It’s official, we’re in business kindergarten! Hmm, maybe business years are like dog years, because it definitely feels more like 40 than 5. In any case, I registered www.pearsestreet.com on March 8th, 2005, marking the birth of a new chapter in my life, and a whirlwind roller coaster ride into entrepreneurship. Five years feels like a short period of time, but it has been so full of activity, growth and learning. Here’s a retropective!

2005.

Pearse Street's First Logo Design, May 2005

As I was wrapping up the writing for my last issue at Destin Magazine, the idea of establishing Pearse Street as my first entrepreneurial endeavor took shape. I had spent the past year profiling local businesses for their features in the magazine, and in the process I could not help but feel that the potential for starting up my own business was well within reach. Thanks to the support of my husband, a military firefighter at the time, I designed our first logo after hours, and first website design came to life in March. Voila, we were in business! My first client was a local author and Hollywood actor, Thom Gossom, Jr. who I met while heading up the Emerald Coast Writers group. We ended up developing a number of websites for Gossom’s various projects, and maximized our circle of friends, cow0rkers and author connections to keep Pearse Street profitable for our first year in business. (more…)

So I took the weekend off.

I still checked my email and Facebook a few times a day, but made a point to not aimlessly surf or brainstorm new concepts. I cooked some decent meals, cleaned my house, played with the kids, tackled a few small home projects and hosted two poker tournaments with our friends. Productive, good fun, exhausting.

Sunday nights are usually my pre-game into the work week so that when I get to work on Monday morning to a pile of work, I don’t feel too overwhelmed. But this past week was a mix of loving work and hating work, so I am wondering how to emotionally prepare for the next five days.

It was actually a pretty good week overall. I connected with two Inc. columnists this week. Meg Hirshberg, writes regularly on the juggling act of balancing life and career. As a mother of three, she sympathized with my current “condition” (as I’m calling it these days) and the challenge of maintaining clarity through the nonstop chatter and activity of a two-year-old and a four-year-old at home. It’s always encouraging to connect with someone who has been there, especially someone who’s writing about it. I read another post by a fellow Smith College alum and new mom whose maternity leave has expired. She mentioned her surprise appreciation for having emerged from the “pregnancy fog” at work. I had forgotten all about this and was momentarily excited about when that day will come for me too. After seven months, the fog begins to feel permanent.

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When I first discovered the term “mommypreneur” I took to it pretty quickly. I still celebrate being a mother and a business owner, and the challenges that those dual roles play in my life, at home and at work. I recently learned that as a female C.E.O. of a high-tech firm, I represent less than 1% of the total private companies founded in a year. I knew I was an oddball, but I don’t think I quite realized to what extent. With so few others, it’s obviously difficult to find peers or even mentors. In fact, searches to connect with other pioneering mothers or successful young women are often met with a bunch of spam.

For example, on Twitter, to build a following you often “follow” other users with the same interest based on some keyword searches. Following multiple accounts who identify as working moms or mommypreneurs yields a barrage of spammy Direct Messages. Some of them lead you to scam websites that promise profitable work-from-home opportunities, or only marginally better opportunities to network with thousands of other professional woman–for a price! Why is a window into this very small world fraught with scams and closed doors that only open with hefty membership fees? It truly saddens me that this community has been targeted as vulnerable for exploitation, when I imagine what women starting out in the business world are met with on their initial search for insight and resources.

That said, in my ongoing search to find like-minded others, I have found a few valuable online meeting places for professional women and mothers. Unlike the majority of sites that target the same demographic, these sites are focused on important professional topics and have the ultimate goal of elevating women professionally, not just lining their pocket books. (more…)

Venture capital (also known as VC or Venture) is a type of private equity capital typically provided for early-stage, high-potential, growth companies in the interest of generating a return through an eventual realization event such as an IPO or trade sale of the company. Venture capital investments are generally made as cash in exchange for shares in the invested company. [wikipedia]

I’ll be the first one to admit that I don’t know all that much about VC or the process of acquiring it, so I figured that I might as well share a little about my experience as I learn how to navigate through this community. Even though the chances of women CEOs getting VC are increasingly slim, I like beating the odds, so hopefully this series doesn’t end with, “Giving up on Venture Capital Quest: Part 27.”

To date, my experiences with VC have primarily been through various clients. Typically clients come to us with an idea for a unique social network, and some who treat the project as a serious investment often supplement their own monies with third-party funding in the form of venture capital. This funding might be secured at the onset of the project, partially through the development, or after the site has launched and proven itself to its community and potential investors. We rarely if ever connect directly with clients’ investors, but indirectly, we contribute to the process of securing funding pretty significantly, if that is in the form of a prototype or demo, a fully functioning network, or very early on through a detailed design and development plan that goes into the clients’ business plan.

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