Top in their fields

Local women climb to the top in business world

By Taryn Plumb |  Globe Correspondent

August 29, 2013

Fresh from college and equipped with a liberal arts degree, Tracey Armstrong started her professional career about as junior as you can get: As a clerk: filing, typing, and taking phone messages.
She never considered it a possibility that she might one day ascend to the top job at that very same organization.
“You don’t find a lot of clerk-to-CEO stories,” said Armstrong, who over nearly 20 years worked her way up to the helm of the Copyright Clearance Center in Danvers. “You don’t see a lot of women in these chairs. It’s just not that common.”
But it is a bit more common than it used to be. Although women still account for only 21 of the spots on the Fortune 500 list, high-profile CEOs such as Meg Whitman of HP, Ginni Rometty of IBM, and Marissa Mayer of Yahoo are providing powerful examples of just how far women can go. 

The region has its share of women — at companies big and small — whose intelligence, hard work, and perseverance have landed them in the coveted corner office.

“There’s a good representation of women CEOs on the North Shore,” said K. Brewer Doran, dean of the Bertolon School of Business at Salem State University. That number is particularly higher among local nonprofits, she said, but overall she called the area a “much more open climate.”
Doran pointed out one major shift is the presence of several organizations working to get women onto company boards, which ultimately do the hiring and firing of management.
Specifically, she pointed to The Boston Club, a large group of women executives and professional leaders in the Northeast, and the national group 2020 Women on Boards, which strives to have 20 percent representation by women on business boards by the year 2020.
“The more diverse board you have, the more likely they are to promote women into that position,” Doran said.
Leslie Kagan of the Rockport-based business consulting firm Kagan Associates, who recently headed up a forum for local female CEOs through The Commonwealth Institute, stressed the caliber of those female CEOs and entrepreneurs.
“The women I’ve had the privilege to work with are outstanding,” she said, calling them “incredibly competent, smart women who aren’t afraid to ask themselves the tough questions about life.”
Sometimes, though, those questions start out simple. Helen Greiner of CyPhy Works in Danvers, for instance, met her “muse,” R2-D2, when she saw the original “Star Wars” at age 11.
“He had emotions, he had a personality, he was able to communicate without needing to speak,” she said at a TEDxBoston talk in June. (Because she was traveling overseas, Greiner was not available for this article.)
From then on, it was her dream to build robots. She studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then cofounded iRobot, whose Roomba vacuum is in millions of homes (and has appeared in many a viral cat video), and whose PackBot bomb disposal device has been credited with saving hundreds of lives in war zones.
Today at CyPhy Works, she and her team work on advanced unmanned aerial vehicles – or flying robots — which she says have numerous uses, from getting a close view of dangerous situations, to delivering packages.
The reason there aren’t more women in her field, she said, is because they haven’t been supported to pursue it.
“I’ve always been a geek. And I’m proud of it. Yet when I was growing up, not one person told me I should be an engineer,” she said in an acceptance speech in 2008 for a Women of Vision Award, annual tributes given by The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. “If I wasn’t encouraged, even with the outward appearance of a geek, what about all the other girls who haven’t yet gravitated in that direction?”
Other local female leaders agreed that barriers, in some cases, remain high.
“I don’t think much has changed over the last 10 to 15 years. In fact, it’s possible things have taken a step back,” said Mary Puma, CEO of Axcelis Technologies, a publicly traded semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Beverly.
One barrier to business leadership, Armstrong contended, is “Women don’t ask for it for a series of complicated reasons,” she said. “Don’t be afraid to ask for it. There’s nothing wrong with it, and not enough women do it. The answer might not always be ‘yes,’ but don’t let the first ‘no’ be the last time you ask.”
Puma noted the emphasis today on “work-life balance,” but, she stressed, it’s more about managing time, making choices, and setting priorities. The idea of opting in and out of work can potentially be “an issue,” she said, if you’re trying to work toward a high-level management role. (For example, look to Marissa Mayer’s incredibly brief maternity leave at Yahoo: two weeks.)
“It’s about managing all of your priorities, not necessarily balancing all of your priorities,” Puma said.
“As women, we have to make sacrifices, and if anyone tells you differently . . . well, they either have been extremely lucky, or [they’re] delusional,” said Nathalie Majorek, a doctor who ran her own practice in Beverly but left to head the medical startup MDCapsule.
Puma has seen Axcelis through its share of ups and downs. The CEO since 2002, she joined in 1996 when Axcelis was still part of Eaton Corp. The company now has nearly 30 offices and 800 employees worldwide – 450 to 500 in Beverly. Although it’s had a “tough few years,” she said — including layoffs and a move to outsourcing some services — it’s once again “poised for growth.”
“It’s a roller-coaster ride,” she said. “There’s something new every day. It’s not for the faint of heart.”
Armstrong is likewise passionate about her work – what she and others agreed is a key measure of success. The Copyright Clearance Center provides a way for researchers and academics to copyright their material, and then makes it available to businesses and colleges. It now employs about 300, compared to 30 when Armstrong began in 1989. She has been CEO since July 2007.
“They took a risk on me, and hopefully it paid off,” she said.
She has learned from trial and error, building a trustworthy and diversified team, avoiding negativity, and laying out accountability and authority.
As Armstrong put it, every time a woman in the corporate world does something positive, networks, or gives a reference, they’re “making a crack in the ceiling. Every single day, there are small breakthroughs. This is a marathon.”
Puma agreed that it’s important to push yourself “out of your comfort zone” and diversify, as well as to network and listen.
“There are no shortcuts in life, right?” she said. “It’s all about being focused and working really hard, whether you’re a man or a woman.”

Graphic on local CEOs and compensation. 

© 2013 The New York Times Company

MDCapsule aims to reestablish the patient-doctor bond

Beverly doctor turned CEO looks to connect patients with care

By Taryn Plumb |  Globe Correspondent

August 29, 2013

Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff

Like many others who pursue the medical profession, Nathalie Majorek became a doctor because she wanted to help people. The concepts of listening, corresponding, creating comprehensive histories, and focusing on a patient’s needs were ingrained early in her career.
But over time, the bureaucratic duties of her Beverly practice — billing, referrals, compliance, regulations, the endless back-and-forth with insurance companies — became more burdensome.
“The distance between myself and patients grew bigger and bigger and bigger,” said Majorek, 44.
So after nearly 15 years, she sold her internal medicine practice at the Cummings Center, the Majorek Medical Group, in hopes of finding another avenue of influence.
She earned a master’s in business administration from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management before cofounding MDCapsule, a start-up that provides a secure Internet platform for users to connect and collaborate with their physicians with the goal of taking ownership of their medical care.
“This is care tailored to the patient, and not the patient tailoring to the care,” said Majorek, who helped launch the MDCapsule start-up in June 2012 and serves as its chief executive officer.
The company’s platform creates an online health community. Doctors invite their patients to join; registered patients have access to a dashboard where they can correspond with their physicians; receive important reminders and health tips; upload their own health journals; and even make appointments. Doctors, in turn, can view patient charts, send in prescriptions, communicate with the patient’s other physicians, and offer plans and advice.
“It’s a nice ‘physician-approved’ way to distribute information,” said Dr. Andrea Chisholm, a gynecologist in Salem.
She’s been using MDCapsule since it was first offered through a pilot program in the spring, Chisholm said, and about 100 of her patients are actively engaged. She sends out appointment and health reminders, posts occasional anecdotes, and imports health information, papers, and news to her online library. One great benefit, she said, is that she and her patients can exchange messages privately and discreetly — without having to play phone tag.
“It sets up a dynamic that you’re going into a virtual office,” Chisholm said. “The piece that I enjoy so much is it lets me extend my presence.”
Majorek described her company’s site as “a mix of Facebook and LinkedIn, with a medical twist. We want to provide both the doctors and the patients with a voice.”
Eventually, as the network grows, patients will be able to sign up on their own and then search for their doctors, Majorek said. She also hopes to incorporate features allowing patients to upload daily measurements, such as blood pressure, blood sugar, or weight, through the use of sensory devices.
The platform was launched this month in various offices across the country. Medical practitioners — from obstetricians to gynecologists to psychologists — are being recruited to join, Majorek said.
When it comes to medicine, she said, she “can’t remember wanting to do anything else,” and likened herself to the early 1990s TV character Doogie Howser because she became a doctor at the young age of 23, after studying at McGill University in Montreal and the University of Arizona.
By the time she sold her practice two years ago, Majorek said, she found that about 70 percent of her time was spent on administrative duties.
“I’m a doctor; I’ll always be a doctor,” she said. “I miss my patients. I miss them terribly.”
Recent news reports suggest that she’s not alone: A study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that US physicians suffer more “burnout” than other American workers, with 45 percent citing a loss of enthusiasm, feelings of cynicism, or a low sense of personal accomplishment. And according to a lifestyle report published in March by Medscape, an online resource for health professionals, the top causes of burnout are too many bureaucratic tasks, and too many hours spent at work.
In going forward, the medical profession has to move away from standardized care, Majorek said, toward a more collaborative approach: “We have to reestablish the bond between doctors and their patients.”

Original story link. 

© 2013 The New York Times Company

Easing the borders of tuition

Aug 23, 2013

Startups & Venture Capital

peerTransfer going global for tuition payments

Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal 

W. Marc Bernsau

Iker Marcaide has been there: When the native of Spain was accepted into MIT’s Sloan School of Management in 2008, he learned first-hand how expensive, complex and risky wire transfers can be: His wired tuition payment got lost, although it was eventually recovered.
He figured there had to be a better way for international students — there are about 750,000 in the U.S. — to safely and securely pay for their education.
So in 2009, he founded the Boston-based peerTransfer, which processes tuition payments for students studying abroad.
“When you’re moving around the world, you have to worry about many things,” Marcaide said. “One of the things you don’t want to have to worry about is your money getting there on time, or in the right amount.”
The company employs 40 in offices in Boston and Spain, and has partnered with more than 370 schools in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and mainland Europe, with thousands of students coming from more than 200 countries, according to Marcaide.
PeerTransfer has raised $14.9 million in funding, including $6.4 million in a round announced in June from QED Investors, Spark Capital, Maveron and two Spanish firms, FIDES Capital and KIBO Ventures.
The company’s service is free for students and partnering schools. Students pay in their local currency to peerTransfer, which then bundles those payments with those of other students and negotiates discounted exchange rates with financial institutions.
Revenue comes from capturing a portion of the savings received from that bundling, Marcaide said.
Because colleges only accept tuition payments in their country’s currency, students have had limited options in the past — typically credit card payments or wire transfers. The latter, he said, often come with “high and hidden fees, unfavorable exchange rate conversions, and an inability to track your money.”
“With peerTransfer, there are no fees. What you owe us, and what you send, is what we ultimately get,” said AnnMarie Pennachio, director of student financial services at Bentley College in Waltham, calling it more transparent and organized than other options.
Bentley is employing the service for the first time this upcoming school year, and roughly 75 to 80 of the school’s several hundred international students are now using it, Pennachio said.
Marcaide says the service benefits often “budget-constrained” schools, as well, by saving them time and money, and simplifying processes.
Bentley, for instance, is building out a program that will automatically upload paid amounts and ID numbers into individual student accounts, based on payments it receives from peerTransfer. That will ultimately cut down on manual posting and accounts payable hours, Pennachio said.
“That wasn’t the only reason we went with it,” she said. “For me, it was more for the customer service for the students.”
And going forward? PeerTransfer will use its latest infusion of funding to invest in product development and to focus on global expansion, Marcaide said.
“It’s good — we’re having fun, we’re growing,” he said.
In the end, Marcaide said, it comes down to “how can we make this world a simpler place?”

Original story link. 

Urban vs. Suburban: Where the students are

For inner suburbs, a surge in young students

By Taryn Plumb and Matt Carroll |  Globe Correspondent and Globe Staff

August 18, 2013

Philip Kramer cannot say enough good things about Brookline — the convenience of being able to walk and bike nearly everywhere, the public transportation, the vibrancy of Coolidge Corner, and, particularly, the public schools.
“Unless you want a much more suburban or exurban experience, this is an incredibly attractive place,” said Kramer, an architect whose 11-year-old daughter attends Brookline’s Pierce School. “That’s why I’m here.”
He is in plenty of company. A surge in school enrollment — particularly at the lower grades — has Brookline scrambling for space, with a key panel urging last week that the town expand its high school and some of its kindergarten-through-Grade 8 schools, with the estimated cost ranging from $150 million to $300 million.
But it is not just Brookline that is attracting young families. Several communities just outside Boston are experiencing an enrollment boom at the elementary level that is straining the limits of both classrooms and budgets. Conversely, children appear to be draining out of numerous suburban districts farther from the city.
Nineteen out of 49 area school districts saw their K-5 enrollments rise over the last decade, according to a Globe analysis of data from the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Brookline led the pack in those early grades, but there were also double-digit increases in Arlington, Belmont, Needham, Newton, Waltham, Watertown, and Wellesley.
Meanwhile, K-5 enrollment fell in the remaining 30 local districts, with the steepest drop in Boxborough, followed by Carlisle, Medway, Groton-Dunstable Regional, Norfolk, Southborough, and Medfield. Statewide, K-5 enrollment slipped 4.7 percent between 2002-03 and the school year that ended this spring.
The shifts in enrollment were in many cases less pronounced when viewed across all grade levels, but the K-5 numbers provide a window into what school systems can expect — and prepare for — down the line.
In Brookline, for example, enrollment for the entire system, kindergarten through high school, went from 5,828 to 6,830 over the decade, an increase of 17.2 percent. But for grades K-5 alone, the jump was nearly 38 percent.
In Newton, enrollment grew 7.8 percent across all grade levels, but was up 16.5 percent in the elementary schools.
“We can’t say why people stay and why people move,” said Brigid Bieber, chairwoman of the School Committee in Boxborough, where residents recently decided to extend the regional school arrangement with Acton to include the neighboring towns’ elementary students.
Boxborough’s K-5 enrollment fell 32.6 percent over the decade, while Acton’s slipped just 4.2 percent, leaving its elementary system tight on space. (The figures for sixth grade were not counted in the Globe analysis.)
While there is no definitive answer as to why some schools are bursting at the seams while other populations are contracting, many officials and parents have their theories. In the outer suburbs, the consensus seems to be the economy’s effect on the housing market and the area’s demographics.
“The natural aging of the population certainly has a big impact,” said Bieber, recalling that when her son, now 21, was in elementary school in Boxborough, there were well over 600 students, compared with 440 in prekindergarten through Grade 6 this spring. About 400 students are expected when classes start in a few weeks, she said.
When Bieber moved to town about 20 years ago, one of the primary considerations was the school district.
“We’ve been really, really happy here,” she said. “It’s a great quality of life, very engaged citizens.”
The Norfolk schools, which continue through Grade 6 before students move to the King Philip Regional School District, have also seen their enrollment decline. However, Superintendent Ingrid Allardi noted an interesting wrinkle — and a potential reversal of the trend: The new school year will bring a spike in kindergarten enrollment, from 95 last fall to 133.
“It’s a new bubble starting at kindergarten that will go up through the grades,” she said.
The recent decline, Allardi said, was not because Norfolk’s public schools were losing students to other districts, or charter or private schools.
“It’s more a fact of housing costs and not a lot of new families moving in,” she said. “It’s an expensive community, and with the economy the way that it is, there’s not a lot of property moving.”
Experts back up her observations. Census figures show that for the first time in two decades, the annual growth rate in US cities and surrounding urban areas has surpassed that of the suburbs.
According to William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, between 2000 and 2010, city populations grew an average of just 0.42 percent annually, compared with 1.38 percent in the suburbs; by last year, however, that flipped to 1.12 percent growth in cities and 0.97 percent in suburbs.
“Nationwide, there’s a huge return-to-the-cities movement,” said Kramer, the architect whose daughter attends school in Brookline.
Betsy DeWitt, chairwoman of Brookline’s Board of Selectmen, agreed about the appeal of the community’s location next to Boston, and also pointed to its supportive environment for families, including numerous day-care, preschool, and extended-day programs.
And, she said, a generational turnover is taking place. With the town pretty well built out, and not much new residential development being proposed, the trend seems to be empty-nesters creating vacancies and families with children filling them.
The same goes for Belmont, which has seen enrollment in its K-4 schools rise from 1,396 in the 2002-2003 school year to 1,705 in 2012-2013, and expects another increase in the fall.
School Committee chairwoman Laurie Graham said Belmont has a “really strong school system that brings a lot of people in,” and cited its “phenomenal” arts programs. Still, it comes at a price: The district has increased or implemented fees for arts activities, busing, and sports. And because there is not much of a business tax base, residents “pay higher taxes to live here,” she said.
Also, Graham said, there is a pretty significant number of parents who have moved their children from private to the town’s public schools.
“We base that on the economy,” she said.
But then there is a persistent question: What to do to accommodate the significant gains — or, in turn, to adapt to heavy losses.
In Boxborough’s case, it has meant a significant change: In June, Boxborough and Acton voted to form a regional system covering from kindergarten to Grade 12, to take effect next July 1; they already share regional junior high and high schools, starting in Grade 7.
Boxborough has also decreased the number of teachers per grade, and cut back on art, music, library, and gym time, which has meant reducing staff positions to less than full time, according to Bieber.
She said there are many positives to regionalization, including not only cost savings, but the ability to share resources.
Brookline, meanwhile, is struggling with how to address its soaring enrollment. With the bulk of the increase in the early grades, the town anticipates the growth will continue as the students advance through the system.
The town is establishing a committee to study raising taxes through a Proposition 2½ override, to help pay for new or expanded schools.
“The major public test is, what is it going to cost, and will voters support it?” said DeWitt.
Belmont, for its part, is considering redistricting to balance enrollments across the schools, Graham said, although she stressed, “that’s not something you can take on very lightly.”
Ultimately, most agreed that it’s impossible to say whether current trends — up or down — will continue.
“You can’t predict how many kids people are going to have,” said Graham. “And you can’t predict where people are going to live.”
Globe correspondent Shandana Mufti contributed to this report.

Graphic on school enrollment increases/decreases. 

Original story link.

Technology 3.0 in private schools

August 19, 2013 

Private Schools Keep Their Eye On Educational Technology 

Taryn Plumb
Special to the Worcester Business Journal


PHOTO/Matt VOLPINI

In this age when information is instant and mobile devices — in some cases more than one — are in every hand, students not only want technology integrated into their school day, they simply expect it.
But due to constraints in expertise and budgets that are based largely on endowments and enrollment fees, private schools in Central Massachusetts vary widely in their technology adoption.
As Jason Epstein, chief information officer at Worcester Academy, noted, the key to keeping up is constant evaluation and assessment because technology-based learning is a relatively new area in education.
"People talk about 21st century learning — but we have to remember that a century's a hundred years, and we're just a little bit into it," he said.
Worcester Academy is one of the local private schools ahead of the curve. In 2010, it implemented a 1:1 laptop program; all students enrolled at the school receive a Macintosh laptop for the year, each of which is equipped with $5,000 to $7,000 worth of software, according to Epstein.
Similarly, Worcester's Bancroft School has a 1:1 iPad initiative, which requires every student in Grades 6-12 to purchase the handheld device and download more than a dozen mandatory note-taking, word processing, dictionary and movie-making apps.
But because of tight budgets, other schools haven't been able to make such technological strides.
St. Peter-Marian in Worcester, for instance, tries to keep technology "as up to date as possible," aided in part by a technology fee assessed to students, according to technology director Dawn Van Riper. But it's not enough to implement programs similar to Bancroft's and Worcester Academy's, or, as she would like to see, Wi-Fi across campus and a lab of tablets.

Tools And Teachers

"The biggest challenge right now is that our school depends on enrollment to pay the bills and hire faculty," said Van Riper. "Due to demographics and the economy, we have had some really tough years. The biggest need is faculty and money to make us the very best in the area of technology."
Worcester Academy's Epstein, for his part, noted that his department's budget is good, but he called it a "completely active and dynamic" process.
"There should never be a time when you're not evaluating your budget," he said.
The goal is to ultimately keep ahead of where things are going, he said, and essentially "future-proof" yourself by not making big capital investments in things that are sure to fizzle out.
The school's 1:1 program has been successful, and was based on research that students with laptops are more active learners, more readily engage in problem solving and critical thinking, and develop better writing and computer skills, according to the school's website.
Bancroft, meanwhile, chose iPads because, according to its website, they allow students instant access to information, thus reducing downtime. They also enable cloud-sharing and provide unlimited access to primary source data and immediate data collection.
It's a "truly personal learning tool" that allows each student to "choose apps that make the most sense for their learning style," the school's website reads. Also, "textbooks are no longer limited to delivering information to a reading audience. Information is delivered in a multimedia manner."
Likening technology to other essential educational tools — say paper or pencils — Epstein noted that "it's interwoven into the everyday."
In Worcester Academy's case, that includes iPads, video cameras, microphones, and tripods available for checkout in the library; SMART Boards and LCD projectors in most classrooms; and high-speed Internet across campus. The school is also renovating some classrooms and integrating video, sound, and projection capabilities, Epstein said.
Most notably, starting this upcoming school year, Worcester Academy has launched a new department, Innovations in Design and Technology, which offers courses based around computer science, 3-D design and 3-D printing, and will also house a robotics team. The program will be fluid, Epstein said, and might eventually branch to other areas such as video game or app design, game theory, and even electrical and mechanical engineering.

Following Societal Trends

"It really depends on where society takes it," Epstein said, stressing that the goal is to not get "too far ahead of yourself" and create something that becomes quickly outdated, or is so outlandish that it doesn't fit in with the overall school environment. "You have to find that balance," he said.
St. Peter-Marian, meanwhile, has equipped each of its high-school classrooms with mounted projectors and at least one desktop or laptop, according to Van Riper, and also has a STEM lab with a cart of 25 laptops, a media center with 40 desktops, and a lab of 25 computers that can be signed out for class use. Students can also purchase online books or iBooks in lieu of textbooks.
On the curriculum side, the school offers computer courses focused on Photoshop, InDesign, and HTML. It also has a Virtual High School, offering web-based courses such as forensics and Chinese. Enrollments in the program have doubled, Van Riper said, and the program has done so well that a new teacher was recently added.
Ultimately, Epstein said, technology in education is an "ongoing conversation that has to stay dynamic and fluid."
In doing so, Worcester Academy has a technology committee comprised of faculty and administrators. Epstein works with an internal and external peer network, and is also involved with METAA, the Massachusetts Educational Technology Administrators Association. Meanwhile, two full-time technology integrators constantly upkeep systems and work with faculty.
"A lot of it is maintenance and steady growth," he said. "Training personnel and giving teachers support is really paramount. I could bring in everything in the world, but if teachers aren't ready for it, if the school culture isn't ready for it, it's going to fall flat, no matter how good it is."

Original story link. 

Gourmet lunches for schoolkids

Aug 16, 2013

Startup Smart Lunches takes a bite out of boring school lunch

Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal

 

W. Marc Bernsau | Business Journal

Eunice Chapon knew she was essentially making the same small rotation of lunches for her son Jack — and that he was getting bored.
Then, a couple years ago, she heard about Smart Lunches, a company that provides lunches to participating students at Riverbend Montessori in Natick, Jack’s school. Soon enough, he was enjoying chicken noodle soup, organic beef hot dogs and even quiche between his lessons.
“I have a very busy job, and mornings are such a scramble — getting out the door, getting everybody where they need to be,” said Chapon, who lives in Natick. “It’s nice to not have to worry about making lunch every morning.”
And that’s the dual purpose of Boston-based Smart Lunches: To make the midday meal simple, as well as healthy.
Founded in spring 2011, the company works with about a half-dozen caterers to provide healthy, fresh meals to students. The service is offered at roughly 150 schools, summer camps and day care centers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, according to the firm’s CEO, Emily Green.
Parents start by creating a profile for their child on the company’s website, including where they go to school and any pertinent allergy information. They then place orders online, choosing from seasonal, 90-day rotating menus that feature, for instance, turkey and meatball sliders, veggie pasta salad, chili, or a Caprese sandwich with mozzarella, tomato and fresh basil. Dairy-free, egg-free, nut-free, gluten-free and other allergy-sensitive options are also available. The average price for each meal is $5 or $6, depending on the child’s age, according to Green.
The company works with liaisons at each school who handle the daily delivery to students. “It’s different than the way people normally think about school lunch — a tray and a cafeteria,” Green said.
Recipes are developed in-house by an on-staff nutritionist and culinary director — with input from the caterers — and the company also does tastings with parents and students.
With 20 employees, the company was acquired by Shoebuy.com founder Scott Savitz in December 2011, and has also since purchased the healthy vending machine company Smart Snax.
The firm has raised $2.7 million in funding across two rounds, most recently a $1.6 million round in June. The funding came from Western Technology Investment, Romulus Capital and Data Point Capital (a venture fund founded and managed by Savitz), as well as angel investors including The Kraft Group president Jonathan Kraft and Adelphic Mobile co-founder Jennifer Lum.
Smart Lunches keeps a portion of the revenue paid by parents, and also passes some of the revenue to hosting schools. “Many of these schools are scrambling for every dollar,” Green said.
The firm is not disclosing revenue figures, but Green says the service is now used by thousands of parents. Ultimately, she said, the school lunch business is “very broken” and in need of change.
“No one’s happy with the quality of the meals, nobody thinks that they have enough fresh food, or that they’re nutritionally balanced,” Green said. “I think we have an opportunity to rethink the school lunch service. Our ultimate goal is to be national.”

Original story link.

Bringing real estate brokers online

Aug 9, 2013

Startups & Venture Capital

Placester offers Realtors a home for websites

Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal 

 

W. Marc Bernsau 

Real estate is a service-based business. But, most house or property hunters begin their searches online.
So, simply put, the goal of Cambridge-based Placester is to “empower every real estate professional to be on the Internet, so they can be found by the right people,” said co-founder and CEO Matt Barba.
Founded in late 2010, the company has developed an open-source platform for building real estate websites, whether for single agents, teams of brokers, single properties, property or transaction types, or dedicated markets and geographic areas.
Placester has 16 full-time employees and is backed by $2.5 million in funding. Investors include Romulus Capital, Brightcove co-founder Bob Mason, TechStars founder and CEO David Cohen and Adelphic Mobile co-founder Jennifer Lum.
As Barba explained, the site-creation process is simple on Placester: Users choose a theme from the among the current 14 choices — half of them free, half premium — then customize it with colors, photos, branding and blogs. The sites are powered by WordPress, optimized for search engines and responsive to mobile devices.
Revenue comes from premium subscriptions, costing $45 a month, that integrate MLS data into sites, and also provide indexable property pages and priority support. The company has access to about 90 percent of the roughly 900 MLS data regions across the country, Barba said.
Although he declined to disclose revenue, he did say that Placester has a paid customer base in the “low thousands.” It also has “many tens of thousands” of free sites that it powers, and it provides developer tool sets, as well.
“Our mission isn’t to give every single agent a cookie-cutter website,” Barba said. “We embrace the idea of developers, and companies that specialize in making real estate websites, using our platform.”
Lisa Archer, of the Keller Williams-affiliated “Live, Love Charlotte,” turned to Placester when she wanted to create a site that was more destination-based and “picture-rich,” as opposed to simply listing properties.
“There wasn’t ever ‘That can’t be done,’ ‘That’s going to take too long,’ ‘That’s going to be too expensive,’” she said. “They’re really easy to work with, and they listened.”
Although the experience of people finding homes is becoming increasingly digital, people typically don’t buy or rent a home solely on what they see online, Barba said. “There’s a very, very important place for the foreseeable future for real estate professionals,” he said.
And Placester, looking ahead, has plenty of ideas about its next phase, said Barba, pointing to the 1 million agents, 90,000 brokerages, and 100 million listings across the U.S.
“There’s incredible opportunity,” Barba said. “We think we can really thrive.”

Original story link.