VentureOut: Kathy Levinson – Highlighting LGBT leaders in business.

Powered by StartOut. Written by David Duran.

In business, it’s not easy to be at the top of your game, or even be a trend setter, but one woman, Kathy Levinson, defied the odds stacked against her, not only as a woman, but as a woman who happens to also be a lesbian and Jewish.

Levinson doesn’t have just one coming out story, as she felt like she spent all her life coming out. During her early 20’s, she officially came out to friends and family, but wasn’t always out in the workplace. While working at Charles Schwab, Levinson met her then partner. When she became pregnant, coworkers automatically assumed the father was the person who ran the company because they believed that was the only way she would be able to be promoted as much as she was. This was her first real encounter of sexism in the workplace.

While at Schwab, Levinson found herself working in the same department as her partner. Her partner was her subordinate. “The head of Human Resources told me we couldn’t work in the same department,” she said. “HR opened the employee handbook to the section about married couples, but we weren’t married.” Levinson knew what the HR person was suggesting but in her first act of creating change, she quickly turned the employee handbook to the health benefits page and made her point very clear. If she and her partner were considered to be “married,” then she should have the opportunity to have the same health benefits as a married couple. As a result of her brave act, Charles Schwab became one of the first companies to offer domestic partner benefits in the workplace. “By doing it the way I did it, it was leading edge at the time and begun my shadow career of creating a workplace that was equal for woman as well as LGBT people,” she said.

Levinson stayed with Schwab for 14 years and held about 10 different high level positions. Her intent after departing was to focus on family and possibly non-profit. Before she could focus on her new life, Levinson received a call from a new company which at the time was called Trade Plus. She agreed to do some consulting work for the company in 1995 and in September of that year, she had her second child. But her starting role at Trade Plus didn’t come without hiccups. While being considered for her position, Levinson was questioned about her family and how she would be able to manage raising children and having an intense travel schedule. “This was another example where I could have laughed or been so offended that I didn’t end up working for them, but instead I took the time to explain to them why I shouldn’t have been asked the question in the first place,” she said. “It was done in a way where in the end, I was still offered the position.” In 1996, she went to work for them full time after a year of consulting and she helped morph the company into what is known today, E*Trade. She helped move the business model from phone trading to internet trading and served as President and COO of the company.

Near the end of her time with E*TRADE was right around the time when Proposition 22 was on the ballot in California. Prop 22 was a law enacted by California voters to restrict marriages to only those between opposite-sex couples. Levinson had been approached to take a leadership role in fighting Prop 22, but what she ultimately decided was to make a significant donation instead to the campaign due to responsibilities to employees and shareholders. The donation was to be kept under wraps until Levinson had time to speak to her CEO at E*TRADE as well as the Board of Directors, but unfortunately, her contribution had been leaked before that opportunity arose. After some major damage control, Levinson felt that it was still the right decision. “I think after that experience, what had been my shadow career was now really becoming my real career, and in the summer of 2000, I left E*TRADE with the intent to do what I had intended to do when I left Schwab,” she said. “My intent now was to focus on philanthropy and activism for women, the LGBT community and Jews.”

Levinson quickly found herself immersed within the Lesbian Equity Foundation, a foundation she helped create. “We spent a lot of time with the name, and the name itself was very strategic,” she said. Levinson is still involved with the foundation and she helps make a number of grants each year to women, the LGBT and Jewish communities. “Sometimes we give grants outside of that range if it’s for educational purposes,” she said. “Even though the organization itself isn’t LGBT centric, we use the opportunity to educate.”

Currently, Levinson is involved with Golden Seeds, an investing group that invests in woman owned or founded companies. As one of the Managing Directors, she seeks out companies that fall within the parameters of what Golden Seeds is looking for. She ultimately invests in some as well as sits on board seats of others. “Women get such a small percentage of venture capital and angel investor money, some 1-4% of the money,” she said. “Much like the corporate world, it just seems like women don’t have as much access to capital and my involvement with Golden Seeds seemed right in line with my personal mission of helping woman in business.”

Since her transition from the corporate world to the startup world, Levinson has actively taken an interest in helping entrepreneurs with funding and advising. Having had worked in big business, she knows and appreciates the major differences from working for someone else versus working for yourself. She hopes to continue to mentor young startups and potentially invest in some through her current position at Golden Seeds and at other organizations. “As a woman and out lesbian, with two decades of experience in the financial services industry, I have a keen understanding of the difficult road that entrepreneurs who are in the ‘other’ category can face in the world of raising capital or even in being treated on a level playing field,” she said. “Learning how to stand proud and confident, while still earning a seat at the proverbial tables of venture capitalists, angel investors, and other key constituents, can be a challenge, particularly for those in start-up mode.”

When it comes to transferable knowledge from her experience in a corporate structure to working with startups, Levinson explained that when you are really small, you don’t really think about the culture you are creating. “In my experience, it gets harder and harder to do the bigger you get, so be really clear about the environment and values you want to create.” She suggests hiring people who have the same values and lead with them. “It’s important to understand the significance of imbuing one’s company with core values very early on in the process, setting the tone for the expectations you have for those who work with, and for yourself.”

Levinson acknowledged her work within the LGBT community but doesn’t admit to feeling recognized. “I am a mom and a wife and I feel blessed that I did really well in my professional career in such that I was able to obtain the financial resources to be able to focus on my family and shadow career,” she said. “My job became my career and my career expanded to my shadow career. I’ve been lucky enough to have jobs that have been exciting, and I learned a lot about what fits with my values, and I have been able to parlay that into different communities that mattered to me.”

VentureOut: Travis Lowry – Highlighting LGBT leaders in business.

Powered by StartOut. Written by David Duran.

Imagine an online platform that can truly create change one person at a time. OutGrade, a new social media rating website is trying to do just that. The site believes in furthering LGBT rights on a local scale by involving both sides of the equation: the users who are members and allies of the LGBT community and local businesses. There are many sites that currently list LGBT-owned businesses, as well as those geared towards the community, but according to founder Travis Lowry, those sites don’t facilitate change because they don’t interface with “straight” businesses by teaching them the value, both fiscally and morally, of supporting LGBT rights. “OutGrade breeds an ecosystem in which homophobic businesses face economic backlash and friendly businesses are rewarded and celebrated,” said Lowry. OutGrade is similar to Yelp which brings accountability to the quality of food at restaurants and creates a competitive environment in which the customer now drives ever increasing quality. “The fiscal punishment is certainly a ‘shtick’ to get businesses to change, but I really do not believe this is going to result in businesses putting on some insincere show of fake friendliness just for the cash,” he said. Instead, he feels they will begin to alter their behavior as a result of economic factors and come to the realization that “LGBT people are just like everyone else: be friendly and accepting to them and they will frequent your business.”

Lowry developed the concept for OutGrade during the height of teen suicides being reported in the US due to homophobia. “They were describing the It Gets Better Project and the Born This Way Foundation and the huge impact those wonderful projects were having, and in my mind I saw those campaigns and others like them as these enormously powerful juggernauts in brining homophobia into the media spotlight.” At the time, he was living in Syria working for the United Nations and thought he could perhaps use the internet to create a platform in which a single individual could catalyze visible and immediate change in their local area. “Creating an It Gets Better video fuels this influential march towards equality on a general scale, and I knew I could build something that would allow one of these 13-year-old kids to wield their personal experiences in exacting a change, no matter how minute, in their town, today.” He also felt the site would allow all members of the LGBT and allied communities to share their experiences, and ultimately use the site as a tool in leveraging the power of their spending habits to further LGBT rights.

After returning to the US with the basic business plan and finding a few friends who were excited to work on it, he found an angel investor who saw the value of OutGrade at the early stages and they immediately dove in. “I lived and worked in Syria, traveled all around the Middle East, drove the length of Tunisia, rode motorcycles throughout Nepal and I spend a lot of time getting beaten up at a mixed martial arts gym,” he said. “Running a startup is no different than working in a chaotic developing country or being in a fight: you have to really thrive on risk and the great opportunities that can be found within them, despite the fact that bad things usually happen when you take risks.”

When the site first started, Lowry and his team worked with LGBT activists at Tufts to develop a rating system that determined LGBT friendliness as well as how to make the reviews as fair to the businesses as possible in addition to being helpful to the community. Currently, users can rate their general impression on a scale of -5 to 5 and endorse a business for a series of other factors like friendliness of staff or clientele, and even if they would feel comfortable on a date in the establishment. Users are encouraged to write honest reviews then OutGrade color codes results so places with average ratings on the low-end are a shade of red, neutral are yellow and friendly are green. In addition, they chart the locales for users to see a heat map of friendliness for a local area. “The tight rope we walk right now is creating a series of helpful and actionable variables that are dense and meaningful enough to facilitate change and serve as a viable platform for voicing people’s experiences, while not getting so academic or complex that its unapproachable for users or impenetrable for businesses who may not be super up-to-date on their Queer Theory,” said Lowry. He plans on constantly evolving the variables in efforts to meet the needs of the community and to “dial in the most potent recipes for furthering LGBT rights.”

The site plans to provide a mechanism for local businesses to connect with the LGBT community on a non-sexual, dining and travel focused platform. They spoke to dozens of businesses across the spectrum of friendly to not-so-friendly and frequently heard the same things. “These local businesses have small budgets for media buys and local gay media is pretty sexual, or worse, given the changing media landscape, non-existent.” OutGrade offers a platform they can buy into that fits their budget to reach an untapped local market. “Most local businesses also recognize the value, both economically and morally, of being accepting, but really lack an understanding of what that means in practice,” said Lowry. The company is providing various packages that create a direct link to the community that, in turn, lead to more customers for businesses and a more personal experience for the customer, according to Lowry.

The site has currently soft-launched as an open test bed for early users while they wrap up some final features and complete the mobile app. OutGrade should be rolled out in full-force by mid-April but all are welcome to start using the site right away. Lowry is a big believer in presenting business-focused solutions to problems that non-profits have traditionally sought to tackle. He feels this strategy has worked in fighting climate change and poverty and thinks it can work in fighting for LGBT rights. “We need to put LGBT rights in a language that businesses get…I can tell you that a strategy relying on emotion or morality is not going to soften the hearts of many people who don’t support the LGBT community,” he said. “However, if we can get their attention with the fiscal power of the LGBT community and then provide them with an opportunity to actually interact face-to-face with members of the community, we can enact change on a national (or global) scale.”

VentureOut: Matt Lombardi – Highlighting LGBT leaders in business.

Powered by StartOut. Written by David Duran.

Booking an artist for an event just got a lot easier and affordable. Hear It Local, a new startup helps facilitate the process of booking your favorite artist or new undiscovered band. The web-based business run by partners Matt Lombardi and Glenn Shope helps event hosts find the perfect musician for their event by featuring video, tracks, social media and other content to showcase the online musician profiles. Currently, the site offers over 3,000 active musicians and bands across twenty U.S. cities. Unlike other booking platforms, they enable event organizers to pre-sell tickets to their live music event, making it easy and affordable for anyone to host a private live music event.

Hear It Local has also launched a Facebook app called GetBooked, which brings the functionality of the site to Facebook.  “Once a musician installs the app, it empowers fans to book a live music event and facilitates the booking right from the musician’s Facebook page,” said Lombardi. The app has helped kick start a new “House Concert” movement as fans are hiring their favorite musicians for private concerts in their homes for less than it costs to go out to a show with a few friends, according to Lombardi.

Lombardi and Shope became friends several years ago due to a shared love of live, independent music. The concept of Hear It Local came out of a mutual frustration with the “difficult to navigate” live music scene in San Francisco, according to Lombardi. “When I first moved to the city, I had a really hard time figuring out where to find great local shows and where the local musicians played,” he said. Shope, who’s been a musician for 20 years, agreed and felt perplexed by how inefficient the booking process was for musicians. “Many musicians spend more time trying to get booked than actually playing music,” said Lombardi, “and we launched Hear It Local as a way to streamline live music for fans, promoters and musicians.” The partners listened to users and implemented ideas directly from them as the site grew from a few hundred artists to thousands. The idea behind their Facebook app came directly from their users. “I now feel like Hear It Local has taken on a life of its own,” said Lombardi.

From the start, both Lombardi and Shope kept their day jobs while working on Hear It Local on nights and weekends, in order to be able to finance their idea. Once the prototype was built and enough traction with musicians was established, they were able to raise a round of seed capital and commit to Hear It Local full-time.

Lombardi has been a member of StartOut from its inception and says that the networking and educational sessions have always been helpful at every stage of their business. In fact, the first public speaking he did on behalf of Hear It Local was at a pitch session hosted by StartOut at the Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco. “After pitching our concept, we got tons of helpful feedback and support from investors, seasoned entrepreneurs, lawyers, and other professionals.”

StartOut has helped Hear It Local in tangible and intangible ways according to Shope. “We have met a lot of people through the organization that have either provided services or funding directly,” he said, “ and at the same time, it has helped us keep perspective by being able to see how other people are doing things and how they are handling challenges.  They most recently met an angel investor at StartOut’s New York Demo Day.

Hear It Local is looking to become “THE” booking platform for independent music. In the past few months, they have expanded into twenty cities and they expect to launch in twenty more this spring. “ Their current business model is focused on giving fans access to their favorite musicians for house concerts and private events. In the future, the men see an opportunity to provide businesses, event planners and professional talent bookers better access to top independent talent. The company is currently run with two full-time employees and several part-timers.

Lombardi suggests to up-and-coming entrepreneurs that they should meet with as many smart and successful entrepreneurs and investors as possible, taking the time to learn about their startup experiences, successes, and mistakes. “Ask for their feedback on your concept, approach to the market, product, and pitch deck,” he said.  Shope insists that having a narrow focus is the best way to begin. “Figure out what your simplest staring point is and put everything else on the back burner or shelve it indefinitely,” he said, “…put your focus on the essential parts of your business until you have that nailed, you can always embellish later.”

For more information on Hear It Local, visit www.hearitlocal.com.

VentureOut: Tina Cannon – Highlighting LGBT leaders in business.

Powered by StartOut. Written by David Duran.

Out and extremely successful entrepreneur, Tina Cannon, 41, is using her knowledge and expertise to help other wannabe entrepreneurs. Cannon, the CEO and co-founder of PetsMD.com, the leading online pet health resource acquired in 2011, is also the co-founder of Book-a-Vet, a B2B veterinary appointment application. In addition to being a featured technology presenter and mentor to numerous startups, she is the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Texas State University. Cannon also co-founded PreAccelerate, a pre-seed stage startup boot camp, and, after all that, still finds time to guest blog for CBS (BNET.com).

Her latest business, Napkin Venture, is a consulting firm with three focus areas. The first is helping entrepreneurs take their ideas from a “napkin” sketch to reality, which may consist of creating business models, analyzing markets forming their entity or preparing for angel or venture funding. Second, they assist investment-backed startups with a full C-level drop-in team to help steer the company in the right direction and hit the next measurable milestones. And lastly, they provide entrepreneur education and classes through a variety of partners in the greater Austin area. “Each Friday, we open our doors for free brainstorming sessions,” said Cannon, “entrepreneurs can come in, visit with one or more of the partners and kick their idea around. [They] get a bit of advice and always have some homework to complete as a part of moving forward with their concept.” It’s one of the favorite days of the week for Cannon and the team at Napkin Venture, as it’s a wonderful way to give back to the local entrepreneur community.

After having several startups of her own, Cannon and her then business partner, an attorney-turned-entrepreneur executive with companies like Travelocity, determined that there was a significant need in the entrepreneurial space for advice, guidance, mentorship and education for budding entrepreneurs. “It is always best to learn from those who have been there and experienced not only success, but even more importantly, the failures along the way,” said Cannon. Soon after, the two added a third partner who’s expertise at market validation, economic development and marketing strategies really helped to round out the firm, according to Cannon. “The partners in the firm all mentored other entrepreneurs so it seemed natural to put in place a more formal structure and offering that made sense for the entrepreneur community,” said Cannon and added, “we help steer them away from the same mistakes we see many entrepreneurs make saving them time, resources and money along the way.”

Cannon and her partners wanted to help as many entrepreneurs as possible, but learned to be selective in the clients they work with. As per Cannon, the company or concept has to be something that they all, as a group, believe in with a similar intensity to that of the founders. Another key point is that the founding team has to be willing to change, pivot and execute boldly. “This is a labor of love and my partners and I choose to do this, not because we have to, but really because we want to,” she said.

StartOut, who recently opened its newest chapter in Austin, Texas is fortunate to have Cannon on the Austin Steering Committee where she helps in assisting with planning, promotion and logistics for StartOut Austin events. In addition, she speaks about her vast knowledge and experience regarding startups on StartOut panels. Cannon claims the organization has grown her network by connecting her with a number of important contacts and she has even found time to make herself available to mentor young entrepreneurs through StartOut. Her advice to newcomers: “Validate the market, grab kick-ass mentors, follow the agile methodology and start executing!”

Cannon is currently single and resides in Austin. She serves as a member of the Board of Directors for the very active Austin Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and even ran for local political office as the “gay” candidate without any negative attention during the campaign, as she says, “…in Austin, being LGBT is really a non-issue for the most part.” She and her partners are currently looking at expanding PreAccelerate.com as well as broadening the scope and reach of their entrepreneur curriculum for other organizations to deploy as part of their educational offerings.

For more information on Napkin Venture, visit www.napkinventure.com.

VentureOut: Peter Arvai – Highlighting LGBT leaders in business.

Powered by StartOut. Written by David Duran.

The next generation of presentations has reached a new level. New startup, Prezi is essentially a virtual whiteboard that transforms presentations from what once was a monotonous monologue into actual conversations. The company is doing this by enabling people to see, understand and remember ideas, all from innovative, new presentations.

“At Prezi, we believe that everything good about humanity starts with people sharing ideas,” said out CEO and co-founder, Peter Arvai. From cancer researchers to teachers explaining the history of the civil rights movement, Prezi helps both presenters and audiences understand ideas, according to Arvai. Prezi is working to make it easier for people to communicate their thoughts in a more fun and engaging way.

The company has three co-founders. Prezi began as the brainchild of co-founder, Adam Somlai-Fischer, a visual artist and architect who traveled around the world presenting with a zooming technology he created. Prior to coming up with the idea, he wanted to show his work on a micro and macro level, but at the time, there was no way to show visualizations unless his audience knew how to code. Knowing the average person did not have programing experience; the co-founders set out to create a tool that could be used by everyone on virtually every device. Prezi is currently available online, on the desktop, on the iPad and most recently on the iPhone.

The company was started in Hungary but always maintained its main market in the US, as the European market is large, yet fragmented due to the various languages spoken throughout. “I believe that the US market is currently the biggest influencer market globally, meaning that if a service gets validated in the US, then other countries will follow,” said Arvai. Having success in the US was key to the success of the company.

Prezi and his partners built a global team from the get-go, hoping to be culturally sensitive to global markets. They recruited people to move to Hungary from all over, including the US. In addition, they opened offices in San Francisco in order to have a local presence in their biggest market. Today, the company’s 100 employees are represented by 20 nationalities. Prezi just launched their software in Spanish, Korean and Japanese and is also in the process of opening offices in Korea and Japan as well.

After first moving to San Francisco, Arvai quickly found StartOut and attended his first event. “It was very inspiring as a gay entrepreneur to have the opportunity to go to events that are targeted for others like me,” he said. Arvai, who was born in Sweden, had established a similar business network for gay professionals, but he said the market wasn’t big enough to have it be just for entrepreneurs. While at his first event, he immediately found a new employee. “I visited an event around the time we were looking to find a Head of Marketing, and during the event I met Drew Banks who had just left his startup.” The two decided to have dinner and soon after Banks became the company’s third hire in the US.

Arvai grew up in a small conservative town in Sweden and said the only LGBT people he knew of were comedians, the local transvestite and people who succumbed to the AIDS virus. “I grew up with no LGBT role models to show me how I could combine my professional interests with my queer identity,” he said. “This is why StartOut was so powerful for me; because I could actually be in a room with people who had similar backgrounds and we could all joke about pop culture and still talk business!”

Arvai stated that LGBT people, business role models and LGBT business role models are as diverse as the world we live in. “Internet entrepreneurs are not just one type – we are not all white, straight, 20-something Ivy League dropouts, yet it seems like this type gets the lion’s share of media attention,” he said and continued, “we need to become better at showing this so that more people can have to the confidence to tackle their dreams, irrespective of their identity and background.”

For more information on Prezi, visit www.prezi.com. 

VentureOut: Ian Ferguson – Highlighting LGBT leaders in business.

Powered by StartOut. Written by David Duran.

New culinary events startup, Kitchit, connects diners directly with local professional chefs who create everything from world-class gastronomic adventures to causal dinner parties. “It brings the quality and ease of restaurant fine dining to private and in-home events,” said Ian Ferguson, CPO and co-founder of Kitchit. Their mission is to create experiences that are “effortless, memorable, and customized.” The handpicked roster of talented chefs ranges from well-known Michelin-starred executive chefs, to celebrity chefs as well as up-and-comers in local restaurants.

Kitchit began in a much different form, primarily as an online source of recipes from top chefs, but as the founders spoke more and more with chefs, different themes emerged; the challenge of building their businesses and brands, the difficulties of making a living working a restaurant line, and the intense satisfaction they felt from connecting directly with diners, according to Ferguson. Soon after, they began to explore the private dining world and quickly realized they had tapped a mostly uncharted business idea. “Here was a sleepy, niche market that was ripe with opportunity for new technology and new audiences,” said Ferguson. A year after the idea, Kitchit is now in four markets across the United States with plans to continue expanding.

Working with and having some of the most accomplished and best-known chefs in America didn’t come easy. The company was challenged to prove to the highest-tier chefs that they weren’t a “here today, gone tomorrow” food startup. “It was important for us to learn the ins and outs of the chef world, which is very networked, fairly political, and totally driven by passion,” said Ferguson, “and we had to prove ourselves quickly. Fortunately, we found some outstanding advocates, like Chef Christopher Kostow of the Michelin 3-Star Restaurant at Meadowood, who really believes in what we’re doing.”

Another obstacle Kitchit had to overcome was the perennial challenges of educating new consumers about the accessibility of their product. The legitimate concerns from potential consumers about costs and identifying the differences between their service and a catering service, was something they needed to overcome. Typically, a dinner ranges from $40-$150 per person, and they make it extremely comfortable and convenient for groups to split the bill just like they might at a restaurant. In addition, dinners do not include alcohol and guests are encouraged to bring their own. “Catering sounds so impersonal and big batch…a Kitchit dinner party is just the opposite: intimate, candlelit, wine-fueled nights that bring friends together like few restaurant meals can,” added Ferguson.

Ferguson, who once worked as a consultant for Bain in New York, was always heavily involved in LGBT networks. He moved to the West Coast in 2009 for business school at Stanford, which made for both a geographic and career shift that left him feeling “network-less.” He recently discovered StartOut by word of mouth and has since attended a few networking events. “I’ve been so incredibly impressed by the size, engagement and diversity of the groups,” he said. Kitchit is a business that grows through word of mouth networks, according to Ferguson. “It’s a social product—one that brings people together around a table, so we depend on networks of all kinds to spread the word.” StartOut has served as one of those networks for Ferguson, but he says that it has also connected him with others that amplify his message.

Kitchit operates in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and most recently opened in Chicago. They plan on focusing their efforts on gaining deep traction in the four markets for the immediate future. Boston, Washington D.C., and Dallas are the three contenders for their next grand opening. “In the meantime, we’ll be doing everything in our power to make the experience of hiring a chef as easy as booking a table at a restaurant,” said Ferguson.

Ferguson who is 29, has been with his partner for 8 years and attributes his sanity to his boyfriend’s distance of the “silicon valley world.” Ferguson acknowledged that most startups morph and change and his advice for others was to be open, nimble and to expect change from the original idea. He also suggested having as much external validation as one can, to help speed up the process. “I’m also a big fan of actually having a business model, so businesses start small and need to grow, while others may need to build some traction before they start churning out cash,” he said, and added, “but I’m personally wary of businesses that seem to lack any monetization strategy whatsoever, so don’t forget that part of the equation!”

Numbers released by Kitchit at the start of 2013 revealed that about 15,000 diners have experienced their service, and more than 200 chefs are on Kitchit, with more coming online every day. 55% of events are below $1,000 and the majority of events are between $50-$100 per person. The most popular chefs on Kitchit made an average of more than $60,000 each on the site in 2012, indic ating their growth and success in a short time. For more information on Kitchit, visit www.kitchit.com. 

VentureOut: Rick Vidal – Highlighting LGBT leaders in business.

Powered by StartOut. Written by David Duran.

Social media users who are ready to break free from their friend and follower silos and reach a relevant group of people easily, now have a new option with Reachably. Reachably is “smarter real-time sharing.” People and companies who want to reach others freely and get more from their sharing, without being contained to only using #hashtags to categorize topics, or @mentions to reach specific individuals are now looking to Reachably for a more efficient manner of communicating socially. “There are billions of us online and sharing daily, yet we don’t have an easy way to reach each other smartly – so we created one,” said founder and CEO, Rick Vidal. Reachably’s “@tags” are the only way to reach whoever you like instantly, whether you need better opinions and recommendations or just want to share with likeminded people who care about what you are posting. “We’ve evolved social sharing from following people to engaging smartly around our tastes, interests, backgrounds and expertise – anything that’s meaningful to you,” said Vidal.

By creating a profile and adding “@tags” to your account such as “@techie, @loveto-cook or @newyorker,” for example, they capture who you are and your interests Whenever you share, the “@tags” are attached to your posts, identifying who you would like to hear from. Folks who have added those “@tags” to their profiles will receive the post and join the conversation. Vidal added, “You can have a meaningful exchange with a relevant group of people without all the fuss of having to gather followers or fans, or being limited to hearing from just them!”

Building the “right team” wasn’t easy for Vidal as tech startups run lean, particularly in their first year. Finding a team of developers, designers, and marketers that was “talented, loyal, passionate, and willing for work for salaries lower than those at established tech companies,” was a major undertaking for him. “Despite all the effort I put into having a structured approach to recruitment, it’s funny to look back and realize how haphazardly and luckily we came together – I found my lead designer on a casual reddit post and met my chief developer at a random bar,” said Vidal. The long hours and deadlines made for challenges, but Vidal and his team found creative ways to have fun and keep each other motivated. One event was a game day full of fun mental and physical challenges, from scavenger hunts and “nerdy” tech puzzles, to cook-offs and runway walks, appropriately titled, “Reachably Olympics.”

Vidal has attended numerous StartOut events, primarily for social and networking purposes. He most recently pitched at StartOut’s first ever Demo Day in NYC. “It was fun; I had 3 minutes to pitch Reachably to a crowd of fellow StartOut supporters and a panel of NYC investors,” said Vidal. After the event, several of the members and investors attended their official launch party. “Having a group of motivated, well-connected and supportive gay entrepreneurs in NYC has been incredible,” he said. Vidal also connected with Darren Spedale, one of StartOut’s founders since attending the events. “He’s particularly been a helpful thought partner and facilitated introductions to mentors and potential investors that would have otherwise taken me months to reach.”

Reachably currently has three full-time employees and four marketing/PR interns. They are currently not in e-commerce, therefore it’s too early to value the business. In January, they will be kicking off several partnerships with major retailers, shops and bloggers. “We’re also hoping on completing our Android app in early spring,” said Vidal.

Vidal who is 33, has been married to his pro bono Legal Counsel, Matt Vidal for two and a half years.  He came out at the age of 26 during the middle of his MD/MBA program at UPenn. Vidal suggests to other newcomer LGBT entrepreneurs to surround themselves with people that love and challenge them as well as taking the time to reflect often and celebrate every moment of the experience. “Being a founder can be an incredibly lonely experience if you don’t have the right support network, and some founders get trapped feeling like they have no outlet for their stress,” said Vidal, “…they can’t reach out to investors and risk decreasing their confidence; they don’t want to share it with their team and impact their morale and they don’t want to burden family and friends.” He feels having the right support from other entrepreneurs who have shared in that experience and can provide meaningful advice is critical. “I started building this community the moment I started working on Reachable and now enjoy mentoring others that have just embarked down the same path.”

For more information on Reachably, visit www.reachably.com. 

VentureOut: Sue Conley & Peggy Smith – Highlighting LGBT leaders in business.

Powered by StartOut. Written by David Duran.

In 1976 after completing degrees at the University of Tennessee, Sue Conley and Peggy Smith took a trip to San Francisco. After landing in San Francisco, both established careers in some of the city’s most famous kitchens.

Smith was inspired, and kept her eye on Chez Panisse while developing her cooking skills at places like Noe Valley Bar and Grill in San Francisco, and Mount View Hotel in Calistoga. She had to submit her resume a dozen times, but her persistence paid off: in 1979, she was hired to cook at Chez Panisse’s new upstairs Café. For the next 17 years, Peggy worked the stove, preparing dishes made from vegetables just out of the garden, fruit right off the branch, and fish straight out of the sea. Over time, she managed the Café kitchen with Catherine Brandel and cooked with Jean Pierre Mouile, Paul Bertoli and David Tanis in the downstairs restaurant.

Conley also made her way into the kitchen, first under Bambi McDonald at Hotel Obrero in Chinatown and later, 4th Street Grill in Berkeley under Paul Bertoli. That’s where she met Bette, the namesake of their joint business venture, Bette’s Oceanview Diner. After 11 years of serving delicious everyday meals to an eclectic mix of Berkeley students, workers and neighbors, Sue sought a quieter pace, migrating to Point Reyes Station, with Smith along for the journey.

By the early 1990s, Conley and Smith launched Tomales Bay Foods, a marketing vehicle to help West Marin’s farms and dairies get their products into the hands of the Bay Area’s finest chefs. Their first location, in downtown Point Reyes, featured a small cheese-making room at the entrance to the building. This was where their relationship with neighboring dairy farmers Ellen and Bill Straus came to be. Soon after, they began making delicious fresh cheeses using milk from the Straus Family Creamery. .

Cowgirl Creamery cheeses, owned by both Conley and Smith, are sold in over 500 stores, independent cheese shops, farmers markets and restaurants, and nationally through Whole Foods Markets. They also own and operate two creameries as well as four retail stores.

Conley, 59 and Smith, 60, who are legally married in California, and “happily out,” still prefer to keep their private lives private. “We are fortunate to live in a community that is open-minded and supportive of same sex relationships, so being open about who we love was not an issue in starting our business,” said Conley.

The women had to overcome financing obstacles when starting their business. Finding conventional financing was a major hurdle they overcame by having friends and family loan them startup money during the first few years. Later on, they were able to take on investors in order to build a new creamery. After 10 years, Conley stated, “Banks began to court us, and we have been able to finance growth with bank loans.” They presently hold 80 percent of shares in their company In addition to financing, the women had to wait for permits from two counties and the city of Petaluma which, according to Conley, was an average of three years.

Conley, who was introduced to StartOut through speaking on a panel of LGBT food entrepreneurs in San Francisco said, “The room was packed with engaged entrepreneurs and people with a dream to get started in the food business.” They have both been engaged in StartOut events and networking ever since. “We have made a few new friends who might help us in the future,” she said. Networking and meeting others who can offer advice is one of the benefits of attending a StartOut event. “Go to an event and find a mentor or two to review your business plan,” suggested Conley to aspiring LGBT entrepreneurs.

Cowgirl Creamery is currently remodeling its original creamery in Point Reyes and will be looking for a new facility in Petaluma for a 2014 move. The women are also writing a book about their business and will include recipes. The book will be released in the fall of 2013. There are currently 100 employees in three divisions; retail, wholesale distribution and production of cheese. Enduring the current economic financial crisis, Cowgirl Creamery continues to grow. “Our staff has contributed to improved efficiencies and cost saving measures as we grow organically,” said Conley.

For more information on Cowgirl Creamery, visit www.cowgirlcreamery.com. 

VentureOut: Heather Hiles – Highlighting LGBT leaders in business.

Powered by StartOut. Written by David Duran. The following article was also published in The Advocate and Out Magazine.

Employers and universities aren’t getting the whole picture of their applicants, contends Heather Hiles, the out founder of Pathbrite.

“We are not the sum total of our bubble-test data, and I intend to prove it,” she said.

Her new startup aims to change the way employees and students present their life, learning and projects. Pathbrite is a digital portfolio that helps collect, organize and beautifully publish a lifetime of learning and success.

Students can build academic portfolios, for example, that show all the evidence of their learning, including research projects, collaboration and any other completed product. This type of presentation is appreciated by faculty because it enables assessments that go beyond the standard “bubble” test to get more “qualitative assessments of cognition, understanding and knowledge,” said Hiles, who is also CEO of Pathbrite.

Hiles argues that anyone trying to advance a career uses portfolios that go well beyond the “flat” resume and instead present a more “holistic” view of their individual capabilities and accomplishments. Referred to as “artifacts,” items in a Pathbrite portfolio can include a traditional resume, as well as videos, photos, and documents of any kinds, including scans of transcripts or diplomas.

“Recruiters love portfolios because they get a better sense of a candidate’s ‘fit and finish’ for any given opportunity, which results in lower rates of expensive bad hires,” said Hiles. Employers can also use portfolios to help employees track their work product during an evaluation period. Then at the end of the period, there is proof of an employee’s accomplishments.

Hiles, who earlier in her career was the CEO of SF Works, a welfare-to-work program under the Clinton administration that successfully trained and moved women into jobs, also served on the San Francisco Unified School District board where she saw first-hand the impacts of stubborn achievement gaps among the city’s most vulnerable students.

“I’m so passionate about what Pathbrite portfolios can do to help people address the critical gaps in their lives that might prevent them from getting the education or job of their dreams, or promotion they deserve,” said Hiles.

But Pathbrite faced a series of obstacles before launching, mostly financial. Without her family and circle of friends and angel investors, Hiles admits the company would not have emerged. “There were moments that were really tough, where I wasn’t sure if I could pull it off,” she said. Pathbrite has most recently received its Series A financing. Hiles, who describes herself as “stubborn,” said that she truly believed in the idea and just kept pushing.

The man she calls “employee number 2,” Robert Collins, recommended Hiles check out StartOut as a resource earlier this year. “Start-ups are a lot of perspiration, and StartOut provides a lot of critical inspiration when you might be running low, it’s so important to see that it’s actually possible to achieve your dreams — that other people like you are making it in the world,” said Hiles. Since learning about StartOut, Hiles attends presentations and networking events on a regular basis. “One of our angels who recently joined the company to run sales and marketing for us, Derek Gordon, who also happens to be gay, often joins me,” she said.

Hiles, 42 was married to her wife in California during the brief time when it was legal. She has been “out” most of her adult life and was pretty open with colleagues and friends from the start. “I guess as a woman, a person of color and a lesbian, I’ve got three strikes against me where Silicon Valley is concerned,” she said, “but the truth is I never really encountered any discrimination or blockers around any of that stuff.”

Hiles’ advice to other entrepreneurs is to get your pitch right and be open to refining it as you share it with potential investors.

For Pathbrite, that could mean it one day uses the underlying data collected via all the portfolios people build to help them set goals and then benchmark progress toward meeting those goals against others with similar objectives, as well as other datasets.

“If a student hopes to land a job as a financial analyst after college,” she said, “we can look at what they’ve got in their portfolio so far and illuminate for that person exactly what they need to do in terms of learning and internship experience to attain their objective.”

But the first step is to believe in your idea. “First, I’d say do your research and be very clear that you have an idea that is either completely novel or makes something that already exists better.”

For more information on Pathbrite, visit www.pathbrite.com.  

VentureOut: Joe DiPasquale – Highlighting LGBT leaders in business.

Powered by StartOut. Written by David Duran. The following article was also published in The Advocate and Out Magazine.

Like a lot of business owners who have succeeded during the economy’s recent sluggishness, Joe DiPasquale built his company, Regroup, on a small budget. The initial business model assumed two rounds of venture financing before hitting profitability, but when the economic downturn hit in 2008, venture capitalists weren’t investing. So Regroup immediately focused on profitability. “When your business is able to finance itself through cash from operations, time is on your side,” said DiPasquale, “and you also have market proof that you are doing something valuable.”

His mass messaging company is changing the way universities, companies and local governments are communicating with their respective audiences. Now they can send simultaneous messages to people wherever they are, via email, text, voice, the web and social media. Regroup provides both day-to-day and emergency messaging.

DiPasquale, 33, is CEO and founded the messaging company with computer science students from Stanford and Harvard as they realized there was a problem with effective communication in universities.

As an MBA student, DiPasquale said he noticed Stanford was using an outdated listserv product, and that Regroup ultimately became a better alternative to the “mailman” system. Another of their clients chose Regroup after a security guard accidentally discharged his gun into the floor of the student library. “There was immediate panic on campus, and students didn’t know if they were in danger,” DiPasquale said. With Regroup, the university is now able to immediately get the official word out to students via all the methods the company offers.

“Administrators were sending out important announcements via email, but students weren’t on email,” said DiPasquale. “They were using text messages on their mobile phones, or social media like Facebook or Twitter.” Regroup allows for seamless communication between them all.

But the newest crop of entrepreneurs multitasks on a grand scale. In the last several years, DiPasquale has founded not only Regroup, but also StartOut — a nonprofit for LGBT entrepreneurship — and made investments as an angel investor and venture capitalist. In 2011, he began working with HighBAR Partners on their venture capital investments and on oversight of portfolio companies. HighBAR was the lead in Regroup’s VC round in 2008 and sits on the board of Regroup. He’s also begun making angel investments and recently invested in Artify.It, started by fellow StartOut co-founder Lorenzo Thione.

DiPasquale originally thought of the idea for an LGBT entrepreneurship organization in early 2009 and founded StartOut later that year, along with Bryan Janeczcko, Darren Spedale and Thione. “Darren had exactly the same idea, and with that type of market proof, we knew we had hit a need that many felt,” said DiPasquale. StartOut originally held events in New York and San Francisco and has since expanded events to Austin and Los Angeles. “We are growing quickly and have many success stories, including those who have found employees, financing, co-founders, jobs, or simply learned about entrepreneurship through StartOut,” he said.

On a recent panel DiPasquale put together for a StartOut event, an attendee asked the panel about non-technical founders. A couple of the investor panelists responded that their funds have preferences for technical teams, and one even mentioned several funds that now only invest in teams where at least one co-founder is technical. “I think that calls out the difference between being an investor and being an entrepreneur,” said DiPasquale. He went on to say that as an investor, you have the luxury of playing the odds and betting on a few of the thousands of entrepreneurs you may meet, and as an entrepreneur, you are “risk-loving,” and have to bet on yourself. “Instead of focusing on what may statistically may be a harder path, you should focus on the many non-technical founders who have been successful with large ventures,” he said.

Some gay entrepreneurs today are blazing a new path of being out before founding and building businesses. DiPasquale, who came out during his freshman year at Harvard, feels that being gay helped him become successful. “It’s a point of differentiation,” he said, “and we all need to use our communities to help us in different ways.”

For more information on Regroup, visit www.regroup.com.