering technology related initiatives in the Austin area related to Wireless, IT, Biotechnology, and Clean Energy.
My job duties are varied but include helping make sure operations run smoothly internally, the companies are supported, and we have enough money to continue providing a great service to Austin technology companies and the Austin community in general. I’m most excited about the potential to help entrepreneurs - it can be a lonely/tough job and having been there, done that, and doing it, I believe I can at least share my experience and contacts.
Now working for the University does not lead to great fortune, but I’m open to it offering a ‘new (and different) lease on life!’
June 19, 2008
Now that I took a day job, I’ve been wondering what I should post about. Should I post about my new job or other stuff? It also takes time to write meaningful posts and time is harder to come by now. My new job has a lot to do with helping entrepreneurs or I should say it will once I get past the administrative day-to-day stuff of getting up to speed.
So in the meantime until I figure it all out, I’ve thought about posting about the fortune cookies I get when I go to Chinese restaurants or other restaurants who for some reason hand out fortune cookies.
Hey, the last time I blogged about fortune cookies, I almost got mentioned in the New York Times! It started with Comments and Fortune Cookies, went on to Those Darn Fortune Cookies, and ended up with Portuguese Fortune Cookies.
So, a couple of weeks ago I was having lunch with one of my business advisors at a Chinese restaurant in this place in Austin called Davenport village, and I got the following fortune:
“You can’t ride in all directions at one time.”
We both thought it was appropriate considering what was going on in my life. Of course, I then thought to myself ‘well all directions isn’t the same as two three directions’ and ‘there’s no point in going no direction.’
So here I go (the multi-tasker that I am) attempting to go one direction with a few detours here and there along the way…
June 15, 2008
You’ve probably seen those Nationwide insurance commercials that go something like “Life comes at you fast. That’s why there’s Nationwide.” And they show people whose car gets hit by a garage door, a leaf blower or some other random, humorous, or shocking thing. Check out some of their video ads on their site.
Photo by Sandy Blanchard
Well in every entrepreneurial journey things can happen fast and often there appears a fork in the road. I decided to pick one of the paths that will have quite an impact on my ability to spend time on Babble Soft. The opportunity presented itself when I wasn’t looking and I had to take a cold, hard look at it. The difference between success and failure can often come down to being open to opportunities that seem to randomly present themselves.
The decision on which path to take was not an easy one. It was not made without much thought, stress, doubt, questions, frustration, etc., but I believe it is the right decision for me, my family, and yes even for Babble Soft.
I worked part-time on Babble Soft for a while and started full time in late 2007. As some of you know, I went out to raise funds in early February 2008. By end of March and early April (because I’ve raised funds before and could see the writing on the wall) it became clear to me this was not going to happen right now for a variety of reasons including:
- We are too early. In other words, we don’t yet have enough users or market traction to make investors comfortable enough to take the bet given they have started losing money on many of their Web 2.0 companies that they invested in at the concept or early beta stage. It’s become clearer to me that we are trying to “create a market” which is often quite painful and takes a long time. Therefore, I cannot yet prove that the market is HUGE for what we were trying to do. By the way, what you see on the site is just a fraction of what I envision as a site for new parents. It also did not help that we continue to struggle to find a good SEO rhythm due to a variety of reasons including the fact we are, as I mentioned, for all intents and purposes making a market.
- I need a business partner. It’s tough going it alone without someone to bounce ideas off of on a daily basis. What I need is a strong technical co-founder and/or an expert consumer marketing partner. I remember meeting with another Austin entrepreneur, Chris Justice of Sparksight, a while back and he shared with me a sound bite from one of his mentors: “People fund teams, not individuals.” My husband helps me a lot, but he has a full time job and isn’t really into the business concept the same way I am.
- The economy is in flux. Investors and consumers alike are concerned about the economy, high gas prices, home foreclosures, job losses, the presidential election, impending tax increases, etc. and their behavior and outlooks have changed. I won’t freak you out with links to all the articles about the demise of Web 2.0/social networks and people losing their money and their jobs but suffice it to say there are many. There’s also a lot of good stuff happening but uncertainty is definitely in the air.
- Other personal stuff I can’t blog about yet but which is probably the biggest driving force for choosing this path right now.
So, not being one to continue banging bang her head against a brick wall, I took a J-O-B (another form of insurance that I don’t think Nationwide or any other insurance company offers) to support my entrepreneurial addiction!
I wasn’t looking, but the opportunity arose for an interesting, most likely fun, hopefully low stress job working with people I like. My boss (who has been a long time subscriber to my blog) is a very cool guy who I’m sure I’ll enjoy working with. He knows I will continue working on Babble Soft and is very supportive of my doing so. He also knows I’m a mom to two great kids and wife to a pretty good guy.
I’m excited about the potential of this job combined with what’s going on in the rest of my life. Of course, I will have to become a guru in time management to make it all work.
The entrepreneurial lifestyle is not made up of beautifully paved, straight roads. There are often detours and roundabouts. Right now I’m crossing my fingers that this path I’ve chosen will lead to bigger and better things for me, my family, and my company. A friend of mine, who is a screen writer trying to make it big in Los Angeles, CA (probably similar odds to building a successful company), wrote an excellent post about his decision four years ago to do the same thing I’m doing now when he took a job. He reflects on how its been both a good and bad decision for his goal to become a recognized, well-paid screen writer.
I’ll continue to blog and will eventually tell you more about my new ‘day job’ so Sign up for free email updates so you can see a) how I make it work or b) a train wreck in action. If you see a train wreck about to happen, please leave comments and maybe if I read enough of them, I can find a way to build another track or jump off the train beforehand!
Aruni
June 5, 2008
Just over a year ago, we officially launched Babble Soft’s first web and mobile application (then called Baby Manager, now called Baby Insights). A prominent blogger, Jennifer Laycock, whose personal blog is called The Lactivist, a popular blog on breastfeeding, saw the release and created a post that made me feel shocked, anxious, depressed, angry, and misunderstood at the same time. Jennifer also happens to be the founder, editor, and a writer for Search Engine Guide, a widely read blog on all things search.
Fortunately, soon after discovering Jennifer’s post, I contacted Connie Reece who blogs at Every Dot Connects. Connie helped me set up the first incarnation of this blog and gave me advice on how to get started blogging. She is a veteran blogger and a social media guru. I took several deep breaths, typed up something that I felt would be a good comment to Jennifer’s post and sent it to Connie for a sanity check. She gave me a few recommendations and I posted it.
Turns out that comment led to a few other comments and then an amicable online relationship with Jennifer when we both realized that we were supporters and donators to our local Mother’s Milk Banks. Jennifer and I now follow each other on twitter and read each other’s blogs. [As an aside, we offer all eligible milk bank donors a free subscription to Babble Soft applications to help them keep track of their pumped milk!]
Last week, Connie decided to create a case study on the incident and did a post called Case Study: Engagement Turns Critics into Allies. Where she outlines what happens:
Company
Babble Soft, provider of Web and mobile software for parents of newborns
Challenge
A press release for a new product launch was picked up by an influential blogger who wrote a very negative review.
Solution
Every Dot Connects worked with Babble Soft on a strategy to engage the blogger in constructive conversation.
Success
The blogger apologized for the tone of the review and continued to interact with Babble Soft founder via her blog, email and, later, on Twitter and other social networks.
Well soon after, Mack Collier who blogs at The Viral Garden and Marketing Profs did a post about it too called Worried About Bloggers Dissing Your Company? Read This and he starts with:
“Babblesoft founder Aruni Gunasegaram found herself in a position that any company would dread. She had launched a new product that she had hoped would be well-received by her target audience, mothers who breastfeed their children. Unfortunately, the product was immediately reviewed, and shredded, by Jennifer Laycock, a very popular mommy-blogger who blogs at The Lactivist. What happened next is a great lesson for companies wanting to handle crisis-management in the blogosphere.”
Then, Jennifer decided to write her own post about it. I was just beside myself with 3 blog mentions from 3 prominent bloggers within the span of a few days! Jennifer called her post Bloggers Need To Accept Responsibility Too and she says:
“Last year Aruni was launching her new parenting software. I happened to pick up the press release right as it went across the wires and had some pretty harsh words for the idea on my Lactivist blog.
‘Apparently, the company feels that there’s an untapped market in parents with extreme breastfeeding OCD issues, so they’ve made available some snazzy (I use the word loosely) new software that will allow these Ezzo-wannabes the absolute, total scheduling control that they long for.’
It got worse though. In fact, rereading that post I made more than a year ago I found myself chuckling and wincing at the same time. Chuckling because some lines in my post were really funny, but wincing as I realized just how biting and scathing my critique was. I’m generally a pretty easy going and nice person. I don’t tend to like to rely on snark, and yet there I was, throwing out snark like I was Perez Hilton.”
And continues:
“Ultimately, many of my readers ended up checking out the software and seeing the value in it for certain situations and while I still think the software’s a little on the anal side for the average mom, I fully recognize how helpful it could be for moms who DO need to track things.
Even more important to the story is the relationship that developed because of the way Aruni responded. Aruni became a regular reader of my blog and I became a reader of hers. We follow each other on Twitter and we’ve exchanged quite a few emails over the past year. Not long after the incident, I ended up sending her an email to share how refreshed I was at the way she handled things.
‘I want to compliment you on the way you handled your response to my blog post. I was pretty hard on you guys and you came in with class and style and really did a great job of turning the situation around to make yourself look good. I work in online reputation management and it’s rare to see a company respond so well. Just thought you should know that you gained my respect with that.’“
So needless to say, I am honored at their mentions and I have learned a lot in the past year. I hope I have at least become a better press release writer.
Personally, I think the biggest lesson that I have learned over the year is that although Jennifer’s choice of words were hard to read, her sentiments are reflective of what most new moms and parents think. It’s not easy to introduce a new way of doing and looking at things to the truly oldest and arguably the most important profession in the world: parenthood!
I think our applications can help a new mom having trouble with breastfeeding reach the other side of the breastfeeding bridge. It can help her and her family understand patterns, positions, pumping schedules, etc. But at first blush, most people don’t think of what we do that way. The reasons why that’s the case would be a good topic for another case study! It always takes longer and costs more money to build a business than anyone ever thinks when they first start out. Hence, my recent Fork In The Road post.
I just read a quote I can definitely relate to by James Cherkoff left in the comment section of a blog post that Fred Wilson of A VC did about sharing information on your company:
“Or in the words of Howard Aiken: “Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.”"
I saw it as I was finishing up this post and it made me smile laugh out loud!
June 3, 2008
This is a philosophical post at best and a rambling, forky post at its not-so-best. Everyone’s life is filled with predictable stuff and non-predictable stuff. And it seems like the life of an entrepreneur has more unpredictability than most.
Entrepreneurs often have to create a path where none existed before so the chances of seeing beautiful and amazing things as well as the chance of staring at the face of a lioness with her jaws open wide in a snarl about to pounce on you are higher than say going to work at a “predictable” day job.
Of course predictable day jobs are also subject to stress, crazy bosses, insane co-workers, and layoffs, but it’s not your company that you might just have to see on the wayside as road kill OR on the plus side helping tons of people, purchased by a reputable company, or with a Wall Street ticker symbol. ;) Either way you end up with some sort of vultures around you.
Sadly, yesterday afternoon there was a car-squashed dead squirrel in the road outside our house. Our neighbor across the street told me she saw a big vulture hanging out in one of the trees outside of her house. I told her about the dead squirrel and it immediately made sense to both of us why it was there. Needless to say, this morning the squirrel was no longer on the road. Anyway, I digress…
Everyone knows intrinsically that high risk can equal high rewards but we often forget it also can mean high loss and sometimes making odd, creative decisions.
So what’s an entrepreneur to do?
Well she doesn’t give up easily. She looks at her situation, looks ahead at the several uncharted roads ahead of her, gets manic stresses about it for a while, and then puts her foot down on one of the paths on the fork in the road ahead and starts walking. If she’s got control of her thoughts (which I don’t usually) she won’t look back and wonder “what if?” She’ll move forward and hope the path will eventually rejoin, and perhaps even speed up, the wider, bigger path to achieving her vision.
I have just encountered such a fork in my entrepreneurial road. [As an aside, why do they call it a fork when the utensil we eat with has 4 prongs (sometimes 3) but when we think of a fork in the road it usually is shown with 2?!] I’m hoping it will lead to bigger and better things for me, my family, and my company. Time and presence-of-mind (what’s that?!) will tell.
May 7, 2008
You might have heard, I was a semi-finalist for the Women 2.0 napkin business plan competition. Well, they informed me on May 3, I didn’t make the finals. Sigh. But trying to look on the bright side, I’m actually kind of relieved because now I can focus on networking and learning instead of being stressed out about giving my pitch! I’m starting to think I’ll have to get a job to support my entrepreneurial addiction. Too bad I didn’t get rich off of my first entrepreneurial endeavor…
I’d like to profusely thank Sylvester Becker (a.k.a. German Cowboy) of Dana Lynn Media for helping me pull together a very cool 2 minute pitch video which I can’t share with the world yet, but maybe soon. Sylvester was awesome to work with and so creative! We used crayons. We used Little People to illustrate our future customers as well as small figures of Dora the Explorer and her friends Boots and Benny. Although I think Boots got cut out in editing. My daughter loves Dora and in fact some people say she looks like her especially now with her new haircut.
I had already decided that even if I didn’t make the finals, I was going to the Women 2.0 conference (check out the site for the fabulous list of panel speakers - entrepreneurs and venture capitalists) this weekend in the Bay Area where the skies are blue, the weather is usually predictable, the money made in tech is gigantic, and everything is way too expensive. Except for, oddly, the reasonably priced rental car I got from Hertz. Thankfully, some friends are letting me crash at their place so I can save money by not getting a hotel.
Anyway, in case you are interested in the names of the finalists, here you go:
I’ll do a post about it after I get back, so Subscribe Now so you don’t miss a thing about my sure-to-be idyllic, fantastic, jaw dropping trip to Cali! I wonder if I can find a way to eat some sushi while I’m there…
May 2, 2008
I was planning to write a post updating everyone on our search engine optimization experience today but the real world injected itself with a sick kid at home. High fever and rescheduling meetings doesn’t leave much time for writing long, heavy posts. Plus I had to sneak in a nap in the afternoon while our daughter napped since we didn’t get much sleep the night before.
So instead, while my husband takes care of the kids this evening, I thought I’d write a post on the example of an unanticipated, viral marketing story with a mom twist. So here it goes…
Once upon a time I met a friend on the Internet. I found her blog and commented away. After some time, we realized we had similar visions and she invited me do a guest post on her blog called Entrepreneurship: A Blessing or a Curse. We kept in touch, spoke on the phone a few times about ways to work together, became twitter pals, and finally met in person at SXSW here in Austin back in March and clicked even more.
While at SXSW she got further proof of what she already knew which was that the name of her blog, then called eMoms at Home, was not really reflective of the demographics of her readers and would-be readers so she had a mini-meltdown, picked herself up and came up with a cool new name called Sparkplugging! Since she was and still is an advocate of entrepreneurs and especially those who work from home, her cool, new name opens the door wide open to many of us who are moms or not but like to spark up ideas and play with them until something happens.
So after SXSW, she went home and saw a post about dads on twitter and decided to do one for moms. Within hours she got tons of replies and created a post called The Ultimate List of Moms on Twitter that started with 250 moms. I commented and subscribed to comments on that post and every day new moms would leave a comment with their twitter name until May 1, 2008 that is. Twitter sent out an email to everyone yesterday, May 1, and in it they included:
Mother’s Day: On The Way
We’ve noticed a trend of parents twittering the moments of their baby’s birth so we know there are some new moms on Twitter. Are you a mom on Twitter? Is your own mom on Twitter? Maybe you even made “The Ultimate List of Moms on Twitter”? Mother’s Day is just around the corner so don’t forget to @reply the moms you know with a thoughtful phrase–but keep it under 140 characters, moms are busy people.
List of Moms on Twitter: http://tinyurl.com/6cxgp5
And today I had 150+ comments in my inbox and they are still coming. Now she has close to 400 comments on that one post! Did she do anything extraordinary to make it happen? Not really. Did she tell people on twitter about it? Yes, of course. Did she know others would tell and re-tell more people about the list? Possibly. Did she know twitter would pick it up in their mass email to everyone? Doubtful (but I don’t know what went on behind the scenes). So in hindsight what played in her favor to have a post she wrote on April 8 (before her name change) take on a life of its own? Here’s what I think:
- She took the initiative to do something that ended up being quite time consuming, but she saw from the responses it resonated with hundreds of moms on twitter that it was a worthwhile endeavor.
- She told her friends about it who re-tweeted and blogged about it.
- The tweeters kept the link going within twitter and in the blogosphere.
- Mother’s Day was around the corner and the guys (I think they are all men) at twitter saw the activity and might have said to themselves “Hmmm. How can we mention a major holiday, get brownie points with our wives/mothers, and promote twitter at the same time” and voila a mention was born!
UPDATE: I sent a link to @Biz to this post and he informed me there are several women who work at twitter! So of course I followed them. Here is his tweet:
biz @aruni awesome! I included the moms list because it was noteworthy - also, women who work at Twitter: @crystal @krissy @alissa @lane @sara
In case you haven’t guessed who this friend is, it’s Wendy Piersall. I guess only Wendy can tell us if she planned all of this, but to me it’s another example of viral marketing that in hindsight makes sense but when started, the current result would have been highly unpredictable.
To me, this is why it is so hard to orchestrate a viral campaign. You can plan everything down to the “t” and still not have it work out the way you wanted. It’s hard to predict when there are so many variables. You can also just do something you enjoy doing that helps others and see a “spark” turn into a flame! Way to go Wendy! 
Oh and by the way, I am @aruni and Wendy is @eMom on twitter…
Posted by Aruni
7:00 pm •
entrepreneur,
entrepreneurship,
mom,
mother,
mother's day,
networking,
seo,
social networks,
success,
working mom,
working mother •
April 24, 2008
That’s the headline of a Wall Street Journal blog post that came out yesterday: Why Aren’t There More Rich Women Entrepreneurs? It starts with:
Recent studies show that there are more wealthy women than ever before. While a growing number are making it by climbing the corporate ladder, most of today’s wealthy women are still making their money through inheritance or divorce. A scarce few are making their fortunes by launching big companies - the most common source of big riches for today’s men.
and concludes with:
There are two explanations for the female shortfall, according to the USA Today story. First, starting a business usually requires capital, and men have easier access to the clubby world of bankers, venture capitalists and private-equity. Second, the article says, women are more devoted to their family and have less time than men to start businesses.
The blog post is interesting but the comments just blow me away because it’s like I was reading comments from people back from the dark ages. Most of the comments were well thought out but several posted by people not choosing to put their name down were really shallow. I mean do people really think like this:
There is this little thing called a brain. Most women are severely lacking in this department, and as such have been relegated to house duties for most of history. Now that women are clamoring for equality, we see that they really aren’t equal at all.
Talk about issues! Other thoughts from the commenters:
Seems to me that women are better at following rules than men, hence they do better in structured institutions (schools, large companies, institutions) whereas men are more intrinsically rule breakers and therefore on average do less well, but sometimes succeed spectacularly. - Bill
While I agree that risk aversion plays a part, one also has to look at Analysis Paralysis. As ‘not trying to offend’ points out, men often “execute and follow through based purely on logic”. Women (and I am one, early 30s, well-employed, trying to start my own company at the same time) tend to need full answers before they act. - More than just risk aversion
Despite advances for working women, I think it is certainly the case that they are not supported by husbands. I am about to be married and my fiancee is asking me to quit my job to raise a family - despite making twice as much as him. - so true
To be an entrepeneur one has to be completely comfortable with business risk. In my experience, women as a group
are far less willing to risk everything they have for a business idea. This may be a gender specific biological trait related to the female’s reproductive functions. - Orrin Schwab
Many of the paths to entrepreneurial success are only open to people who have college degrees in science or engineering. Most women don’t have them and it certainly limits their opportunities. - Kevin
I think women also tend to have their eye on the “big picture,” and define success much more broadly than in dollars and cents. This can lead to decisions like cutting back on work hours or taking less challenging jobs in order to have more time to spend on family or other personal pursuits. At the end of the day, this may lead to less money - but greater happiness. - e c
Sometimes I can’t believe we are still having discussions and comments like this. Why can’t we just get along and let women choose to do what they want to do without analyzing every thing about it? If a woman wants to stay at home with the kids full time and be CEO of the house, great! If she wants to work from home, great! If she wants to work outside of the home, great! If she wants to work part time, great! If she wants to work full time, great! If she doesn’t want kids, great! If she wants to try to be Bill Gates, fine. If she wants to be the CEO of PepsiCo, awesome! If she wants to be head of the PTA, cool!
We are all (hopefully) doing the best we can. Us women were given the gift of being able to incubate and give birth to the future generation of humans, honestly that in and of itself is success! Sadly that ability is often sort of brushed aside as not being as valuable as being a billionaire entrepreneur/CEO. Honestly, I can think of several former billionaire CEOs who would have traded their fate to be a woman/mom.
