Madeline Veenstra Explains How She Achieved Early Startup Success Combining Fashion With A Wiki
Summary: I've been watching the startup community here in Australia a lot recently. This is because of my own interest having a startup and because things are heating up in Australia in general when it comes to tech startups getting media coverage and investment funding. [ Download MP3 | Transcript | iTunes | Soundcloud | Raw RSS ] One of the standout startups I keep hearing about is WikiFashion.com, a wiki for fashion started by a young lady named Madeline Veenstra, who happens to live in the same city as me, Brisbane. Madeline started the site with her then boyfriend now fiancee as the technical founder, beginning with just your basic Wiki installation and the desire to fill it with all things fashion. It took off and she quickly found herself in charge of a site with traffic and an income stream from advertising large enough to live off. Now Madeline has begun taking the next step, seeking funding to help grow her project and move to New York, one of the best cities if you work in the fashion industry. I called up Madeline and asked to do an interview so we could learn how she started her website, grew it and what advice she would have for other entrepreneurs. I do have to apologise that we sort of geeked out a bit on the "Brisbane startup" aspect since we are both from Brisbane and have startups, but despite this I know you will get a lot of inspiration from hearing Madeline's story so far. Enjoy the podcast and please take a look at WikiFashion to see what Madeline and her community have created. [ Download MP3 | Transcript | iTunes | Soundcloud | Raw RSS ] YARO: Hello, this is Yaro Starak and welcome to another interview with an entrepreneur. Today, I’ve got Madeline Veenstra on the line with me. If you’ve never heard of Madeline, she’s actually the founder of WikiFashion which we’re going to learn a bit about in this interview and Madeline is actually, well, I should check, Madeline, are you born and raised in Brisbane like me? MADELINE: Yes, I am. YARO: Awesome. You sound more like a person from Brisbane than I do so, you’re more authentic. Where did you begin this process? Did you go to University of Queensland like I did? MADELINE: I did. I went to UQ and I started there in about 2004 and I didn’t do anything to do with fashion. Obviously, UQ doesn’t have any fashion courses but, I did Japanese and Economics. And so, I became an economist when I graduated and I kind of just started WikiFashion on this side. It was more of a hobby to sort of, funnel my creativity into something and it just sort of started to take off. It was a lot rewarding than being an economist because at that time, I was being trying to become an econometrician, so very hard core data, sit on Excel all day long kind of stuff. Not very thrilling. YARO: Yes, I remember doing just the basics. I did a business management degree at UQ. The Economics subjects just… Yes, I could not imagine doing that for a full time living. I think I’d go crazy. MADELINE: Oh yes. I told them that in my interview. I said I don’t like Maths and they thought I was joking and then, they gave me the Statistics job. YARO: Oh! [Laughs] MADELINE: Yes. YARO: Maybe you should practice your serious version and the joke version. So, is there any history of entrepreneurship in your background? Did you have the lemonade stand as a ten-year-old or anything like that? MADELINE: Actually, I think I did. I had a car wash / lemonade stand when I was about 13. I put all these signs on our front driveway saying “Free Car Wash and Lemonade Stands.” My dad got very angry and took down all the signs. But yes, other than that, I haven’t really done too much. I think WikiFashion kind of just came about, not an accident but, it was, like I said, more of a hobby. It wasn’t something I thought I could make any money from. It was just something that I think a lot of people noticed was missing as well and they came on board. And so,
