Tales of inspiration at Princeton event
By: Lauren Otis
Women and girls who aspire to found a business of their own someday were treated to a good dose of inspiration last week, not to mention practical advice, at a full-morning series of presentations by women entrepreneurs of all stripes.
"As long as you are more excited than scared, open your company," said Saki Dodelson, a former telecommunications executive who founded Achieve3000 a Lakewood-based for-profit education company which helps children improve reading, writing and learning utilizing computers and the Internet.
If your company succeeds, great, Ms. Dodelson told an audience made up mostly of women and girls from area schools, including Trenton Central High School. If you don’t that’s okay too because you learn a lot, Ms. Dodelson said. The experience of even a failed enterprise "is a better school than Princeton," Ms. Dodelson told the audience, which was convened at the Friend Center on the Princeton University campus. Ms. Dodelson founded Achieve3000 in 2000 with the goal "to help kids every day so I can feel good, and make money."
The half-day event, entitled "Women Entrepreneurs: Inspirations and Innovations," was sponsored by Integra LifeSciences Holdings Corp., the National Association of Women Business Owners North Central Jersey Chapter, Association Business Solutions, Inc., the Uncommon Individual Foundation, and Princeton’s Center for Innovation in Engineering Education.
Speakers told the audience that to survive the rough and tumble world of entrepreneurship, they needed to be passionate about the product or service they offered. Charmaine Jones, who founded the Hoboken-based high-end specialty cake provider Cakediva 20 years ago, and appeared to embody her company’s name said, "I don’t look at it as nicely designed cakes, I look at it as high art."
Ms. Jones described how she started off with $6,000 and no safety net, and now serves clients in the highest realms of the fashion, business and entertainment worlds, including singer and actress Beyonce recently. "I still don’t have a business plan," she said. However, "I didn’t know the phrase ‘don’t work harder, work smarter,’ I always worked harder," she added.
Ms. Jones, and other speakers, underscored the critical importance of having a Web presence for any entrepreneurial enterprise. "Without a Web site no-one would know who Cakediva is," she said, noting her site gets 10,000 hits a day. "I had a Web site before I even knew how to turn on a computer," she said.
A Web site "is your storefront, it has got to be right," said Lisa Stamler, founder of Pittstown-based Creative Baskets, which creates specialty promotional gift baskets for a corporate clientele and is a year old.
Entrepreneurs need to be able to switch direction quickly, she said. Ms. Stamler cited her own experience, where she found "my target market for the baskets is primarily a corporate client," and altered her business strategy accordingly. "You have to be able to change your target market, be able to change quickly," Ms. Stamler said.
Jessica Durrie, founder and co-owner of Small World Coffee in Princeton, described her peripatetic childhood with a father who worked for General Motors overseas as preparing her for starting her own business. "When I look back on my life it is just the compounded experiences I had that enabled me to be comfortable going off on my own," she said.
Ms. Durrie described the challenges of being a mother and entrepreneur, learning to be a good leader for her 40 employees, and building a strong sense of community within her enterprise. "You need to work on your business, not in your business," she said
One panel featured young female entrepreneurs. The event concluded with women executives from Plainsboro-based Integra LifeSciences talking about being entrepreneurial from within a larger company, or "intrapreneurship."
The women talked about the importance of having passion and mentors, and finding an employer where "you are allowed to be innovative, you are allowed to express your ideas," according to Heather Beam, program manager, reconstructive products, for Integra.
The Integra executives spoke of the fulfillment of finding and pursuing a satisfying career path, and successfully balancing it with family. Asked by an audience member whether things didn’t sometimes go wrong in their lives and careers, they acknowledged that perhaps they were presenting too much of a picture of perfection, and had all weathered setbacks and moments of doubt. "Yes, there are some days you don’t want to go to work in the morning," Ms. Beam said.

