L.A.B. Unleashed

I have been wanting to blog about the awesome and exciting things happening at my alma mater, Sweet Briar College, ever since I made it down for their first annual Conference on Entrepreneurship and the Liberal Arts, back in April.  The conference was organized and run by the students and faculty of the fairly new Business Administration program.  Professor Tom Scott, as chair of the department, is explicitly moving the focus of the 6 year old program into the direction of entrepreneurship.  SBC is already known for its strong Liberal Arts programs, and focusing their Business degree on entrepreneurship just makes a whole lot of sense.

At SBC you are expected to be good at many things.  Dance majors are also applied Mathematicians, and Biochemists are also concert pianists.  As an entrepreneur, I’ve learned you also have to be good at a multitude of things.  You can’t just be a programmer or a marketer, its good to have an interest and even excel in many areas.  When I left IBM I was an engineer – a simple role to convey.  Two years later, I would say I am part engineer, part marketer, part saleswomen, part business strategist, part fundraiser, part communicator, full time janitor, part community advocate …. the list just goes on and on.  Here’s the kicker … I love it all (sometimes even the janitor part)!  As I build a team, I look for others that can do it all and enjoy thriving in an environment where there are minimal boundaries and innovation and independence is encouraged.

I believe a strong Liberal Arts education leads to well rounded, smart and savvy, contributors to our world.  A focus on entrepreneurship in this environment is the perfect compliment, and I am thrilled to see the generation of women going through this program come out with the confidence and skills they need to succeed as a leader – perhaps even founding their own business ideas and companies.

Exactly 2 years ago today, the idea for RunMyErrand was born. You may have heard the story before, but it all started with a dog. A big yellow one. His name is Kobe, and 2 years later he is our CIO – "Chief Inspiration Officer".

It was a cold February evening in 2008, when we were out of dog food for Kobe, and came up with the plan for RunMyErrand. We were meeting my dear college friends at Masa in the South End – Brie, my roommate from Sweet Briar who I hadn’t seen in years, and Jen another SBC alum. I remember barely being able to contain my excitement over dinner and margaritas that night as I shared our idea with friends. They were the first to hear about RunMyErrand, and it was wonderful to have their support from the start.

I was still at IBM at the time, and I would have never guessed that two years later, this is where we would all be. A company launched, funded, with an amazing team (including advisors), behind us. My house in Charlestown sold – the one we were going to "settle down in" – with plans for a launch in the San Francisco market imminent. Not to mention a special dog food delivery partnership that solves the original problem that inspired RME! Craziness!

Reflecting back, I’m not sure I realized at the time, how fast two year would go, and how much work it would be to get to this point. I myself have learned a ton in this time, expanding my skill set beyond engineering, and finding a passion for entrepreneurship that I realize was always a part of me. I have never felt more alive.

I am so grateful to advisers, mentors, and new team members that have supported this company, and a very timely update to our team page was just pushed live yesterday featuring then entire RunMyErrand Crew, including our CIO – Kobe. A celebratory margarita will be made in the Busque house tonight – here’s to the next 2 years …

Dr. Robeva was one of my favorite Math and CS professors at Sweet Briar.  I had many favorites actually, between Dr. Chase, Dr. Wassell, and the Kirkwoods, it was impossible to go wrong in that department.  I vividly recall one memory in particular, that has stuck with me, and for some reason, as I have been going through this fundraising process for RunMyErrand it somehow keeps popping into my head.

I was a C++ tutor (total geek), and we were sitting in the the large computer lab in Guion (the science building).  Anyone in that building lived and breathed the sciences and we were affectionately referred to as "Guionites" pronounced "Guy-on-nites".  Anyway, we were sitting in the computer lab amongst robust Dells and IBM PCs, with big old monitors, and a 1st year CS student was learning how to compile C++ code.  The exercise was to write a swapping algorithm, where two values were swapped between variables.  I could overhear the student behind me struggling, tweaking, changing syntax, and recompiling.  Error after error relentlessly surfaced.  Dr. Robeva was there, helping by throwing a few pointers (as in tips), over the student’s shoulder.  Finally, there was a big HORRAY as the student ran the compile command and it ran CLEAN.  Woo-hoo!  The student was thrilled, and as Dr. Robeva peered over her shoulder at the code and then the output, she said

Not so fast.  Just because your code compiled, does not meet the programming is correct.  In fact, your two variables did not swap         values at all – the intended outcome was not reached.  You only reached step 1 of the entire development process.

  
The student was puzzled, as she thought the entire point of the exercise was to get the right syntax in place so that the code would compile.  What she didn’t realize, was that compiling the code was only the first step, and the easiest step at that.  Now she had to take that code, debug her swapping algorithm, and ensure her underlying logic was solid enough to support a larger outcome than just running through the compiler clean.

I remembered that moment the other day as I was reflecting on my fundraising efforts, and how it is just one small step in building this business.  Getting the syntax right, getting the structure of the financing right, is a piece of the foundation, but I realize it doesn’t automatically mean the underlying model won’t need to be tweaked and iterated over (again and again).  My instinct tells me, this is the easy part, and actually producing the intended outcome of a big business is much, much, harder.  There is a sense of satisfaction when that code compiles, but the even greater satisfaction comes when your produce an algorithm that is innovative, aggressive, efficient, and actually contributes to a larger picture.

As Hubspot closed another 16M in Series C financing, this floated across tweet deck last week: @dharmesh: Startups: Closing a funding round is not value creation.  It’s the *opportunity* to create value.

I think he summed up where I was going with this blog post in 140 characters or less!

This past weekend was "Sweet Briar Day", which was celebrated nationally by all the different alumnae clubs across the country.  The Boston event was very well attended and there was a lot of exciting news to share …. from the construction of a new gymnasium to the design of new 100% "green" dormitories on campus!  Enrollment is way up, and new facilities are being built to support the increase in students.  Because Sweet Briar stayed a women’s college, while many of the surrounding schools went coed, there has been a lot of anticipation in the last few years, to see how we would fair, and it is thrilling to see the college thriving!

Along with the many new students on campus, SBC is also hosting two Afghan women.  Through the program, the students are given full scholarships to study.  The program is called the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women, and was started by the president of Roger Williams College’s wife, Paula Nirschel.  I was really impressed with the organization, and the information they provided.  It seems like the women that participate in this program, want to get a good education, so that they can go back to their home country and get involved with leadership and making changes.  A couple quotes from the women read ….

Education in the United States will be a valuable contribution to our country.  We hope to be the future leaders of Afghanistan. 

Joining the IEAW is the biggest achievement of my life.  Learning in the wold’s best education system will equip me to reach my goal of becoming a leader in my country. 

Higher education will give me the skills to build a bright future for me and the women at home who have for decades worked to defend their basic rights.

Sweet Briar is not the only college hosting these women, Middlebury, Roger Williams, and Meredith College, are just a few others.  To learn more about the program, they have a really great website with a ton of information. 

We’ve all heard the statistics – Mathematics and Engineering are not at the top of the list when it comes to careers the majority of women purse. We’ve all heard the remarks made by the Harvard University President last year that “innate differences between men and women might be one reason fewer women succeed in science and math careers”. Complementing these two themes is a new article that suggests women are holding back in mathematics. This is proven in the article by looking at grades and participation in the classroom, and comparing it to standardized test scores, showing that women could be influenced by the above stereotypes. This part of the article really struck me:

Though many girls pursue higher education, they may avoid “stereotypically masculine fields, such as science and engineering” because the “more competitive environment of these fields is not a good fit with how girls approach school,” the Developmental Psychology researchers wrote.

I can definitely see where this researcher is coming from, and I can also see how this stereotype really didn’t affect me at all. I think attending a women’s college with a strong Math/Engineering department allowed me to excel because the environment was tailored to my best possible learning scenario – small classes, dedicated professors, and hands on projects. I can imagine that the environment at a co-ed institution would have been worlds apart from what I experienced. And you might ask, did it prepare me for a “real-world” type of work environment. Of course it did! I think attending a women’s college simply allowed me to gather knowledge a way that fit me best, and now I am able to apply that knowledge in the work force.

I see this new research as tremendous support of the importance of institutions for women. Sweet Briar College, where I attended, recently went through some discussions about changing over to a co-educational institution. Their main reason for this was financial concerns. There is such a small applicant pool of 18 year old prospective students that will even consider looking at a women’s college, and that small applicant pool continues to diminish by the year. Sweet Briar has had its challenges attracting potential students, and with low enrollment creating financial losses, it’s not surprising that they thought about going co-ed. Now, of course they would HAVE to change the name – what guy would go to “Sweet Briar”?! I was sitting on the Board of Directors at the time, and the vote was unanimous to remain a women’s college.

There are only a small number of women’s colleges left, and they play such an important role in developing successful women in our society. I can even see how they could help close the gap between men and women in Math and Engineering related fields. Here’s hoping that more prospective students will consider women’s colleges to enhance their own futures.

With the era of the internet comes a whole new form of space garbage – old forgotten websites floating around, taking up space … not necessarily bandwidth. Here’s a *really* old one of mine I stumbled across just the other day:

http://laplace.sbc.edu/LaplaceIndex.htm

It must have been junior year of college, my Ordinary Differential Equations class. We were given a group assignment to teach the class a chapter from our book. My good friend Erin and I went above and beyond with our presentation using…. wait for it ….wait for it…. FRONTPAGE! Yes … good times with Frontpage! All those fun Frontpage themes and extensions! We presented to the class via the proudly created website and were a huge hit! Read more…