Finding Your Small-Business Calling on Vacation

Most tourists enjoy shopping, but two former corporate executives took it a step further by importing the products they discovered on vacation.
Debby Ruth, an executive on the fast track at a major cable television company, fell in love with Hester van Eeghen’s quirky and colorful handmade leather bags on a shopping trip to Amsterdam in 2004.
“I was absolutely mesmerized and spent half a day in Hester’s boutique,” recalled Ruth, who is now the exclusive U.S. importer of van Eeghen’s handbags, gloves and wallets via Hester van Eeghen U.S.
Ruth admits she never planned to start a small business. But when she was laid off in 2008, she decided to invest her severance package in her own venture: selling van Eeghen’s goods in the U.S.
Amsterdam or Bust
Contacting van Eeghen to discuss the potential business venture was the first challenge. “It took eight months to reach her,” Ruth says. “Hester is one of the busiest women you’ve ever met. I finally hopped on a plane and flew to Amsterdam—without even having an appointment.”
When they finally met over dinner, they explored ways to sell the Italian-made purses, gloves, wallets and briefcases to American fashionistas. Van Eeghen’s hand-sewn bags are pricey, retailing for around $900 for a purse and $300 for leather gloves.
But Ruth’s persistence paid off and so far, the relationship has been positive, according to van Eeghen.
"Working with Debby on the HVE US online boutique was a natural way to have a greater presence in the United States,” said Hester Van Eeghen via e-mail. “We have found the American customers in our Amsterdam shop to be very enthusiastic about my designs. I thought creating the online boutique first would be an ideal way to reach as many people as possible but in a way that was organic."
A Walking Billboard
Soon after van Eeghen made Debby Ruth her exclusive U.S. distributor, Ruth tapped her husband, Tim Lenz, to help her design the sophisticated, minimalist website. Lenz also shot all the photos of van Eeghen’s wares.
Launched in 2010, sales have grown steadily. Ruth said she and van Eeghen split the revenue on the bags sold via the U.S. website. She declined to reveal the financial details of the arrangement or share annual revenues for the privately held U.S. company.
“Our goal is to get big enough to open physical locations,” Ruth says. Meanwhile, she is a walking billboard for her product. “Whenever I’m carrying one of Hester’s bags, people stop me to ask where to buy it.”
Boutique Bubbly
While Debby Ruth found a new career importing handbags, Ruth Frantz, a beverage industry executive, also had a life-changing experience while vacationing abroad. She was visiting several small, mostly family-owned vineyards in France when she was inspired to import the boutique champagne into the U.S. Frantz felt confident she could pull it off, having worked on the global marketing of Ketel One Vodka for a major liquor distributor.
“There are about 4,000 champagne producers in France, yet most Americans only know Moet and Veuve Clicquot,” Frantz says.
Her mission is educating Americans to enjoy the sparkling wine more freely. It’s a challenge, because most Americans drink champagne only for special occasions, Frantz says. Europeans, however, drink champagne to kick off an evening of eating and drinking.
She created a character called Henri and founded Connecticut-based Henri's Reserve about two years ago. For sale is a gift package called the “Guaranteed Seduction Kit” for $300, which includes truffles and candles. One top seller is the $160 "tasting kit" featuring three bottles of champagne and pre-printed cards for making notes about the different wines.
Scaling Up
Frantz depends on food writers, wine bloggers, Facebook and other social media platforms to spread the word about Henri’s Reserve. “We started very small and now it’s all about scaling up,” she says.
Because importing liquor to the U.S. is highly regulated and complicated, Frantz relies on Robert Houde, a Chicago-based wine expert, to manage the logistics. “I source the wines and get them into the country for Ruth,” Houde says. “Our customers really like that these are real wines from real vineyards, versus mass blended wines from big companies.”
Small restaurants looking to set themselves apart from the competition by offering a selection of unique, boutique champagne are a growing percentage of Henri’s Reserve's sales. The privately held company does not release revenues, but Frantz says that although she started the business during the recent recession, sales are growing.
Have you ever drawn business inspiration from a vacation?

12:43 by Robert dawne · 1

Top 10 Entrepreneurs Under 30

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the country's most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to youth unemployment and underemployment and provides its members with access to tools, mentorship and resources that support each stage of a business's development and growth.
When recently asked to name the top entrepreneur under the age of 30 who deserved an award for the work they've done in the past year, YEC members had the following to say.
1. Dave Morin of Path
It's been inspiring to watch Dave and his talented team at Path take their app from something that no one was paying attention to to one of the top apps out there. Path revolutionized iOS design by releasing one of the most beautiful apps out there, and has been on a roll ever since. —Ben Lang, founder of EpicLaunch
2. Shane Snow of Contently
Shane Snow is absolutely the most impressive individual I know for his accomplishments in recent times. A TechStars NYC alum, Shane developed Contently with his team and recently raised $2 million in a Series A round. In addition to that, he's the top infographic artist, period. Shane is also the coolest journalist you'll ever meet, having written for Mashable, Fast Company and Wired.com. —Danny Wong, co-founder of Blank Label Group
3. Drew Houston of Dropbox
Drew Houston, CEO and co-founder of Dropbox, led the startup from a simple vision—making it easy to store and share files in the cloud—to a massive business success with millions of users and sales. I am so impressed with his focus on an exceptional user experience. Drew and his team created a product that betters productivity and data storage so much, it's hard to imagine the Web without it. —Doreen Bloch, CEO and founder of Poshly
4. Nick D'Aloisio of Summly
Nick D'Aloisio, he's creating a way to summarize the Web. Not only is he young, but he caught the world's attention through Om Malik's expose on his app. The app is a window into a much more powerful concept around how content has become digestible in tidbits—especially content lacking opinion. It could be quite fascinating to companies that manage tons and tons of content that needs to be indexed. —Brian Wong, CEO and founder of Kiip
5. Ben Silbermann of Pinterest
There is a reason why Pinterest is getting so much attention right now. It's a beautifully designed product that solves a problem that nobody knew the Web was facing. It's the co-founder's vision that made it the impressive application that it is today. —Logan Lenz, president and founder of Endagon
6. Ben Milne of Dwolla
Ben Milne is the CEO and co-founder of Des Moines-based Dwolla, a peer-to-peer payment platform disrupting the mobile payments industry. Milne and his team have quickly scaled the business and is now moving over $1 million per day. Dwolla recently raised a $5 million round of funding, led by New York-based Union Square Ventures and a solid supporting team. —Jeff Slobotski, founder of Silicon Prairie News
7. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest self-made billionaire in history and arguably the greatest entrepreneur of our time. Facebook wasn't created in the past year, but Zuckerberg has presided over its continued dominance of the social Web and the company's skyrocketing valuations. And he is only 27. —Emerson Spartz, CEO and founder of Spartz Media
8. Catherine Cook of myYearbook.com
While most people want to say Mark Zuckerberg, I'd give the award to his female counterpart, Catherine Cook. Not only was Catherine just 15 years old when she started myYearbook.com, but she managed to stay under the radar by operating outside of Silicon Valley—in Pennsylvania. The site was recently acquired for a reported $100 million...while Catherine was still attending college! —Matt Wilson, co-founder of Under30CEO.com
9. Brent Beshore of AdVentures
Being a great entrepreneur isn't just about profits. Brent Beshore leads AdVentures (which was no. 28 on last year's Inc. 500), so he's made his share of money, but what I respect is his entrepreneurship for his community. When his hometown—Joplin, Mo.—was destroyed by a tornado, Brent used his skills to raise over $1 million in four days to rebuild the city. We should all strive to use our success for good, as Brent does. —John Hall, CEO of Digital Talent Agents
10. Jeremy Johnson of 2tor
Jeremy Johnson is 27 and is already changing the face of higher education. His current project, 2tor, is a visionary startup that helps top-tier U.S. universities bring their degree programs online. Jeremy, along with co-founders John Katzman and Chip Paucek, is on a mission to transform education, and as the highest funded U.S. education tech startup, 2tor is bringing that vision alive. —Zach Cutler, CEO and founder of Cutler Group

10:52 by Robert dawne · 1

How to Become a Tech Guru in One Year ?

You have an industry-changing idea for a technology company. In your mind, the organization solves a major problem, secures $50 million in seed funding and breaks beta testing records. You’d launch this company tomorrow if it wasn’t for one big problem...You don’t know how to code.
Up until August 2011, this was a major roadblock, usually resulting in entrepreneurs scrapping ideas altogether or hiring expensive programming partners. Thankfully, two former Columbia University students have come to the rescue.
Last year, Ryan Bubinski, 22, and Zach Sims, 21, founded Codecademy, a New York City-based startup that provides online learning opportunities in the programming space. The company offers classes and videos on how to code, and this month launched Code Year, a free and interactive yearlong coding class. The company sends out weekly e-mails with homework assignments and class notes and since it’s launch, more than 300,000 people have signed up, according to the company. Participants are not just wannabe tech entrepreneurs; they are every day code knowledge-aspiring residents, including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
I sat down with Sims to hear about his background and to see how things are going at Codecademy.
Could you tell me a little about your and Ryan’s backgrounds?We met at Columbia. Ryan was a computer science, biophysics major and I was a political science major. I’ve been interested in startups for a while and have worked on a couple as a product and businessperson, but never on the programming side. Ryan is so good at programming that he started teaching me and would teach some of our friends, too, on the weekends.
It was really frustrating for me not to know how to code, so Ryan and I came up with an idea to build something I would have wanted to learn from and Ryan would have wanted to teach. Ryan graduated in May 2011 and I dropped out at the same time [with one year left until graduation] to start Codecademy.
Were you worried about dropping out?No. This is what I want to do. With my political science degree, I would have wanted to work at startups anyway. I think compared to what I would have been doing post-graduation, this is pretty intense. I’m really thankful that I was given this opportunity.
How many people do you have on staff?We have five people in our Soho office, including Ryan and me.
Are you sleeping much?Not really. We are working seven days a week and about 18 hours a day. But it is such a passion for us and we love to help people learn a skill that can help them get employed. It isn’t really work to me.
Code Year sounds like a great idea, but how are you able to offer a year’s worth of coding classes for free?We’ve been really lucky; we raised $2.5 million in October, so we have a good cushion.
What’s been your biggest challenge so far?Hiring. The reason we are doing this is because there aren’t enough qualified software engineers out there that aren’t already employed. There are tons of jobs for those people, so the trick is convincing them to join our team. The average starting salary out of college for a software engineer is somewhere around $90,000 to $100,000, so that has been a challenge. 
What’s been the best part of your first six months in the startup world?The best thing is learning things really, really fast. Every day is pretty awesome. It’s been a crash course in how to run a business.
How can Codecademy help aspiring technology entrepreneurs?I think our classes can help entrepreneurs know how to speak the programming language. I still think you always need a very good engineer or team if you are building a technology company, but it is difficult to find a good technical co-founder if you don’t know what to look for. Our classes really give you the tools to interface with engineers, and soon I hope we can help people create their own startups as well.
Can your product help entrepreneurs not in the technology space?Absolutely. By learning how to code, you can automate processes in any type of business. Lawyers can automate files, retailers can automate inventory tracking, for example. 
What does the future hold for Codecademy?We would like to increase our course offerings. Right now we are offering classes in JavaScript. By the end of the year, we will have courses in other programming languages.
We also want to ramp up our hiring efforts. I think we will have about 15 employees by yearend.
How long will you stay at Codecademy?I want to do this forever. We are building this company for the long-term.
What advice can you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?Do your research and start something that you really care about.
American Express OPEN Forum

15:20 by Robert dawne · 1