Through Our Eyes, as Entrepreneurs

As the founders of UrbanInterns.com, we’re routinely asked what it was like to reinvent ourselves as entrepreneurs, having both come from the corporate world (Cari, as a lawyer at Bryan Cave, and Lauren, in various strategy/finance roles at IAC). The short answers? Urban Interns is an idea that we are passionate about, both as a business that has a huge national potential, and for the concept it represents.

Another piece of the Urban Interns story that some find fascinating: we are a double female founding team of a technology start-up. While we shy away from any titles or personal disclosures that may distract people from focusing on Urban Interns as a business (as opposed to a reflection of its founders), the truth is that you don’t see too many women-run businesses in the technology space, and we’re proud to be among this small group. We’re both passionate about issues relating to women in business, and while we can fill pages and pages with our musings and opinions on that topic, we don’t view the fact that we’re women business owners as core to the growth of Urban Interns. Also, we identify with ALL small business owners and entrepreneurs, not just women.

Urban Interns is currently a local business with a virtual platform. Our goal, and we believe that we’ll achieve this within the next 12 months, is to become a national brand. As we travel this path and wear many hats - entrepreneurs, marketers, technologists and managers - we are certain that despite our years of training and experience, we will learn many new and important lessons about building a business.

What are some of the important ones we’ve learned to date? Well, the first lesson we learned as entrepreneurs is the importance of being flexible. Urban Interns actually started out as a very different idea.  Years ago when we were both working long hours in our respective jobs, we often chatted about the need in the market for an easy way to find part-time personal assistants. While personal assistants are typically a luxury, we thought there could be an interesting business around making them accessible on a fractional basis to busy professionals like ourselves.  However, timing is everything. When we started really rolling up our sleeves to work on the idea years after the initial light bulb went off, it was late summer 2008, and the economy was starting its decline. In other words, not a great time to introduce a business in the personal service space.  We always contemplated small businesses being one aspect of this marketplace, but as time went on, we saw that though the economy was really tough, business owners still needed help.  Additionally, we recognized the value that an online marketplace can bring in terms of empowering employers to make their own hiring decisions as opposed to an agency model.

And with that awareness, Urban Interns, as we know it today, was born, as was our philosophy about the importance of flexibility.  We believe in making decisions based on sound logic and analysis, but sometimes facts and circumstances change, and therefore, so do we.

We look forward to sharing lessons from our journey with you.  Please check back here soon for our next segment.