How 3 Friends And A Credit Card Built Meebo – With Sandy Jen

Sandy Jen, Meebo, Customer Acquisition, Women Founders

Sandy Jen and her friends tried two previous business ideas (each one called Meebo), but neither felt right. Then they hit on a vision to make instant messaging services like AOL’s AIM accessible on a web page — instead of forcing users to download software. It felt so right that Sandy quit her job to pursue it full time. Her co-founder’s credit card bankrolled the idea and they were off.

In this interview you’ll hear how they got their first passionate users, why their previous ideas didn’t last, and how they failed (and failed) until they finally hit on a winning version of the Meebo bar.

Sandy Jen

Meebo

Sandy Jen is the co-founder of Meebo, which enables users to instantly connect, share, and communicate with all of their friends

 

Pre-program: Before we get started try these tools, first 99designs. The largest crowd source market place for graphic designs. When I used them I wrote a description of the design I needed and how much I wanted to pay. I got a bunch of designs back, I picked the one I liked best and only paid for that and that design was customized to my needs. Try them for logo deign, blog design, app icons and more. 99 designs.com. Next sponsor is grasshopper, entrepreneurs like me love and use grasshopper because it offers all the features that the big expensive phone systems, you know the kinds, multiple extensions, music on hold, call forwarding and so much more but grasshopper works with any phone system and it’s inexpensive. grasshopper.com. Finally pic click, it’s a one person start up by my friend Ryan in San Diego. His site gives you a visual way to search eBay, atsea and other sites, it’s already profitable and it’s bootstrapped, you got to check out pic click, p-i-c...

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