Daring moves in digital world
SANDRA GUY sguy@suntimes.com November 11, 2011 3:48PM
TIPS:
** Don’t quit your job. Test your start-up theories during evenings and weekends.
** Develop a revenue model and charge money from day one.
** Build a product or service that works, is unique, that people are willing to pay for, and that creates demand.
** Be open to people, be honest and help others.
Sources: CrowdSpring and Lightspan Digital
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Updated: December 13, 2011 8:14AM
Two 30-something Chicago women are proving that entrepreneurship in the burgeoning digital scene can be a rewarding second career.
Their willingness to take an educated risk proves to be especially daring, according to new research showing that fewer young people are starting their own businesses and small numbers of women are starting tech businesses.
Only 260 of 100,000 people ages 20-34 are starting a business each month, compared with 350 in the 45-54 age group, according to the latest Kaufmann Index of Entrepreneurial Activity.
Marian Mangoubi, co-founder and CEO of Sassy CEO, has compiled a list of 97 technology companies in the Midwest that are founded or co-founded by women, of which 88 are based in Illinois and, of those, 80 are headquartered in Chicago. The 88 Illinois companies, mostly start-ups, have raised a collective $2.5 million in investor financing, based on the information Mangoubi could obtain.
Mana Ionescu, a native of the Transylvania region of Romania who moved to the United States 13 years ago, worked as a case manager for the homeless and as a digital-marketing assistant vice president for a financial firm after deciding that a career as a television reporter wasn’t right for her.
Yet she felt stymied as she realized the possibilities of new media.
“I realized that I wouldn’t get to learn and test new channels as quickly as I would have liked,” Ionescu said. “It felt right for me to start my own business.”
Ionescu’s start-up, Lightspan Digital, has been profitable since its start a year ago, helping companies use blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Ustream and other social-media tools to attract and keep clients.
Ionescu, a 34-year-old Ravenswood resident, counts on her own networks, too. She posts questions and relies on the support of MsTech, a by-invitation-only group of 290 women in the industry, mostly from Chicago and including influencers such as China’s Girl 2.0.
Major corporations have started posting job openings with the group.
The creator of MsTech is Nicole Yeary, a South Loop resident who started her own health-care reform blog — Health Care Hope on Twitter — to explain the hidden details, pitfalls, loopholes and other intricacies of the reform legislation.
“We need health-care reform that is simple and streamlined,” said Yeary, 30, who won six promotions in five years at a major insurance company as she climbed to a senior team manager’s position.
She combined that vision with her social-media savvy to create NicoleYeary.com, where she publicizes her consultancy in content development and social-media strategy.
Both Yeary and Ionescu see on-line tools as natural extensions of doing business.
“I’m a huge believer in how on-line tools change the dynamics between businesses and their customers,” Ionescu said. “Social media lets customers participate in building stronger products, brands and communities.”
One example: Meatheads Burgers & Fries, a burger chain with four restaurants in the suburbs, asked its Facebook friends for summer book-reading suggestions, and published the list on its website.
“That’s the power of crowdsourcing ideas,” Ionescu said.
That sort of openness sounds scary, but Ionescu has developed a participatory model that companies use to meet their customers’ needs and reach out to the greater community.
The advice, with varying fees based on a client’s needs, starts with simple but commonly overlooked steps such as daily updating one’s Facebook status, using embedded search tools, speeding information-sharing with shortcuts and tracking tools, and leveraging media applications such as Hootsuite, TweetDeck and Seesmic. Ionescu spends eight hours training her client businesses’ employees. Those who master social-media management obtain certificates attesting to their skills. The training and certification program costs $960.
Lightspan Digital engages its community — another necessary ingredient in today’s unique combination of digital and personal engagement — by partnering with Orbit Media and Flanigan Communications to launch “Chicago Cause,” a contest awarding $32,000 in web and social-media marketing services to a non-profit whose mission helps enhance a community’s social, economic, cultural or environmental dynamics.
Ionescu’s success mirrors that of many first-generation Chicagoans. Her grandfather came from a family with no traditional schooling, but his smarts earned him a mentor who ensured that he got a college education. He, in turn, pushed Ionescu to study and earn honors such as her scholarship from billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations to study journalism and political science at the American University of Bulgaria. Her classmates’ horrifying family experiences in the Kosovo war of the late 1990s led her to write her master’s thesis on the rhetoric that USA Today and the New York Times used in covering the war.
“It had a tremendous impact on me to know people who were jailed and whose families were deeply impacted by the war,” Ionescu said.
Ionescu also follows what might seem the trite admonition to network in the same creative way.
Yeary’s experience let her hear first-hand health-insurance horror stories ranging from young single moms owing thousands in new-birth and newborn-care claims, to 50-somethings paying $2,500 and more a month for “guaranteed” coverage plans.
Yeary turned to networking and sharing her expertise after she was laid off two years ago, along with her entire 100-agent department.
“I worked 14-hour days all of the time,” she said. “My department grew from 20 to 100 people in a five-year period.”
She recalls being horrified at struggling to get job interviews after she had so swiftly climbed the career ladder.
“Unless you take the initiative, you’ll find yourself sitting in the house,” she said. “TV bores me. I want to work. I want that team energy.”
Yeary went to a “tweet-up,” and realized that she had plenty of company among successful, laid-off and still-searching young people.
So Yeary turned to her vision of making on-line health-insurance transactions easy to understand and as effective as meeting one-on-one with an agent.
She also moderates three online courses with The American College, including helping companies market financial services to women.
Her tweet-up networking efforts helped her find trustworthy business partners, including Ionescu, and led to MsTech’s creation 10 months ago.
In that time, group members have posted thousands of questions and comments seeking support, fellowship, advice, networking opportunities and insights ranging from app commentary to Web 2.0 strategies to using RowFeeder to track hashtags on Twitter.
“Everyone is so eager to share what they know,” Yeary said.
A member survey shows popular topics include social media, marketing, blogging, mobile technology, business development and consumer-focused businesses.
The only topic off limits is self promotion.
“We are in the raw, really sharing legitimate information that can be helpful,” Yeary said. “I knew this group was needed because I wished things had been easier for me.”
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