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Success for the ‘notonthehighstreet’ women
The Not Girls - Holly Tucker and Sophie Cornish
The founders of Not on the High Street have enjoyed a successful first two years of trading, in which they have found themselves winners of numerous start-up awards. These accolades have included: Grazia O2 X regional winner 2007, Startups Women in Business; Young Guns 2008; HSBC Start-up Stars; Marie Claire 23 Women; Startups 100; The 50 Best E-Boutiques and MSN Best Shopping Website.
Holly Tucker and Sophie Cornish have truly been unstoppable. Since launching in 2006, the site has grown from 100 businesses to over 750, selling everything from fashion to home ware, fragrances and jewellery. Funding has come first from Spark Ventures in 2007, and in August 2008, another 1 million pounds was raised from Venrex. At that time, the team was enforced with business development experts Giovanna Latimer and Serena Coulson, formerly of Advent. Founders and majority shareholders Tucker and Cornish built the site, driven by both a passion and a frustration.
Get the M-factor through Horsesmouth
MT Rainey - founder of horsesmouth
If you want it straight from the horse’s mouth then visit HORSESMOUTH, the first website committed solely to e-mentoring for life. At Enterprise Week, we met founder, serial entrepreneur and former Chair of Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe (which she sold to WPP), MT Rainey who is the driving force behind the website. She says: “Anyone you ask wants to be mentored or wants to mentor. Getting the M-factor is essential in business and life.”
Promoting the concept of wisdemocracy, the site – which launched January 2008 - combines social networking with social enterprise to allow anyone and everyone the chance to gain hard-earned wisdom from the wise. The site is not just about mentoring for businesses, but covers a world of experiences from recovering from cancer to starting a business and moving abroad. Currently, the site has 6281 mentors, all of whom are volunteers and ready to help at the click of a mouse.
Sweemo launches with Rachel Elnaugh as mentor
Rachel Elnaugh is as a mentor involved with SWEEMO, the ‘E-bay for experiences’. We interviewed founder and CEO Jay Nguyen, saying ‘…….funding - I just needed to get over the fear and embarrassment of asking - once I got over that, getting the money was fairly easy. ‘
Sweemo
How did you come up with the idea of your start-up?
The idea evolved out of the lack of exciting social opportunities that were available to me, so it was a matter of trying to fulfil my own social needs. I realised that the majority of the great experiences that I’d had previously were always due to friends inviting me to certain events, so I needed a way to make ‘friends’ with anyone who had access to something that I wanted to do.
How did you form your team?
My team has formed rather organically and I’ve been quite lucky that talented individuals have approached me after hearing about Sweemo, to see if they can come on board. Given the limited budget of a startup, the challenge has been to ensure that I can get as much help as possible without necessarily having to pay for it. Rachel Elnaugh, [author of the Business Nightmares, TNW], acts as my mentor, providing guidance and wisdom gained through her 25 years of business experience. I initially approached Rachel and she was very quick to respond as she was excited about the concept of Sweemo and it was immediately relevant to her background giver her history with Red Letter Days. With regards to names, we are still finalising the roles for several members of the team, who still employed for other companies and as such, I’m not able to advise names for our key roles (CTO and CMO) until they’ve been finalised.
How did you fund it and what is the business model?
Funding was through Angels consisting of friends and family. I raised £300k in angel funding. The turnover is expected to be a modest £350k in 2009. Read more
Luck has nothing to do with it- Van Leeuwen’s online adventures
Marianne van Leeuwen: founder of dutch price comparison site Miepkniep
It is a perfect morning in Amsterdam and sitting at a tiny bar table is a woman, Marianne van Leeuwen. Without saying a word, she radiates a playful energy coupled with an air of someone who seems to have it all. [You wonder to yourself at just why some people are so lucky?]
Marianne van Leeuwen has been on an online entrepreneurial adventure for the last 10 years. The founding of MiepKniep in 1998, the first Dutch price comparison website, was only the first chapter. Already though, it was evident from introducing a price comparison website to the Dutch culture in particular, a nation of traders over the centuries, that Marianne has a strength for good ideas. And running with them. Read more
The Quality Living Network seeks mentor
Mirjam Spronk, founder of the Quality Living Network
Whenever we can, thenextwomen tries to bring together entrepreneurs so they can meet, match or work together.
A while ago, Mirjam Spronk got in touch with us, an aspiring entrepreneur who had the original idea to create her own yellow pages for professionals and tradesmen in New Zealand. Her business the Quality Living Network launched a year ago but now Mirjam is looking to grow and expand it. To help her do that, she is looking for mentors, which is why we interviewed her to find out a bit more about her business and why she is looking for mentorship.
Can you offer her useful advice, do you want tot tell her about your experiences with a similar business? Are you her mentor? let us know and we will put you in touch!
How did you come up with the idea of your start-up?
Calypso Rose, entrepreneur with a social conscience, initiates Pocket the Problem project.
A truly inspiring project organized by young entrepreneur Calypso Rose, founder of CLIPPYKIT and by Make your Mark. Yesterday evening saw the opening of the exhibition in London at City Hall. ‘Pocket the Problem‘ is the project that was set up to enable girls to explore the concept of fashion with a social conscience. 650 girls, all aged 14-15, formed teams to come up with a unique design using the Clippykit Bag to raise money and awareness about an issue of importance to them. The winning design was about gun and knife crime.
Calypso Rose
Calypso Rose, only 27 years old, approached the Make your Mark foundation with her idea to tackle the negative image of teenagers and to assist teenagers in an entrepreneurial way with the Pocket the Problem project. Read more
The 100 hottest private tech companies in Europe
Cary Marsh, Founder/Ceo MyDeo
The Mediatech 100 is a list of Europe’s hottest private media technology companies that are likely to have the biggest impact on the industry in the future. Winners are selected after extensive research by an expert advisory panel of 20 most prominent mediatech investors and experts in Europe. Among which Michelle Holford of international investment company Livingstone Partners LLP, Bindi Karia VC at Microsoft and Marta Skundric of venture capital company DN Capital.
Other Female Internet Heroes among the winners are:
- Outi Henriksson, CFO of online entertainment company Sulake (Finland), which runs virtual world Habbo Hotel
- Cary Marsh, Founder and CEO of video hosting company MyDeo (UK) and
- Founder Katie Lee of new media company Shiny Media (UK).
Female Hero of the Week: Gina Bianchini
Female Hero of the Week: Gina Bianchini
Our female internet Hero of the week is Gina Bianchini, co-founder and CEO of social networking platform Ning and a true innovator on the web scene. Gina was among the 20 most influential women in web 2.0 named by Fastcompany this week, with other women including Leah Culver, founder of Pownce, Rashmi Sinha, CEO and co-founder of Slideshare, Dina Kaplin, founder of blip.tv, Marissa Mayer, Google’s first female engineer and many more. Feel there is one that should top them all? On thenextweb you can vote for one.
Thenextwomen’s vote goes to Gina, why? Read more
EconWomen Conference with Hearst, Glam and Shine
econwomen conference
A conference completely devoted to women media is taking place today in New York. Hearts, Glam or Yahoo, they are all there. The line-up of speakers is equally impressive, featuring a number of ladies that we consider female internet heroes. They include:
- Victoria Colligan, Founder of online women entrepreneurs community LadiesWhoLaunch in a panel on Advertising, Ad Networks and Other Revenue Opportunities.
- Joni Evans, Co-founder and CEO of wowOwow, the online community for women who like to share their stories on politics, culture and other women topics. She is in a panel on community building.
- Brandon Holly, women web portal Yahoo Shine Read more
HERSEO helps women website owners get found
Her SEO
HerSEO is a search engine optimization company specializing in women owned businesses. Holy Klaassen, founder of the service has a reason to focus on this group. “With the huge boom in growth of women and mom-owned startups, there are many women looking to increase relevant, qualified traffic to their sites.
“Typically, SEO companies charge high fees, but often these small startups just don’t have the budget for this. We focus on educating business owners about SEO, finding the right keywords for their particular product or service, and giving practical, easy to understand instructions on what they need to do to increase their rankings.” says Holly who became interested in SEO after starting her own website, www.FussyBaby.ca. Remembering that time, she notes: Read more
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