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Building a VC-Funded Fashion E-Commerce Company: Weddington Way CEO Ilana Stern (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: This is not exactly a wedding planning site? It’s a bridesmaid shopping site.

Ilana Stern: No, it’s not. It’s a rich collaborative shopping experience.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, but your focus is still on bridesmaid dresses or has it broadened?

Ilana Stern: Our focus is still on bridesmaid dresses and we’ll be expanding beyond that. Earlier this year, we launched our own private label. We started to vertically integrate, which gives us the ability to get even closer. We’re so close to understanding what our customer wants and what she’s missing. We’ve got the power to serve that up to her through our private label collection. Over the next couple of years, we’ll be launching new categories of merchandise that’s still focused on the wedding industry. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: Krishna Kumar, CEO of AppOrchid (Part 2)

Sramana: How did you get the company off the ground? Did you raise VC money? Did you use your own money? Did you bootstrap?

Krishna Kumar: Initially, we had to bootstrap. The first few years were funded through my checking account.

Sramana: How long did it take you to get your first customer?

Krishna Kumar: We had to get an alpha customer to get our product out. I had to use my consulting skills to get a foot in the door. Our first customer was Johnson and Johnson. The product did a good job of optimizing the analytical landscape. Instead of us trying to promote our own product, we used existing analytical product budgets and systems, which were well crafted within the landscape, to piggy back on and promote our analytical products. The best way to do that was to sell myself as a visionary consultant. >>>

Building a VC-Funded Fashion E-Commerce Company: Weddington Way CEO Ilana Stern (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How did you select whom to put in the private beta? How were you finding these beta customers?

Ilana Stern: It started with my network. The fact that I am in the target audience is really helpful because I am the customer and the people around me are too. The first few customers came during the last quarter of business school. It was before the website even existed. One was my classmate from business school who was getting married after school. She approached me in the parking lot and said, “I’m getting married during the summer after graduation. I live in Palo Alto. Our friends live all over the place and are super busy. We are getting married on the East Coast. The logistics of managing all this is really difficult. I don’t know how to go about the bridesmaid dresses.” She knew that I was working on this idea. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: Krishna Kumar, CEO of AppOrchid (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

See how a serial entrepreneur is using the ‘Bootstrapping Using Services’ methodology repeatedly to get companies off the ground.

Sramana: Krishna, let’s start with the beginning of your personal story. Where are you from, what is your background? What leads up to your entrepreneurial story?

Krishna Kumar: I was born in India. I came to the US in 1996. I worked my way up the consulting chain from an SAP consultant to the Vice President of Ness, a consulting firm based in New Jersey. Ness was also primarily an SAP shop. It was a NASDAQ-listed company and I had exposure to both the strategy and product sides of the house. >>>

Building a VC-Funded Fashion E-Commerce Company: Weddington Way CEO Ilana Stern (Part 2)

Ilana Stern: What was really interesting was that I saw this disconnect between the supply side and the demand side. If you took a millennial bride and looked at how she lived her life in general, it’s very different from how her mother lived her life in terms of how she consumes media, how she connects and stays in touch with friends, and how she shops. If you put a millennial in the position of being the bride and planning a wedding, she could actually take her wedding and hand it over to her mom. Her mom could plan it the same way she did 30 years ago, and not much has changed. It was this disconnect between consumer behavior and what the industry was offering the consumer that got me really excited about the industry. >>>

Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Your customer base is enterprise customers?

David Steinberg: Yes, our customers are enterprise.

Sramana Mitra: You were just talking about specifically how you’ve differentiated and brought the pieces together using, to some extent, a roll-up strategy. Is that part of the strategy now?

David Steinberg: No, we’re not a roll-up strategy. >>>

Building a VC-Funded Fashion E-Commerce Company: Weddington Way CEO Ilana Stern (Part 1)

There aren’t that many venture-funded fashion e-commerce companies out there. The main reason is that the venture capital business is dominated by men, and typically, women happen to be more in tune with fashion. Ilana Stern is building a very interesting fashion company focused on bridesmaid dresses as the starting point.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with your personal story. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised and in what kind of circumstances?

Ilana Stern: I’m originally from Los Angeles. I was very close with my family. My dad is actually an entrepreneur of sorts. I was inspired by his hard work and passion for what he does. When I was 18, I left LA and went to the University of Pennsylvania for undergraduate studies. >>>

Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: These companies that you brought together to get the base level offering going, how did you identify them?

David Steinberg: That’s a great question. I took a core team from my last company who focused on M&A and corporate strategy. That team started looking around and calling everybody on earth. For example, we started the company in October of 2007, but we didn’t do our first deal until April of 2008.

Sramana Mitra: They were looking for companies within a certain domain. What constraints did you give them?

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