Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs | Fortune

good morning I've I've told the actually all the most powerful women entrepreneurs that they are my lifeblood because as I've gotten older I have found that you know just coming to getting to know young women who are starting businesses building businesses are you know have a lot to teach the rest of us and I just think you know what they I think we're all kind of looking to Define ourselves outside of our our job descriptions and I think you help us do that so thank you for being here you're a great addition to the program one thing we did on Monday afternoon before everything started was we met with uh High School seniors from who live on Camp Pendleton and we had a a mentoring program with some of you and uh we asked the mentees mentors there what did you want to be when you were 16 years old so that is my first question for you before we get to know you and your businesses Victoria what did you want to do when you were 16 years old so I think at that age I could probably only think of about five careers and lawyer was on there and doctor was on there I think at that stage it was a doctor um I at one point wanted to be a singer but I I actually have the worst voice of anyone that exists um so that quickly died um and I really wanted to be a surgeon that's interesting uh me I I grew up in the southern part of China so um a very traditional China um Chinese scholar family so going through my degrees is what my dad always wanted me to do so um I didn't had a a big dream of being becoming a business woman so um that time was um really achieving my master degree you know PhD degree that when I was at high school well we're going to get into their businesses in a second but I just have to tell you this answer is extremely interesting because in talking with all of the very prominent women in Silicon Valley both entrepreneurs and the women at Facebook and Google and they so many of them have either parents who are doctors or they wanted to be doctors when they were children and I think it has something to do with doctors or entrepreneurs and doctors want to help people definitely definitely that part so tell us about your companies and why you started them what what were you looking to do so with me Victor um so Wildfire is a social media marketing software company so we provide a software solution for large and mediumsized companies to uh manage their presence on social networks understand what's being said about them respond to Consumers measure their performance uh and very common story we started the company because we had our own problem to solve uh my co-founder and I uh used to own an adventure travel company Global Adventure travel company Facebook was the ideal place for us to Market that company when Facebook launched their brand Pages for businesses we created a page for exess trips and then sort of had this now what moment how are we going to get people to become fans how will we get them to engage with us uh wanted to create engaging content realized we'd need to create a Facebook application to do that uh which meant hiring developers and designers and we thought that's a really big barrier to entry we're not going to be the only company that has this problem and that's pretty much how the idea was born so what does Wildfire do um so it's evolved over time um but really it's sort of your complete suite for your social media marketing needs your measurement your tracking your um content management um yeah so it it it helps Big Brand companies basically find fans yeah so large Brands and we work with a lot of midsize companies as well um get fans engage those fans encourage those fans to spread the word understand who they are communicate with them measure what's working not just fans but followers on Twitter and we work with YouTube and Linkedin and other social and you started the company when uh 2008 2008 and Victoria a few months ago sold Wildfire to Google for more than $350 million that's powerful it's so Alexa top that I can't at all um so I run a company called learn best we're in New York City um similar problem I had my own issue I graduated from Harvard went to go work at Morgan Stanley and was going back to Harvard Business School and I just said God I don't know what to do with my own personal finances and I knew that it was something that um I didn't want to be bad at right I just kind of wanted to know how to maximize my own finances and and there just wasn't a great place to go and H the more I started talking to people and it became a real passion I just started talking to everyone I knew my peers male and female and found that no one knew what to do with basic things like what's a credit score exactly and my IRA and long story short uh I wrote a 75 page business plan which was a really long process um and probably didn't even get me anywhere um but when I went back to business school in the fall of 2008 the economy was falling apart Leman Brothers was going under and I ended up winning a business plan competition out of uh Silicon Valley to create a company that would make getting access to experts as easy as doing something like joining a gym um so just the ability to get trusted access to an expert to look at your finances and just tell you what to do um and it's now been three years we've raised $25 million from Excel Venture Partners um and we're now and we just announced about two weeks ago we're a registered investment advisor uh and what we do as a businesses a customer can come they can pay a small fee $350 to $600 a a year and they get unlimited access to their own certified financial planner who works for us who literally reviews every aspect of their financial life they're on call for you um via phone and email and they tell you what you need to do with your money um and I think my real passion for it is that financial planning shouldn't be a luxury it just shouldn't be um and 99% of the country doesn't really have access to an expert because most of us particularly young people if you don't have a lot of assets a lot of people aren't asking for you know your uh hand as an adviser and so that's what we're trying to do try to make personal finance accessible to millions of people here shuni seesoft International why did you start what is it and why did you start it well um Patty first of all I want to say um it just couldn't be a better way to celebrate my birthday today I'm a sage happy birthday to Shi it's such a great honor recognition around all the rest of uh selected um most powerful women entrepreneurs of this year so I want to say Petty Stephanie and Andy brought brought brought me uh into this community so um thank you very much yes um chuni has been involved in our in our in our China expansion yes so thank you so um before I um telling your story how I started sees Sal I want to talk a little bit about what sees Sal does sees Sal stands for um Communications of foreign trade so we are the leading um language technology local iation Communication Service headquartered in Beijing China and we provide um uh customized the uh globalization strategy execution for our um customer around the world um in a worldwide product uh deployment so basically we translate our um customers product uh technologically linguistically and culturally in each different local so we serving a lot of Fortune 500 customers and someone in the audience um in in their worldwide product releases um so by giving them customized um language engineering and and Creative Marketing so um how I started uh uh sees off um so uh starting my own business was never something I had planned for in my life I didn't really had the huge ambition to become a businesswoman uh and um before cesa I was an executive vice president for uh APAC for a NASDAQ listed Company headquarter in Massachusetts so my last assment was doing a little uh fundraising in China basically bring local CH China investment into uh potentially Sprint out China subsidiary so the deer didn't go through and I find myself pregnant so the next thing I uh was I lost my job so so you know women do extraordinary sh s out of desperation so at the same year I had my boy um I started the sees off with a handful of uh um my Chinese colleagues all of a two bedroom apartment at SoHo China Beijing actually I still remember uh we had our server uh sitting on the a stove or kitchen so today um SE Sal was more than 450 employees around the world we operating uh more than 14 different locations we really delivering um we call local sophistication uh in our customers uh worldwide product releases so and Petty I just want to really I express to you then before coming on the stage I'm overwhelmed a bit you know this is my first women exclusive kind of forum I'm tending and I want to add the the theme of uh this year's Summit the talent the idea transformation I think uh what I have how I started the business probably part of my destination in life but how we are doing now at sees Sal I think a lot more extraordinary and even we headquartered in Beijing China we're building a truly Global organization so my management team in different nationalities I have 25 different nationalities working on Beijing office so this is thank you that's that's terrific and um you know what strikes me about all three of you is you were all working at big companies you were working for a a very large company based in the United States Victoria and Alexa were both working at Morgan Stanley these big companies couldn't keep these really talented women and these big companies don't all of you from big companies want to have an entrepreneurial culture and don't you all talk about entrepreneurialism so what were what were the big companies not doing and how might they have been able to let you do inside what you've done on the outside uh in my case I would say um so I was a financial analyst at Morgan Stanley so the lowest of the low on the totem pole I guess which was absolutely fine I I think um you know coming straight out of college it was absolutely fine I think if I worked my butt off and it wasn't the most you know exciting work my problem was that as I looked up the ladder that didn't look like it was going to fulfill me so I think for me it was less about you need to give me my dream job right now I think some young people feel like that I didn't but I needed to see a path that if I progress I was going to really be it was about passion and being really excited about what I was doing doing and I guess as I looked up the ladder it didn't I didn't feel like I was going to be really fulfilled by that and then you were at Harvard Business School and you were racking up student loans yeah and then I went and started a company in the middle of the Great Recession well it worked you I didn't wor about that huh Alexa what about you you were at Morgan Stanley um yeah it's so funny we were both at Morgan Stanley and then we both went to Harvard Business School and we just missed each other which is so interesting um I think my big thing is I just wanted to get out of bed every morning and feeling I like I was making a difference and so for me my career path what I needed in it um was a mix of utilizing my talent so that I could feel like I was doing a really good job every day whatever it may be but also I wanted to do something that would really make a difference and I think um I'd sort of figured that out for myself in my early 20s that um fulfillment for me was just going to be getting out of bed and feeling like I was doing something bigger than just myself and so um you know as like a Trader at Morgan Stanley I just didn't really get that and so I think they did a good job for me it was just more of that um I didn't have that wow I'm really making a difference in helping people and so that was just something that was critical for me to be really happy and and then you went to Harvard Business School and you you actually raised about how much money for your company while you were in school and then dropped out yeah so uh I followed 2008 um the world was turning uh you know upside down and I did something that was totally nuts which is I literally walked into the admissions office um without even raising a dollar yet um just knowing that I really believed in my business and that I was going to find a way to build it come hell or high water um and I literally dropped out in the heart of the recession which my mom I called her and she said Alexa you've always kept me on your toes like I've you know you've always come up with some crazy plan and so I moved to New York with no funding no nothing and it took me about four or five months to pull together um a seed round so and how much was that seed uh 1.1 million from some early Goldman Sachs team members and um probably the hardest work I've ever put into my entire life really really scary and that was 20 8 yeah that was uh it was January uh to the beginning of uh the summer of 2009 uhhuh not an easy time who has questions any yet okay uh Susan line okay wait for the mic thank you hi where do you see your companies in five years or 10 years um so we're at Google Now and one thing I'm learning which is great I'm have enormous respect for Google I can't believe that they built such a large company and kept the amazing culture that they have really respect that um but we were on a really really really fast trajectory at Wildfire we went from you know millions in revenues to tens of millions of revenues to approaching more than that but you realize when you're at Google you need to be thinking with a bee in front of it so so what we now need to think about is how can we combine our knowledge of social media marketing and what we've built with Google's incredible expertise around Marketing in general and their distribution to say how can we make a really really big impact within Google um and I think how can we make a really big impact for a market is my belief is there's a real lack of Technology Solutions um sort of a One-Stop shot for Market is to handle all of their needs for the CMO to handle everything uh from one technology solution it's a very fragmented technology industry for marketers and so I'm really excited cuz I think Google is the company that can pull that off and social media marketing is a very important piece of that so um that's what I'll be spending my time doing for the next five years um so I'm a lot earlier sort of in the game um than Victoria but my dream is uh I would love to build a brand that can be as big as a consumer brand like a Weight Watchers that's extremely accessible to millions and millions of women across the country um to provide Financial advice so you think about Weight Watchers you have a plan you go you get points it's a process and they give you access to experts and what if we could do something like that to make money this topic that everyone cringes over and no one feels great about but yet it affects every day of Our Lives until the day we die and if you can have a trusted unbiased expert at your disposal and really making it just that large so my dream is to make literally tens of millions of people have access to experts they can make better money decisions so they can live better lives beautiful shuni so um I know we talk a lot about how the the world become so smaller while we are getting so close and you know connected and we don't realize how different that each of us we are so I really believe uh the space where we at se of language technology it's it's the next Revolution um the real Che enabler um for the global econ and um what we're doing as CA um my Bel is we really set a a new order from east to west and I believe represent the future to truly complete uh uh the true Global transformation trans uh local uh globalization so I I'm excited um taking SE how far beyond where we are today um we're still um private owned um company and um very um healthy and so we're looking for really truly redefine uh language technology and communication to to support the global economy um I want to I want to say two more quick things before we wrap up thank you Susan I'm sorry there there isn't time for more questions uh in case you were wondering if these women can do it all um I'll remind you that chuni had her son who is now nine when she was pregnant when she was starting her company Victoria I met a couple of years ago when she told me that she and she her husband also works at Wildfire and she's the CEO and um she said yeah we're engaged but we've been engaged for like a few years and we haven't had time to get married when are you getting married March March yay wonderful and Alexa you're getting married when in March March we' discovered that we're kind of twins we're twins so congratulations both of you happy birthday and I want to I want to give a special thanks I want to yesterday at the most powerful women entrepreneurs reception Alexa you went up to Sheila Marcelo who is the CEO of care.com who amazingly is sponsoring the most powerful women entrepreneurs program this year having grown enormously from the time that she was selected as a most powerful women entrepreneur in our launch year 2009 and Alexa what did you ask Sheila yesterday Sheila's been a great mentored me and I said what do I need to do for the next three years so that I can come back and sponsor this so that's Alexa's goal thank you all of you and thank you

Channel: Fortune Magazine

Views: 86,066

Keywords: MPW, ENTREPRENUERS, FORTUNE Most Powerful Women, Most Powerful Women Summit, Fortune Magazine, Victoria Ransom, Wildfire, Alexa von Tobel, LearnVest, Shunee Yee, CSOFT International, Pattie Sellers, SIlicon Valley, Fortune (Magazine)

Id: 4R2OWMxq1-M

Length: 19min 19sec (1159 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 28 2012