Pioneering On the Net

The Gold Rush To The Net

It was in December of 1994, that Netscape introduced the browser and the Net opened up the rush beyond the engineers, scientists and government workers who were on the Net before. Now the pioneers who saw the possibilities came, the entrepreneurs and techies and just plain people in remote places who longed for communication with the rest of the world.

At the same time, in December of 1994, my inspiration for a website was a study I was asked to do for the University of Texas at San Antonio business department. They had a lot of very rough, raw material ( like clippings or tear outs from newspapers) which suggested men make more money than women, even when women own their own business. The term “glass ceiling” had only recently become part of America’s vocabulary, when The Wall Street Journal’s “Corporate Woman” column identified “a puzzling new phenomenon. There seemed to be an invisible—but impenetrable—barrier between women and the executive suite, preventing them from reaching the highest levels of the business world regardless of their accomplishments and merits.”The Federal government’s Report on the Glass Ceiling Initiative in 1991 was still somewhat virgin territory for the public at large. It certainly came as somewhat of a shock to me. I thought, Wow, this is pretty interesting stuff, I bet more people would like to know about it.

I spent 1995 learning more about the Glass Ceiling and the Net, as the two converged in my mind as an interesting topic and a new technology platform to present it. I had to learn HTML coding, as in those early days there was no “What you see is what you get ” software, much less content management systems. It was challenging for many reasons and on many levels ( see Match Your Entrepreneur Story about one of the early Internet conferences in 1995 where I was one of 5 women and about 5,000 men). When AdvancingWomen.com finally launched, we got about a million and a half page views in a month, melting down our server 3 times. ( But that’s another story). Remember, back then, the Net was relatively small with little competition. There were no large corporations. No Hearst, no iVillage, although I later worked with both of them.

So, I got in on the ground floor with my niche, the first women’s website to focus on leveling the playing field for women, although we’ve continued to evolve and, as we’ve increased our offerings on business and technology we’ve also increased our male audience. Our concept morphed as well. We decided the most effective path was to give both women and men the tools and strategies to succeed. And since the tools meant nothing without the knowledge to use them, we began to focus on coaching and mentoring. Consequently, as well as connecting with professional women and business owners, we are one of the leading websites among business men in China and Saudi Arabia, and business and technology experts in the U.S. and globally. We have built a diverse community of both women and businessmen on the web. And we have moved on to produce other websites and other business models. But on to the next chapter…..

Call me or email me if you’d like to discuss how I can help you with your start-up, your website, blog or social marketing on the Net.

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