Gotham Gal

Donors Choose

I am seriously blown away by the overwhelming response and outpouring of donations to Fred and my 50 for 50 challenge for Donors Choose.   We thought it would take about 3 months but we hit the number in less than a month and even went over. There are few communities who could have pulled this off. 

A few things.  A big thank you to everyone who participated.  We will be having a meet-up on November 9th bewteen 6-8 in the USV event space.  The other thing is that what Donors Choose has created, the ability for individuals to give back to teachers across this country who are in need of more money to provide better education for their students from books, cameras, science projects, reading tablets, etc. is incredible.  They have filled a void in the market place that so badly need to be filled. 

In many ways, Donors Choose is a band-aid for the cash strapped Government who is not providing the right amount of capital to schools to fund the curriculum.  It makes all of us feel good to give back and make a difference in education but on the other hand it is crazy that the number one priority in this country isn't education.  To both Fred and I, education is number one.  If everyone could be educated, challenged and pushed to their highest level the benefits for society are endless. 

Bottom line, thank you to everyone and Donors Choose for creating such a unique company that is dedicated to providing a better eduation for everyone. 

 

A Spanish Meal

I made a Spanish meal the other night although I was definitely missing a salad but didn't realize I didn't have any greens until right before dinner.  Alas.  Here is the meal:

Grilled Shrimp and Octopus with smoked paprika mixed with sweet and sour peppers.  This serves 6-8

4 yellow peppers - sliced thin

4 red peppers- sliced thin

1 red onion - sliced thin

1 cup sherry vinegar ( or sherry cooking wine )

1 cup light brown sugar

Olive Oil

1 1/2 lbs. shrimp

1 1/2 lbs. octopus

You could easily use more peppers and put some away for later in the refrigerator after making them. 

In a large frying pan, coat the bottom with olive oil.  Add the peppers and onions and saute until soft.  Add the brown sugar and sherry (salt to taste) and continue to stir at a high heat letting the sauce boil down. 

Separately grill the shrimp (peeled and no tail) that has been smothered with smoked paprika and salt.  The octopus, once boiled for about 20/30 minutes should be then also smothered with smoked paprika and salt and put on the grill.

Mix everything together with a hunk of bread and serve.

Potatoes, Chickpeas and Chorizo

1 lb. small potatoes

1 can of chickpeas

4 ounces sliced chorizo

In a large frying pan, cover the bottom with olive oil and add the tiny potatoes.  Once the potatoes get a little browned I put a cover on and brought down the temperature to low.  Letting the potatoes sit for a while to become soft but not too soft, about 10 minutes.  Then add in the chorizo and crank up the heat to high.  Saute until the chorizo browns and then add the chickpeas.  Stir until everything is completely mixed up and serve. 

If I had greens I would have used a can of hearts of palm and sliced them for the salad.  I might have also put in some cherry tomatoes, some shaved manchego cheese and used a red wine vinegarette.  Simple and a nice balance to the meal.  

Cindy McLaughlin, Style for Hire, Woman Entrepreneur

The Internet is truly changing the business platforms.  We are seeing smaller businesses scale by joining forces to create something bigger as a whole.  Style for Hire is one of those businesses.  Cindy and her partner, Stacy London, are essentially rolling up the personal stylists around the country to create one unique place for anyone and everyone to find the right stylist for their needs.  Making this particular niche more accessible for the everyday woman, or man.

Cindy grew up on a tree farm in Massachusetts.  Mount Holyoke on one side and a farm on the other.  Her father was a professor at the University and the tree farm, well, it was a way to have a lot of land by selling trees and it also creating a pretty idylic childhood. 

Cindy went to Mt. Holyoke to go to college and after graduating moved to Denver where her sister was living.  She has applied to get into the Peace Corp and was waiting for her application to be approved.  Instead of sitting at home, she went out to Boulder to live with her sister.  Although she was basically just waitressing to make some money she landed a receptionist job at Newpride.  They noted her ability to get stuff done and asked her to oversee $300K that would be allocated to high risk juveniles who were trying to get back on their feet.  It was really fulfilling but Peace Corp finally came through and the next stop was the Congo. 

Cindy worked on water and sanitation systems in the Congo.  Building latrines, capping water fresh water springs while doing health and community education on the side.  After two years it was time to move back.  She had enough of working in an area where inefficiency reigned.  Friends told her that she should really spend time doing consulting work before jumping into something else.  She picked up the phone and called McKinsey/Bain.  The Tower Group was located in Needham, MA and they provided financial, research and consulting services for their clients.  The HR guy said Cindy wasn't qualified for the job but should come in and talk to him anyone.  She did and he really liked her and asked if she had any interest in being a right hand person to the President.  Sure, why not. Very quickly Cindy started working on consulting projects for smart cards, micro processor chips in credit cards.  A great experience but in those days everybody would tell you that if you didn't get a MBA you couldn't move forward. 

Cindy went to Sloane Business School which for her was the absolutely right move.  Growing up in a world of education and then working for the Peace Corps, she really didn't have a foundation for business skills.  At Sloane she actually learned what economies of scale and ROI meant.  For her, it was a great decision to get a MBA.  By her third semester, one of her favorite strategy professors asked if she would be interested in building a web tools company to service the retail industry.  It was December 1999.  This was Cindy's first entry into the business side of fashion with a technology component.  The company Store Front Media was funded and she joined in the fun.  Then everything crashed. 

It was too late to return to Sloane that semester so she went to work for a group of MIT astrophysicists that took huge retail data bases and applied analytical data to fashion forecasting.  Oracle bought them out.  She loved the idea of being able to take thousands of transactions and apply that technique to data mining.  She returned to Sloane and became known as the fashion MBA technology student.

No surprises that Cindy got a job with Federated after graduating from Sloane.  She worked on cross corporate tech platforms.  Fascinating work but a political nightmare.  After a year, she left to start a fashion company.  She teamed up with a talented swimwear designer and started selling swimwear to high end companies such as Barneys.  She was instrumental in building the company into a social brand as they did cool events at the fashion shows...and then, she got pregnant. 

Her husband was being offered an amazing opportunity in SF, working for Google and they both decided it was the right move.  Two kids later living in SF Cindy found herself doing some consulting work here and there but the truth is as much as she loved being a mom, she was bored and frustrated.  She started to go on interviews and realized she had absolutely nothing to wear to them. Stacy London, an old friend, came to visit and took Cindy shopping.  She is a genius in a store.  She focused on exactly what she needed and how it could work in to other aspects of her life.  It saved Cindy time, money and stress.  That shopping experience starting the conversation about why this kind of service isn't readily available for the everyday woman.  Wouldn't it be cool if we could build a network of personal stylists that bring this service to regular people in their home. That was the conversation where Style for Hire was born.

SF ended up being a great place to start a company.  Cindy began doing biz development with potential retail customers.  This type of business actually already exists in the Interior Design world.  People hire decorators to help them figure out their needs, get discounts and in the end truly save the clients money.  Style for Hire is doing the same thing.  Clients will get special discounts from retailers that they are working with. They will also have training sessions for their stylists as well as their site will have all different types of stylists at different price points with difference senses of style so you can pick the one that works for you.  Style for Hire is in essence an agency for professional stylists. 

Cindy moved to DC with her family and it is there that the beta testing will begin. 

 

Birthday Cake

I found the recipe for grown-up birthdaycake on the Food52 website.  This is probably the easiest cake that I have ever made and one of the most delicious.  The cake is so incredibly moist and tasty.  The butter wasn't melted enough when I made the frosting, hence the little butter bumps, but the taste made up for it.

2 1/2 cup flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tbsp. baking soda

2 cup granulated sugar

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup white wine

1 cup olive oil

Preheat oven to 350.  Really butter two 9 inch cake pans and line the bottom with parchment paper.

Sift together the flour, salt and baking soda. 

In a mixer, mix together the eggs and sugar until thoroughly blended.  Slowly add in the vanilla, wine and olive oil.

Add the flour mixture, one cup at a time, until thoroughly combined.  Don't over mix. 

Pour equally into the baking pans, bake for about 25 minutes or until done.   Let this cool completely before taking out of the pan.

Chocolate Buttercream Icing

1 cup unsalted butter, totally soft

2 cups confectioners sugar

1 cup dutch processed cocoa

1/2 cup whole milk

2 tsp. vanilla

Blend the butter and sugar.  Add the cocoa.  Slowly pour in the milk and vanilla while mixing until it begins to look like frosting.  Whip it up until it is really the right consistency.

A total winner. 

Tomato Tart

This is beyond easy and you will look like a rock star.  All you need is a tart tin.  I actually made two.  One circular and one triangular. 

One box of frozen puff pastry

2 pints of cherry tomatoes

Basil - cut into thin slices

Olive oil and kosher salt

Preheat the oven to 350.

Let the puff pastry defrost.  Unfold it and then lay it over a floured surface.  Roll it out to be about twice the size.  I was able to use one box to make two tarts.  Lay the pastry over the tart tin and crimp into the tart. 

In a separate bowl put the cherry tomatoes and mix with olive oil and kosher salt.  Pour these into the tart.  Place the tart tin over a cookie sheet and put in the oven.  Bake for about 30 minutes or until the pastry is browned.

Sprinkle the basil over the top. 

Serve warm or at a room temperature.

Note:  I put shaved Gruyere underneath the tomatoes.  It is fine if you serve the tart warm but once it gets to room temperature it becomes a little mushy. 

Disruptive, Disruptiveness, Disruptively

This is the definition of disruptive technology in Wikipedia:

A disruptive technology or disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology there. The term is used in business and technology literature to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically first by designing for a different set of consumers in the new market and later by lowering prices in the existing market.

Whitney Johnson wrote a post this week in the Harvard Business Review called Disrupt Yourself.  It is a worthy read.  Whitney writes that by making a career change she basically disrupted herself.  I have mentioned before that I am on a listserv that is comprised of a group of some incredible women. One could describe this group as a significant (on many levels) collection of women trying to disruptive the technology industry.  Whitneys blog post was sent to the group and as always people chimed in on the post with a bravo and some interesting comments.

Here is what I wrote:

women define disruptive.  we continue to change our goals, our jobs, our direction as we charge down the path of life.  men's careers ( not as a rule ) look like a growth chart starting at the bottom and slowly moving upward over the course of their careers.  women's charts tend to look a little more erratic as they go up and down depending on where they are in their life mostly because of children and also because as a group we have a bigger bandwidth of interests that might play out over time. 

my guess is that everyone on this list is a bit disruptive in their own personal way.  personally, i have reinvented myself more times than i can count on one hand. 

great piece.

If you read the first sentence in the Wikipedia definition, it can easily be applied to any career move.  Moving forward creates new experiences and I have to believe that the experiences of the past that one carries and applies to the next experience makes each of us better at what we do.  It is like aging.  There is something to be said for years of experience no matter which new direction you take yourself. 

I have had a diverse career starting out as at Macys as I raced as fast as I could up the ladder to buyer and then jumping ship to work in the garment center.  Then figuring out how to move up that ladder landing a job that allowed me to grow a company and learn every facet of the business.  Then it was time for the kids and I literally jumped ship.  Through a random group of freelance gigs helping friends I ended up in the technology business on the media side helping grow a magazine, ezine and conference business.  I continued to move forward into the non-profit world and taking my past experiences of growing businesses and putting that to work sitting on a few start-up boards.  I took my sales knowledge and applied it to the kids school helping change the way we fundraise as well as sitting on the board there too.  Started blogging to write about what was running through my head and eventually started to invest in start-ups myself.  Now I am working with an amazing women at NYU creating a conference for women entrepreneurs. 

Do all these career moves make sense?  Doubtfully but kids came into the picture, life changed, my husbands business changed, we moved, we lived and I just continued to not only reinvent myself each time but disrupt my career.  I had golden handcuffs when I worked in the garment industry and I walked away from a serious amount of cash but in the end it was what I had to do. 

Many women who have got off the train for the past how many years to raise their families, that experience is resume worthy.  That experience makes these women better at the next challenge.  We are entering a world of disruption on every level and embracing ourselves as to be disrupted too is the key to innovation and success in our own lives.  It is about your skill set and that can easily be moved from industry to industry and job to job. 

Here is what I say....disrupt, disrupt, disrupt. 

 

Pizza on the Grill

I made a bunch of pizzas on the grill for appetizers.  I used a recipe that I have blogged about before for the dough.  Super simple just timely. 

The key is a super hot grill.  I learned a few things.  First of all, prep the pizza as you would for the oven.  Pulling it around and around until the dough is pulled into a round shape.

Toss this on the grill and then put the toppings on the dough.  If you wait for the pizza to cook the bottom gets burnt too quickly on a grill.  My grill is on its last legs so we can't really turn the heat down without the grill just shutting off.  If you can, then I would turn the heat down to medium after the dough begins to harden, shut the grill and let everything melt.  Crank it back up to high for the next round and repeat.

We made a mixture of different pizzas.  Think of your pizza like an easel.  You can put anything you want on it. 

Fresh Ricotta, Sauteed Kale and Green Tomato Relish

Artichokes, Grilled Eggplant rounds, Fresh Ricotta

Mixture of spicy and regular peppers sauteed, Fresh Ricotta

Thinly sliced fresh Mozzarella, Sliced Cherry tomatoes, Chopped basil, Proscuitto

Happy camper.  Pictures by Diettra.

Supply and Demand and the ever changing World Wide Web

I keep thinking about what I wrote in regards to the September magazines.  It wasn't so much about the magazines but more about Matchbook and the next generation of businesses that are cropping up in my email box. 

I am seeing ideas that using cloud based technology to manage everything from your family to your doctors appointments that are definitely geared towards the average American family to places to store all of your recipes to online magazines.  The ideas are all different and the designs are completely different.  Where one appears to be designed for the next generation of people that will read Good Housekeeping another is designed towards a more modern crowd.  All interesting.

The Internet has flattened the playing field.  Like a game that changes based on the hand that you play, the Internet is a game that changes depending on where you click.  I am looking at the next generation of people and how they shop as well as how they communicate from saying thank you to figuring out what movie to go to.  For instance, Josh is a total ecommerce guy.  He does his own shopping and it is all online.  As he puts it, why go into a store when you can buy it online.  You can also do more research and find interesting things that allow you to create your own identity. 

If I get my latest magazine on my iPad on Saturday morning, I should be able to read the content and shop at the same time.  Lets say that there is an article on a restaurant in some remote area of the world, how cool would it be to click on any item that you see in the picture of the place and be directed to the architect, the contractor, the place where the art work was purchased, the place where you can buy the tableware or even the place where the restaurateur bought their t-shirt.  I would find myself in areas of the world that I couldn't necessarily travel to that day but could explore on a Saturday morning because eventually every company will have their own website.  Maybe there is only one edition of the piece but I can learn something from that search.  An endless steam of ecommerce while learning at the same time all in a few clicks. 

As more people launch their ideas/companies online, the key is always how do you bring the eyeballs and consumers to your site.  Some of these businesses will create wonderful niche audiences that might end up becoming life style businesses for the owners while others will become much larger.  It is through these experiences of reading content that we should be able to find them.  The consumers desire for demand of their products will help each business figure out their supply.  That supply and demand is becoming more international as the world wide web continues to grow into something bigger than your local shopping mall.  The local shopping will become something that is more community oriented filled with makers such as cobblers, local farm products and dry cleaners or small classes given at night. 

All of this and the ideas I continue to see makes me very excited about the opportunities that are bubbling out there that will help change the economy at a global level.  I hope to go back and read this post ten years from now and see if I was on to something. 

 

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made these over the weekend and everyone asked if I would post the recipe.  They are quite delicious. 

2 sticks unsalted butter at room temperature

1 cup light brown sugar

3/4 white sugar

1 tsp. kosher salt

1 tsp. baking soda

1 jar of extra crunchy peanut butter ( the extra crunchy party might be the key )

2 large eggs

3 cups flour

24 ounce bag of sem-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350.  Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper. 

Using a mix master and the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugars until creamy.  Add salt and baking soda, mix again.  Add the eggs, mix again.  Add the peanut butter and mix thoroughly.  Add the flour, one cup at a time and mixing in between.  Add the chocolate chips and mix again until everything is really incorporated.

Using your hands, make about 12 balls per cookie sheet.  Press them down with a fork.  Put in the oven for about 12 minutes or until browned.

Voila.

 

Anne Dwane, Zinch, Woman Entrepreneur

Anne Dwane was introduced to me by a reader of this blog and that alone makes for a good story.  Donna thought I should know Anne.  Social media has changed all of our relationships. I have met face to face, talked to on the phone and have had skype conversations with women all over the world who are creating new companies and through technology we are all connecting with each other.  I love it.

Back to Anne.  Anne started out in NYC and left the concrete jungle for the Fingerlakes area of NY where her father bulit his practice as the local obstetrician.  Anne graduated high school and went to Georgetown.  After graduating Georgetown she was hired into the research arm of Nabisco.  It was the early 90's.  She was doing research on chips ahoy before moving into the brand management area.  At the time, the CEO of the company challenged every department to come up with a reduced fat product.  Remember Snackwells?  I do.  I remember that when that product hit the market people had this idea that they were low fat and would eat an entire box at one seating.  After years of dieting, I knew that this was not a good idea. 

Anne was involved with the Planters Peanut brand at the time and coming up with a reduced fat solution for a peanut was not so easy.  KKR had just bought out Nabisco and huge levels of middle management were cut out.  Lucky for her, she remained and so at 25 years old she found herself responsible for this new product. She went down to Virginia to work on the solution working with a patent they had. The product ended up being a reduced fat product with a great concept solution it just tasted terrible so scaling at market didn't go to well.  One time purchases were about all they were getting.  That job was an unbelievable training ground for management. 

It was 1996 and Anne saw the world changing.  She went to the President and recommended that they should create something on the web called Nabisco direct so that they could sell directly to their consumers and create more brand loyalty.  He thought it was a crazy idea until two weeks later when he was at a cocktail party and someone asked him what they were doing on the Internet and he responded with the idea of Nabisco direct.  You have to love that story.  Anne decided it was time to move on and went to Harvard Business School for a MBA. 

After graduating in 1998, she went to work for Paul Allen in the research tank doing diligence on everything including Tivo. Then she got a call from a woman who she had graduated with at HBS with who had an idea to start a site for the armed forces that would allow them to stay connected.  Together the two of them started Military.com.  They called it community but it really is a social network.  The military moves all over the world but wants to remain connected with the people who have crossed their paths.  They didn't want to change their behavior but help the way they stayed connected.  It was a huge success and Monster.com bought them for $65M.  As part of the deal, Anne went to work there for the next four years growing the business. 

One of the original investors of Military.com suggested that Anne meet with two young founders who had started Zinch.com which is a kind of a linked in for young people.  She loved what they are doing and joined forces.  They match kids to the right schools and scholarships based on their profiles.  For instance, your profile might say that you are from Boston and that you are interested in the Sciences and little did you know that a particular university is interested in growing their student body with kids from the Northeast and are giving scholarships based on the Sciences.  The process is tech driven.  They work with over 900 colleges and universities that are telling them who they want to recruit. 

They have raised $4m so far after initially boot strapping the company.  Anne believes that in an analog world GPAs and test scores used to be the only proxy for admissions but in a digital world that has changed.  It is about finding the right fit and there is more transparency in the process.  Universities and colleges pay them to find the right students.  It is much more efficient than direct mail.  It is very measurable and free to all the potential students. 

Anne is all business.  It is not surprising at all that she has had success already with one business sold under her belt and has moved on to CEO of another start-up being there from the very onset.  I also love that Anne is doing something in the education world.  I meet so many women who are all drawn to changing the world of shopping and fashion and I personally want to see more women enter the education space.  More women like Anne in education will be the key to creating companies that will disrupt a platform that needs a total shake up.