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Wine-ing and cheese-ing with Women 2.0

Last night, I convinced a friend to come with me up to San Francisco for a Wine and Cheese Women 2.0 meetup. Before going, I was a bit worried about going to an apartment and not knowing how many would show up. When I arrived, there were about 40+ women and a sprinkle of men. It reminded me of a Snoop Doggy Dogg video (I’m kidding) in that the party was shoulder to shoulder and basically a good party.

One of the Women 2.0 organizers asked everyone to introduce themselves to everyone else. It took about 45 mins. I was amazed at how many women had a side project (aka new startup business) going on. It was great. Some were hiring techies, some wanted to get into the tech industry, and most wanted to meet more like-minded women. There were some RoR developers, but unfortunately I was seeking some programming answers from PHP developers (which I finally did find one person to help me a bit). One woman has a business that caters to other women-started businesses. I thought that was interesting because compared to men started businesses there are not as many women started businesses. I wonder how big her niche market is in the Bay Area. I met the chocolate business owner of Cosmic Chocolates. Her chocolates have been on the Today Show as well as receiving other popular media attention. I tried a couple of the chocolates and I can tell you that they were really good hence the word “couple”.

This morning I was thinking about how many women-started companies have become Fortune 500 companies. I did not do any official research, but my bet goes with not many. Then I thought about Avon, Mary Kay, fashion labels, etc. Well, for sure women have shown to be successful entrepreneurs with “women” topics, but what about the tech area. I ran into a PhD EE woman at the party and asked her what she wanted to do with her career. She responded that one day she wanted to start her own business. Now the reason I bring this up because I have noticed the good technology companies in the area were been built upon either a PhD’s work and/or some patented, complex technology. In my personal opinion, we need more women started tech companies. Not because I’m “Go Women, Women Rule”, more so because women think differently from men. It would be interesting to see more of what women come up with as business ideas. I like to see diversity in ideas, people, and places.

All and all it was a fun and worthwhile event. The wine and nibbles were flowing.

Bay Area USC Entrepreneurship Panel at Plug and Play Tech Center

Last night I attended the Bay Area USC Entrepreneurship Panel at Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale. If it was not a USC event (Fight On!), I would have not paid $20 to attend. BUT, I love my school, so I did it anyways. When I first arrived, I was showered with USC Marshall School trinkets. I happen to graduate from the USC School of Engineering, but knew others who did graduate from Marshall, so I grabbed a few things here and there. The CEO of Plug and Play gave about 10 of us a personal tour of the facility and an intro talk about Plug and Play before the panel started. Unfortunately, Plug and Play had banners of other major schools excluding USC. My only criticism is that Plug and Play probably should have put something USC up during the USC event.

Alright about the panel, there were two VCs and one CEO of a mid-size firm. Here is what I captured as some takeaways:

  • - Good CEOs need to have a good BS meter. Know when to invest in something and when to stop investing in something
  • - At Sequoia Capital, one general partner hates the word “CleanTech”. Use instead “New Energy” or “Energy”. You can thank me later when you get your first round of funding.
  • - Don’t go to the big VCs (e.g., Sequoia Capital) if you think that you can’t get $1B valuation with your idea, bootstrap, use friends and family members or go to the smaller VCs for funding
  • - Eventually the world will go away from fossil fuels to other energy alternatives, no predication as to when a VC thinks this will happen
  • July 28, 2008
  • In Business
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The wedding business is big money, but why is it so hard to find the right vendors?

The wedding business is big money.  Most people get married once or even two, three times in their lifetime (sorry people do get divorced).  You would think that wedding vendors have the selling part down.  Well, I don’t think so.  It’s hard to find the right vendor.  There are bridal fairs and wedding consultants that can help you out as the one stop shopping experience, but both those options cost money for the couple.

What about a website that you can post the projects and then the vendors bid on the project?  Well, that assumes that all vendors use the internet.  Alright, how about if there was a brick and mortar location in which couples go to get tastings and bids during normal business hours with the vendors?  This would be like a bridal fair but instead a bridal fair 365 days a year with no cost to the couples.  The vendors pay to get access to the couples.  Maybe this could work.  In any case, the wedding business is cut throat.  Most high-end facilities and some other facilities have preferred vendors.  Better yet, partner up with another wedding vendor to recommend each other.   There is a lot of competition and the industry has a low barrier to entry.  Figure out what market niche that you are going to attack and how you will get those customers.

Event listing for upcoming week

When starting your business, leverage your network

This is probably a redundant posting by someone else, but I thought that it was important enough to say again.  I would say that there are two types of folks when it comes to networking: 1) “I am in contact with those that I want to stay connected with, no need to network with people that I don’t know”, 2) “I want to network with more people as much as I can”.   Well I fall into the latter.  Basically, you never know who you are going to meet. Since this is not a posting about networking, I’ll get to the point.

The bigger your network, the more opportunities that you have to tap into that network.  Imagine if you were starting your business and you realized that you needed a graphics designer, lawyer, accountant, etc etc.  You can either pay people to do this work or you can find someone in your network who could at least answer some quick questions and put you in the right direction.  It feels better to work with someone that you know rather than a complete stranger.  Think about this the next time that you are out networking.  Besides, you could probably find one interesting thing about everyone that you meet.  It’s your mission to figure it out.   Happy Networking!

The challenge of pricing your product

By no means am I an expert on pricing, but there was a thing or two that I learned during my stint as an MBA student. Forget about adding “X” percentage on top of your COGS. Remember the supply and demand curve? You should focus on the perceived value of your product. How much is someone willing to pay for your product? For instance, (for the ladies) why buy Levi’s over True Religion jeans? Hmm…

If you are not sure about what consumers think about your product, perform some in-depth interviews, surveys, and/or focus groups. Don’t be too anxious about going straight to a survey. Unless you are a domain expert in that subject, you really don’t know too much about consumer behavior. Instead, do 3-4 in-depth interviews to help shape your survey. You might even consider doing a focus group too before sending a survey. Keep in mind that people will always want to pay the cheapest price for products, so create questions that avoid getting such answers. Alright, you’re ready to price your product now. Hahahaha, well better than before. Good luck!

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