Gotham Gal

Shame on Yahoo

The businesses that launched in the early days of the internet were set on changing the world.  That also meant changing the work place and their environments.  I know because I worked in one.

I was the second person at Silicon Alley Reporter in the mid-90s when anyone involved in the Internet scene thought that we were all going to change the world.  Now we all know the way we live our lives is not going to change over night but it was the beginning of change.  Here is what was life changing for me.  I worked at Silicon Alley Reporter heading up all sales including involvement in the overall big picture of how the company was going evolve.  I had 3 young kids at home all under the age of 5 and I worked from home.  I had a home office that was next to the kids playroom.  I fielded 150 emails a day, 50 phone calls and faxes.  The business grew and the sales grew and I eventually hired a sales staff in LA and NY.  I came in once a week and talked to my group daily.  Trust me we did not lose out because we were not all under one roof every day.

Certainly Yahoo has found itself way down a path where the culture of the company is perhaps out of control.  The company has gone through several CEO's in a very short amount of time.   Changing the culture of an organization is like turning around a cruise ship.  It takes a long time.  I do not believe that shooting a new mandate across the bow of the ship is going to change the culture. 

There are 14,500 people who work at Yahoo.  Digging in to every single division is time consuming.  Who is running each area, what are they getting done, what projects are they working on, what are they just maintaining, are the creative people getting together a few times a week face to face, are divisions working together or are there a variety of fiefdoms, can the company be more nimble and efficient with 9000 people.  I am going to assume that these questions are being asked and the powers that be are digging down into management from the bottom up.  It takes time but if you can clean up the company and culture in a strategic disciplined calculated way then the concept of flexible work can and should exist.  It has to.  It is the principles that Yahoo and others companies of that generation were built on.

When I worked at Macys, many years ago, they went from being a publically trading company to a privately held one  They took on massive debt.  How did upper management deal?  They put restrictions on all management so that nobody had any flexibility to make decisions because they micromanaged the process from above.  That is exactly what is happening at Yahoo.  What happened at Macys is the best and the brightest jumped ship. 

Beware to Yahoo, you will get what you paid for.  The best and brightest will jump ship, the next round of employees will not be self-starters but working stiffs, the environment will become boring with zero innovation and will feel like an old school bank and the costs will be higher for every employee to have a chair and people will be clamoring to get out and home by 5pm.

Yet the worst thing that they have done is send a message to families, working parents who want and truly need the flexibility to be productive at work and be productive happy parents at home.  Their dreams that internet businesses will change the work environment is over.  In particular the ability to give women especially mothers the opportunity to work and be present in their childrens lives while leveling the playing field because technology has created a platform to do that....well that bubble at Yahoo just burst.  Shame shame on Yahoo.  No longer a leader of change. 

Loverly relaunches

Today Loverly relaunches. Click on the link and take a look. 

The site is incredibly user friendly.  I love the business model.  Search for weddings.  You can create your own bundles and concepts in your own one easy location on the site.  You can purchase products from the site.  You can find vendors from the site.  You can discover on the site.  You can also get ideas for your own wedding from the site.  The annual spend on weddings in just the United States is around $100 billion.

The launch party was last week.  You know you are at a launch party that is run by a woman entrepreneur when there are beautiful hearts pinned on the wall.

There are champagne glasses lined up with raspberries in each one for your enjoyment.

When the food table is color coordinated and set up perfectly.

I spent some time in the back seeing the new site.  They did an amazing job.  BIg hats off to the team. 
Especially loving the new logo.  Bold just like the woman, Kellee Khalil, steering the ship. 

 

Can technology really change behavior?

This is a subject I have thought a lot about recently.  I am fortunate that I see a lot of businesses that are using technology to change the way we live our lives.  I also think to myself, "will this play in Peoria?".  No disrespect to Peoria because what I am really thinking is how long will it take for this to move out of the excited early adapters of the start-up world to everyone else...and will it.

I do not know the answer but here are a few things that I have witnessed recently which just makes me wonder.  I was sitting in the doctors office this past week and next to me was a woman that I would put to be in her early 60's.  On her knee she had her check book and she was balancing her check book.  It was the exact check book that I used when I was in college.  Totally old school.  It obviously worked for her.  Then she took out of her bag a Filofax where she had paperwork stored including her calendar and address book.  Funny enough she also had an old blackberry and she appeared to be taking information from it and writing it down in her check book and filofax.  My conclusion is that the blackberry was purely for communication purposes. 

In the late 80's I remember walking through the garment center and seeing two random men talking on phones that were as large as their head.  I thought why on earth do they need to be constantly connected like that.  It just seemed utterly ridiculous and of course expensive.  This is certainly an area where consumer behavior has totally changed. 

My brother is embarking on his next career journey.  My sister-in-law asked if he would help her get organized while he was working out of the house with her.  She has her own successful business that she runs out of a home office to be with the kids.  The ultimate balance multi-tasker.  My brother tried to help but she kept saying well that won't work because that is not how I do it.  I know Fred has wanted me to put lists in particular ways so he can have access and analyze the data how he likes to do it and it just doesn't work for me.  I do not think like that. 

I can imagine a lot of ways to make our lives easier particularly when it comes to managing our healthcare or managing our money.  I do believe that when people in college start using certain products as they enter adulthood will be the time when many of the behavior changing options will begin to stick.  Once most people go down a certain path on how they run their lives it is really hard to change their behavior.  Most people do not like change. 

That doesn't mean that the companies that are building life changing technologies aren't exciting, it just means that it will take some time before they scale to the masses. 

 

 

Nelly Yusupova, TechSpeak for Entrepreneurs, Woman Entrepreneur

Nelly first contacted me about getting a press pass for the Womens Entrepreneur Festival in 2012.  She was interested in a media sponsorship for Webgrrls.  We were not doing any sponsorships at that point but we gave Nelly a ticket to attend. Soon after Nelly attended an intimate dinner that I went to and it was there that I really got a better insight into Nellys smarts.  Fast forward to the Womens Entrepreneur Festival of 2013 where we quickly caught up on her latest venture, TechSpeak for Entrepreneurs.  A two day intensive boot camp designed to help educate non-tech entrepreneurs on how they communicate and manage their tech teams. Great idea.

Nellys story has a lot to do with her drive and chutzpah.  Nelly grew up in Thadjikistan.  A town in Southeast Asia that was part of the former Soviet Union that bordered Afghanistan and China.  I first thought it must be really cold there but actually the climate is like living in Arizona.  Her father had a shoe making business as buying shoes off the rack were ridiculously expensive.  Her mother was a nurse that had stopped working when her twin brothers were born. 

When Nelly was 13, during the Afghganistan/Soviet war they left.  The USSR was protecting the border from the Taliban coming into the region because it was mostly muslim.  Nellys family were Jews living in a muslim community.  The family had relatives in both Israel and the US both working on getting them VISAS.  The Soviet Union was beginning to collapse and they realized that war was going to break out.  The decision where they would end up was completely based on which ever VISA came through first.  The US came first and off they went. 

They family was able to buy plane tickets to get to the US through a Jewish organization as the ruble had completely collapsed and their net worth was now zero.  They came with 15 other people that included her extended family members of uncles, aunts etc.  They ended up in Forest HIlls living with an aunt where there is a large Russian Jewish community.  Of the 15 of them only 2 spoke English.

The whole family went to work.  Her parents worked in any job they could from delivery person, dishwasher, working the register at a food store, etc.  Nelly worked too.  Eventually her father saved up enough money to open a shoe repair shop in Long Island and her mother learned English and took all the exams to become a registered nurse.  Yet their number one priority was getting an education for their children.

After graduating high school in Forest Hills, Nelly had to decide what to do for college.  It was 1996 and She was 17.  She decided that she should do something in computers because that was the future.  Education in Russia is very different from the US, Nelly said the math and sciences there were more advanced and that is why she easily moved towards computer science.  She had zero idea what it meant to be a programmer and they did not even have a computer in their home but she just knew it was the way to go.  She took a class at Queens College and found she was the only person in the class without a job in computers.  She said she felt as lost that first day of college as she did when she landed in the US for the first time.

The lab was where she got on a computer for the first time in her life.  She sat down to this guy who was typing super fast and she thought he must be so smart.  Once she started to learn how to write code she realized that all that guy was doing was changing directions in DOS.  At first it just seemed to amazing but she quickly realized it was not as hard as she thought.  Nelly worked really hard to get an A in that class.  She says as an immigrant, failure is just not an option.  Once she understood the power of being a techie she fell in love and finished the program in 3 years.

During her time in school she always had a full time job.  In every job she had she would start out on the floor (shoe store and bagel store) and soon find herself getting more responisibility to become a manager.  About a year and a half into college during these type of jobs she decided she should get a professional job.  She put out feelers everywhere and Webgrrls was the first company that responded.  They gave her an internship with a promise that within two months they would hire her to work in the tech area.  At first she was just answering phones and doing community development but was more interesting is that she started to meet entrepreneurs. That was what really excited her.

Nelly moved into the area where there were 20 people sitting in a room working on a program called Town Hall with message boards and chats.  She was hired to manage that.  She was doing the work and blown away at how Internet companies work the same time.  Soon she was put in the tech department with two other guys.  Sooner than later she learned how to run the tech department, the two guys left and she found herself in charge.  It was 1999 and she was graduating at the same time.

Like many others, Nelly was offered a job at Paine Webber and took it.  She thought well this is the dream working for a big company.  She got a wonderful card from all the people at Webgrrls saying she would be back.  They knew what she did not know.  Paine Webber was a corporate environment and there was zero excitement.  It was the total opposite of what she loved about Webgrrls.  She loved the working in a small company wearing a million hats where you get to do everything. 

A few months into the job she CEO of Webgrrls asked her if she was happy at Paine Webber.  She said she was not but felt she should stay a year because it was important to stay in a job for at least a year.  The CEO asked why.  If you quit I'd hire you to become the CTO of Webgrrls.  Nelly was 21.  She looks back now and is shocked that they gave her that opportunity.  She knew she had drive and could figure it out as she went along and so she took the job.  Nelly really does believe that she was a very mature 21 year old because she was really forced to grow up very quickly when she came to the US.

Nelly has been the CTO of Webgrrls since 2001.  They have given her a platform to work on the projects she loves while being a CTO.  In 2004 she became the New York chapter leader of Webgrrls.  Webgrrls gives Nelly a lot of flexibility to be entrepreneurial because she is capable of managing her clients, getting the work done and helping other people how to leverage their businesses on the side.  It is an incredible cultural environment that has allowed her to spread her wings.  At Webgrrls she started something called Digital Women where she would speak on the behalf of Webgrrls to help mostly women entrepreneurs understand their businesses.  Working in an environment where you get to learn the 360 degrees of the business from biz dev, tech, sales and talking to investors has given her a unique perspective and she believes that a CTO should understand all those parts.  Through Digital Women Nelly would be hired by businesses as an entrepreneurial consultant looking at businesses from top down. 

The more she worked with companies the more she realized that one of the biggest issues is that non-tech company leaders and entrepreneurs would go down the wrong path technically spending money where they did not need to.  I have seen happen countless times.  Developers promise one thing and then the entrepreneurs who hired them did not get the product that they want.  There is a disconnect.  Nelly realized it wasn't only the developer fault but is also the entrepreneurs fault because they do not know how to communicate or understand the process of developing something and because of that they make the wrong choices that are laid out for them from the developer.  She started asking questions to entrepreneurs and she began to see the red flags that the entrepreneurs can not see with their developers.  That is why she decided to launch TechSpeak.

Nelly set up processes in Webgrrls that allow her to grow TechSpeak.  She has a road map that she is following and she is teaching other entrepreneurs to use that map to leverage technology in their own businesses.  TechSpeak puts on two day seminars across the country.  Not surprising Nelly knows exactly how many people she needs at each class in order to make TechSpeak a profitable business.  Nelly has created something that many first time entrepreneurs should consider taking.  It can save one a lot of money and frustration down the line.  Keep in mind that Nelly has built this business while maintaining the tech infrastructure for 100 Webgrrls chapters across the country and world.  She understands how to run an efficient tech infrastructure after all she can built a business at the same time.  Impressive woman and techie that has taken her knowledge and figured out how to give back by training others to do what she does so well.  Most of the people she has touched are women.  

I am looking forward to watching what Nelly does next.  An impressive woman.  Really glad she crossed my path. BTW, for anyone who is game, here is a 15% discount off the two-day class.

 

Breaking bread with the Board

Breaking bread, sitting down and having a meal with business people, allows conversation to flow that is not all business. That is a very good thing.

I am a big fan of the closing dinner.  Fred has been doing them for years.  When a company closes a serious round of financing, that really means their Series A, then you get all the investors together to break bread.  Some of the investors might not sit on the board while others will but now everyone knows each other.  There is certainly a connection that everyone at the table believed in the entrepreneur and the company but there is now an open line of communication for everybody. 

This not only works for a profit business it also works for non-profits.  Hot Bread Kitchen has a dinner every year for the board members and the staff.  It is a wonderful annual event. 

I sit on the board of the High Line.  In most organizations of this size a lot of the work gets done in committees so at the board meetings it is really difficult to get to know others who are not on your committee.  This past Friday I had lunch with the board of the High Line.  We ate, we had a glass of wine and we got to talk to each other not as board members but as NYers who have come together from different parts of the city with many other passions to discuss besides our beloved High Line.  It was great.

I am always a fan of a dinner party as we really try to have as many as we can over the year.  What is nice is that through many of the businesses we involve ourselves in we get to meet so many interesting people that we might eat with to close a financing but we also find that those meals can take relationships to another level where we find those people sitting at our home as friends, breaking bread. 

MOUSE celebrating 15 years

Last night I went to a dinner to pass the wand at Mouse.  After ten years the Executive Director, Carole Wacey, has moved on to her next career move.  In 15 years she was one of two Executive Directors.  The first, Sarah Holloway, who is the Co- founder had that role for 5 years.  Both of those women IMHO are truly  accredited to the success of MOUSE. A new person has been hired to lead the next charge.  He has big shoes to fill but I am pretty confident that he will bring MOUSE to the next level of excellence.

I was the first Chairperson and I am incredibly proud of the foundation that I helped build.  Altough I am not on the board I have always stayed very close to MOUSE.  Mouse is and has always been a lean organization with a group of talented individuals who are top of their field.  It is another key to MOUSE's success.

I know this group well. They are a part of my life that is near and dear to my heart like no other.  They are friends, colleagues and people who care just as passionately as I do about education and technology.

On May 20 MOUSE is holding their 15th year anniversary party. I am beyond humbled to be the honoree of this event.  I have never been honored before as I am not sure being honored is my thing but for this and my involvement for the past 15 years I said yes.

So mark the date May 20.    The amount of children that MOUSE has touched is staggering and I can't help but feel incredibly humbled to be chosen as the person to head up their 15 year anniversary celebration. 

The Magazine is Far from Dead

Over the last few years there has been a surge of very cool magazines that have emerged.  They are not exactly like the magazines of the past such as Vogue, Elle, Food & Wine but they are written more like short stories. 

There is Gastronmica for food, Wilder for gardening, Kinfolk for lifestyle and others. They are all beautifully designed and surviving.  The content is unique and the photography is beautiful. 

I have been a magazine reader for as long as I can remember.  I own the last 25 years of the September Vogue issue.  We get countless magazines every month.  I look forward to seeing them in the mailbox.  I do get through each one.  I call it useless information for my head.  Pages of content that really attempt to create something that is unique.  That is quite a challenge these days when everything out there is live and immediate.

Sometimes the articles are amazing and sometimes they are just ok but I still do love the ability to sit down and turn page by page to see the monthly creation of that each magazine.  I know my daughters love magazines too and pick up some of the publications from overseas such as Purple. 

As much as the Internet has changed so many industries, and yes the flip book has done wonders for certain magazines, it might be a challenge to keep a loyal audience in the magazine world from old school publications from Conde Nast and Harpers but the new magazines are thriving with a loyal audience.  So as much as people are creating companies to move our every day world on line, their are some people putting out magazines that are changing that industry too. It is a different start-up nation but it is a start-up.

Bottom line, I am just a sucker for a good paper magazine. 

Skiing

I just got back from a long weekend in Utah skiing.  I plan on going back out there for almost 3 weeks in March.  That has to do with the kids and their different vacations. 

I learned to ski when I was in seventh grade.  The school would take us on these Friday night trips to Roundtop where the snow was ice and we skied under lights.  It was honestly miserable but at that age I thought it was awesome.  I continued to go on those kind of trips through high school.  Some of the trips were long weekends and I sometimes went with friends families for long vacations.  I still wear the ski sweater I bought when I was 14 when I ski.  They just don't make them like that anymore.

Fred is a skier and so when we got together skiing was just part of our journey.  We would take at least a one week a year and go skiing.  We raised our kids to love being on the mountain be it skiing or boarding.  As a family, it is really one of the nicest ways to spend a vacation.  Everyone is active and everyone is exhausted by early evening.  It is just fun.

This weekend we had a crew of people out, our friends and Josh's friends.  It was amazing.  I have also come to realize that in another life I might have run quite a bed and breakfast.  Cooking three meals a day and a few desserts here and there makes me absolutely happy. I am probably the most relaxed.

Back to NYC this week but I am still feel that feeling of just having my batteries recharged and it feels really nice. 

Winter Salad

I love a good salad.  This is a salad that I put together based on what was in the fridge.  It has become a favorite this winter.  The amount of each ingredient is all based on how many people you are having so I am just going to list the items.

Mixed Greens

Brussel Sprouts - cut in half and pan fried

Broccolli Rabe - chopped and pan fried

Acorn Squash - cut squash in half, scoop out seeds, slice into 1/4" pieces, mix with olive oil and kosher salt and bake at 350 until browned.  Put it on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

Sliced almonds

Manchego cheese - shaved

Pomegranite seeds

Dressing:

1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard, 3 Tbsp. White Balsamic Vinegar, 1 Tbsp. Soy Sauce, 1 tsp. Honey, 1/2 cup of more of Olive Oil.  Take all the ingredients and whisk. Slowly add in the oilve oil continuing to whisk until the dressing get thick.  Add kosher salt for taste.

 

 

 

Caryn Siedman, Clearme, Woman Entrepreneur

Caryn should have been on my radar way before I talked to her.  Someone who works for Caryn contacted me.  She said that Caryn was an amazing woman entrepreneur and I should speak with her.  I love the whole concept of Clearme and said yes.  Clearme is transforming the transportation industry by pre-screening people that become members to get the Clearme card so one can bypass long security lines and take the angst out of travel.  Caryn and I begin to talk and then I put 2 + 2 together.  Her business partner happens to be one of my best friends brother.  But there is more.

Caryn grew up in Potomac, MD.  So did I.  We are a decade apart so we did not know each other.  Her father was an economist for the Department of Transportation and her mother was a real estate agent before becoming a budget analyst for the Government.  Caryn graduated from the same high school as I did.  She also went to the same camp as I did growing up, Camp Ramblewood.  She also had a variety of jobs in high school and in essence always felt like a tough chick.  It was hilarious talking to Caryn because she had lived some of the same experiences as I did but only 10 years later. 

Caryn went to University of Michigan for college.  She wanted to go to a school that was heavy into sports because she wanted to be a sports journalist.  Caryn spent her second semester junior year abroad in Madrid where had to take all the classes in Spanish.  Needless to say she spoke fluent Spanish very quickly.  Her summer jobs were back at home working for the Don and Mike early morning drive show on 105.1 fm radio and an internship at NBC working and writing for a few major talk shows including Jim Vance.  Her last summer before graduating she worked for a CBS affiliate in Toledo Ohio covering the Mud Hens reporting from behind and in front of the camera.  She realized that the job was not as glamorous as you think.  She made a conscious decision to not go into the world of sports journalist.  That is the best thing about doing internships and jobs in college.  It teaches you what you want to do and what you don't want to do. What she did love was doing research.  She would read about proxies about companies like they were magazines which is why she decided finance was the way to go.

Caryn graduated from college with a job at Deloitte and Touche in Chicago paying her $29K a year.  She turned it down because she wanted to be in NYC.  Her mother thought she was crazy.  She came to NYC as many do without a job and began to pound the pavement.  She knocked on the door of every finance company she could find.  Eventually she landed a job in risk arbitrage at Arnhold and Bleichroder.  She was a slave to running numbers on spread sheets.  She had graduated in May and was there by June.  She was the lowest paid person in the company and her desk sat looking at a brick wall.  It was an incredible opportunity.  If you were there early enough and stayed late enough they would pay for breakfast, lunch and dinner so even though she was only making $24k a year with a rent of $1200 a month she could survive because she had no expenses. 

It was 1994 and there was a lot going on in mergers and acquisitions.  She learned a ton.  She worked for one guy for about a year and a half who mentored her to become an analyst.  The company bought a hedge fund and she became an analyst in that department.  She got to meet management teams and act like she knew what she was talking about.  Her strategy was fake it until you make it.  She had nothing to lose so why not.  That strategy paid off.

She stayed at that company for about 3 years until a few of the higher-up people left to start Iridian Asset Management and asked Caryn to come with them.  They became an 8 billion dollar asset management company.  She stayed four years rising among the ranks.  Their strategy would be to take a 5% ownership in companies and help them grow.  She began to build great relationships and learn how to invest. 

In 2001 Caryn left because she wanted to own her own company and culture.  MSB Capital gave her the opportunity to do that with them but after a short 8 weeks she knew it was not the right fit.  She left on good terms to join Glenview, a hedge fund, to be their number two.  Ultimately the number one told her that he would back her in her own hedge fund business. 

At 29, pregnant with her first child, she started her own hedge fund and called it Ariance, part art part science.  She had $50 million under management and began to raise more funds.  She went to raise money from one guy and he actually said to her "how do you know if you will come back after having the baby"?  Her response was "are you crazy".  Between 2002-2008 she grew the business from $50M to $1.5 billion.  It was stressful, daunting, frustrating, exciting, horrible and awesome.  Through all that she had 3 kids.

In 2008 the financial world imploded.  Caryn began to think "is this what I want to do with the rest of my life"?  She felt like she wanted more control of her destiny.  So both her and her partner decided to give all the money they had under management back.  It was unheard of but she felt it was the right thing to do while they thought about what is next.  If we can not invest with confidence then we should walk away.  They made sure everyone who worked for them got a job and they closed shop.

She went to Paris for four days with her daughter, Mom and niece.  It was literally the first time she had taken off with any responsibilities to work.  She spent the next two months doing the Mom thing and quickly realized that it was not for her.  She loves working.  She loves using her brain in a business environment.  So her partner from before started a company called All Good Holdings to invest in good stuff.  First they took $1m and gave it away through their foundation.  They wanted to invest in homeland security, defense and aerospace.  It was through this desire to invest in these verticals that they stumbled upon Clear.  They took their own capital and some mentors and investors that they had met along the way and bought the company.

Over the past two years they have rebuilt the company and changed the name to Clearme.  Clearme is a fast pass through the airport that you can acquire by enrolling and having your biometrics taken for clearance.  It is the ATM of identity by matching your fingers prints and iris.  They are hoping that the data analytic will also change the physical screening of people so you don't have to deal with shoes, coats and liquids in your bag.  It will be a data base of millions of identities and that pass can be used at airports that have integrated Clearme into their system and that could include buildings, hospitals etc.  It is only $179 year to joint and you can add your partner/spouse for $50 and kids under 18 go free.  They are currently in SFO, Orlando, Denver, Dallas and Westchester airports.  They are hoping to get into more soon.

Caryn believes that transportation is one of the few places that has not moved forward with technology.  They are leveraging technology as this is a huge opportunity with high barriers to entry. It has been a tough road dealing with bureaucratic challenges but they are getting there.  After talking with Caryn there is absolutely no doubt she will get there.  She is sharp as a whip and is driven to success.  We sent each other are Camp Ramblewood photographs of each other and got a good chuckle.  I can hardly wait to see Clearme get into the airports that I frequent most often.  For the consumer, Clearme is a no-brainer.