Lessons from Startup Chicks

Written by Jan Jaben-Eilon Tuesday, October 19 2010

Dyer: What to wear?

Have a passion that you want to turn into a business? Take a deep breath first then consider talking to women who have preceded you on that that exciting path. If one of those women is Jennifer Bonnett, she suggests you ask yourself a big question.

“Before you make a decision to start a business, make sure you really want to be an entrepreneur,” advises Bonnett, founder of StartupChicks, an Atlanta-based educational and networking group for female entrepreneurs. She calls it looking at one’s “mental mindset.”

“Do you want to build a Mazda or a Maserati? The Mazda will get you there, but not be high maintenance. The Maserati can get you there faster, but it’s high maintenance,” she explains. A woman must do some soul searching and decide whether her lifestyle will determine her business or her business will determine her lifestyle.

Bonnett, who also has the title of “chief chick,” says her first startup raised $12 million. But as chief technology officer, she paid a price in her personal life. “If the site goes down at 4 a.m., you have to go to the data center.”

Fennell: Managing data

The second step, according to Bonnett, who is a technology entrepreneur with more than 20 years experience in the information technology field as chief technology officer, is creating the “minimal viable product.”

“Entrepreneurs often have big ideas that are elaborate, with multiple parts,” she notes. “I encourage women to ask, ‘What is the minimal viable product that you can get into the hands of customers to find out what they really want? How fast can you build the minimal technology to get to customers so they can help you build your product?’ Because if you put in all the bells and whistles, the customers may not want the product.”

Bonnett says the third step in launching a new business is creating a team, something that is particularly important for women. “No matter the size of the business, you need an advisory board or a group of mentoring peers, or your attorney or accountant. Find other women like you.”

She notes that for her own business, which she is launching this month in a beta test, she has a group of 11 women who are serial entrepreneurs. Her company and product are called Nexpense, which provides expense reporting solutions. She realized how much she has hated taking the time to gather receipts, annotate, and consolidate her expense reports through the years, so she created a “real-time expense report.” She says she chose the name Nexpense to be the name of both her product and company “so we won’t have to brand two names. I’m not a marketing person. I struggle with branding in my own businesses.”

Fashion-Ade home page

Bonnett says that she is often cold-called by women asking about connections to financing, another huge consideration in launching one’s own business. “I ask them about their business and ask if they have a team. If there’s no team, I tell them to call Mom, because their mother is the only one who will invest. You need a team and a product in order to get financing.”

Bonnett created StartupChicks in February 2009 because, as a serial entrepreneur, she wanted to give something back to the startup community. She decided to make it all female when she’d attend entrepreneurial events and see how few women participated. She initially thought StartupChicks would consist of 20 women who would get together once a month to chat. Immediately she realized that the demand was greater and the organization needed more structure. Now its mailing list of registered women is more than 600, and 11 events are scheduled throughout the year.

One of those participants is Ella Dyer, who just brought her new business into public beta in the last few weeks. “Fashion-Ade was born out of my personal need to answer the question, ‘What will I wear today?’ My partner is Jody Fennell,” Dyer says. “She is extremely capable of managing lots of data, as she did at The Weather Channel. We’ve known each other for awhile, and she’s always very fashionable. I went to her with my question, and she thought that technology could solve my daily task to know what to wear.”

Fashion-Ade garments

Fennell felt a computer algorithm could be created to manage all the data that would be necessary for this product. But Dyer said she wanted to make sure first that there was a market for her idea. “We invested in significant research, more than 1,000 women online and in focus groups, who all had the same daily task. We learned that women wear only half of what’s in their closets.”

Simplified, if a woman logs on to Fashion-Ade, she can inventory her wardrobe and with recommendations for mix and match purchases from retailers, she can more easily “see” what’s in her closet and how to make it work for her. “After we vetted the idea with consumers and felt we could meet that demand, we spoke with online retailers who might be interested in this digital application,” she explains. Retailers are her company’s actual customers. When the consumer completes a purchase from one of the participating retailers, “we share in the revenues from that purchase.”

Dyer’s goal was to solve a problem she and other women have, but it had to be simple. “She had to be able to build her virtual wardrobe in 15 minutes,” Dyer says.

Appropriate branding was essential for this consumer-targeted business. With a few ideas, Dyer went to more focus groups, and when they heard about the idea of the business, they kept saying the words “fashion” and “something fun.”

Fashion-Ade outfits

Dyer advises women entrepreneurs to surround themselves with smart people. Fennell knew a female designer who created several possible designs for their web-based product, and Dyer and Fennell chose the top three; in fact, the same top three.

“What makes a successful startup,” Dyer says, “is to align yourself with people with shared values and shared goals.” Complementing backgrounds is also helpful. Fennell came from corporate America and Dyer from smaller entrepreneurial ventures.

The two women plan to leverage the latest in social media to enhance their marketing. After all, social media is really the new word-of-mouth advertising. If someone “likes” something on their Facebook page, friends and family can learn about the product. Twitter, which Dyer describes as a mini-micro blog, can help information “go viral,” or spread quickly around the internet. “You must participate in social media even if you don’t think it’s got value,” she says.

Dyer also advises women entrepreneurs to vet their market. “Know how you’re going to make money. Try to anticipate worst-case scenarios and how you’ll handle it,” Dyer says. But above all, “you must have a passion for what you’re doing.”

Jan Jaben-Eilon was a founding staff writer of the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Since then, she has been the international editor of Advertising Age magazine and has written for such publications as The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Washington Journalism Review, and Consumer Reports. She is the author of soon-to-be-published (There is) Life After Cancer. Jan and her husband have homes in Atlanta and Jerusalem.