Arrive Magazine - May/June, 2008

says. “This machine is about making them available.

“The truth is, the book is a very efficient medium,” he continues. “We’re simply bringing technology to a successful analog product. The broader implication is that suddenly books are available at a reasonable price throughout the world. The impact can go much further than the book business and the book customer, to the improvement of education and literacy everywhere.”

Breaking Through
the e-Glass Ceiling

Victoria Colligan and Beth Schoenfeldt Cofounders, Ladies Who Launch

With its winking name, pretty pink logo and you-go-sister attitude, it’d be easy to dismiss Ladies Who Launch as a girly spin on the old boys’ network. But this 5-year-old effort, like the audience it serves, is dedicated to doing things its own way. Employing an Internet-based model, it has helped connect—and launch—thousands of women-owned entrepreneurial ships.

“Women are starting businesses at three times the rate of men,” says cofounder Victoria Colligan, 39, “and they’re doing so for different reasons. Survey after survey shows that they value flexibility and fulfillment more than anything, and being an entrepreneur satisfies those needs. I created Ladies Who Launch to address their specific needs.”

While working in business development for a succession of women-owned companies, Colligan began noticing just how differently women entrepreneurs operated. She decided to start an online newsletter to reach them—some 11 million American women own businesses— and to highlight their success stories. Before long, she teamed up with Beth Schoenfeldt, 40, a New York marketing and sales exec who was developing an incubator to offer workshops and coaching for entrepreneurial women.

Now, the New York–based organization is national, with 45,000 members who receive its e-mail newsletter and access online content like bulletin boards, job postings and an eBay store.

The network extends to the physical world, too, with intensive four-week workshops run by licensees in some 50 cities and regular live events in 10 cities.

Its recently expanded website is the key, though, with video presentations and greater interactivity slated for the near future. “We see the site as the one-stop shopping tool for a woman to enhance her life while running her business,” says Colligan. “We want to be a clearinghouse where she can find her nanny or her massage therapist as easily as she can her printer or her graphic designer.”

The Mobile Revolution
Has Begun

Lubna Dajani

CEO, Stratemerge Inc.

When Lubna Dajani waxes poetic about wireless, she does so from the point of view of the consumer. “Wireless is all about being connected, not about wireless versus wired,” says the 43-year-old CEO of Stratemerge Inc., her New Jersey– based network of technology consultants. “It’s about simplifying everyday life rather than adding to the technological clutter.”

Beth Schoenfeldt (left) and Victoria Colligan founded Ladies Who Launch to enable networking among entrepreneurial women.

During her career in information technology, Dajani says she came to understand that “mobility was the next revolution” and set about spreading the word. “I see myself as an evangelizer,” she says. “I tell the industry: Let’s not think about how we’re going to bill the customer but about what compelling service we’re going to create for him. The money will follow.”

Take Japan, where the mobile phone is king. Equipped with bar-coding technology, cells can be aimed at turnstiles for subway admittance, at vending machines for a can of soda or at billboards to download, say, a trailer for the movie being advertised. “It’s the remote control for your life,” says Dajani.

“That’s not yet the case here. There’s still a lot of fear that it may not be the best business model for certain industries,” she says, “but it’s very important that we come to think of mobile not as an alternative to TV, radio, print or even the Web but rather as a multiplier. Mobile gives you a whole new way to measure and reach your audiences. And it gives you instant feedback. There’s an enormous number of revenue-generating opportunities that we’ve yet to explore with wireless.”