Helping Moms Juggle: Juggling Mother Sara Sutton Fell, CEO of Flexjobs (Part 3)

SM: You made that transition right before the bubble. When did you actually sell JobDirect?

SS: The deal closed in July of 2000. It was hard to go from such optimism; it was a very difficult time. I was dating my husband at the time. We decided that after four rounds of layoffs at the company that it was time to leave. >>>

Helping Moms Juggle: Juggling Mother Sara Sutton Fell, CEO of Flexjobs (Part 2)

SM: I think straight out of college is a great time to do entrepreneurship. You don’t have families to support or any big liabilities. If it doesn’t work you can always go do something else!

SS: Exactly. There was a freedom because we knew that if it did not work we would go back to school. As we started building it we started hiring our friends and we had internships on college campuses all over. >>>

Postcard From Belgium

In the tradition of my postcards from Asia last winter, this summer, I will write you a few postcards from Europe. >>>

Helping Moms Juggle: Juggling Mother Sara Sutton Fell, CEO of Flexjobs (Part 1)

Sara is the CEO of Flexjobs. Prior to this, she was the co-founder of JobDirect, an entry-level job service for college graduates. After JobDirect, she founded Flexjobs to promote professional, legitimate telecommuting jobs. Flexjobs embodies the telecommuting philosophy, and its own staff is located throughout the country where they work from their homes.

SM: To start, tell us the genesis of your story. Where are you from? What kind of environment did you grow up in?

SS: I had a wonderful childhood. I had more parents than fewer parents. My parents divorced when I was six and both remarried; I had four parents and four siblings. It was a nice, chaotic, busy life! >>>

Deal Radar 2009: BOKU

BOKU is a global online payment company with a new mobile payment service which enables mobile phones to pay for digital goods and social experiences across the web. The company gets mobile users access to bank-grade technology, creating a viable and accessible market for consumers, publishers and carriers. Since most people today don’t have a preference for how they pay for things but just care about how fast it gets done, the company’s Pay By Mobile feature is gaining popularity worldwide, with the aim of making it a standard way to pay for digital goods. >>>

Innovating In Sustainable Building Materials: Hycrete CEO David Rosenberg (Part 7)

SM: How big is the TAM in the US?

DR: The concrete market is a $300 billion market. If you slice that into waterproofing and commercial construction, then that number becomes smaller. >>>

Deal Radar 2009: GlobalSubmit

Today’s Deal Radar is another great bootstrapping case study! GlobalSubmit (formerly known as Intuitive Technologies), provides validation and review software for electronic control technical document (eCTD) submissions for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and life sciences companies. As Intuitive Technologies, the company created publishing products for the financial industry. However, the economic downturn in 2001 combined with the emergence of eCTDs forced GlobalSubmit to redefine themselves. While submissions are historically done on paper, the eCTD provides an electronic format to submit the documents that make up marketing applications such as the New Drug Application (NDA), which pharmaceuticals and biotechs submit to the FDA when they want to take a drug to market. >>>

Innovating In Sustainable Building Materials: Hycrete CEO David Rosenberg (Part 6)

SM: Do you provide anything other than materials to construction sites?

DR: We provide materials and services. We do not do the construction but we are involved in the design and implementation side. We are constantly educating contractors about the new paradigm in construction. >>>