Domain Masters Radio Show

Starting an Online Business and How She Joined Monster Commerce

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Monte: I love that. Welcome back to Domain Masters and, again, my thanks to Tim Mayer for being on the show. Again, Tim, I’m sorry if I pinned you down, but I was really glad you were able to share some things with us that I know that the listening community were able to take away and walk away from and learn a little bit more about Yahoo! and how to be successful on the web. My next guest is Stefanie Leffler. She’s the CEO from Monster Commerce. I met Stefanie a year ago at Webmaster World and she is one of the most well-respected ecommerce leaders and she’s asked to speak at a number of different conferences, including Webmaster World and she spoke at SES. They have a great product and service, a great company, we manage their domain names at Moniker and we’re going to offering their products and services up on our site as well. Stefanie, welcome to the show.

Stefanie: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Monte: It’s about time I got you pinned down, huh.

Stefanie: I know. It’s tough, I tell ya.

Monte: [inaudible] was going to be interviewing you at SES and you were just too busy for me. We’ll make up for that now.

Stefanie: I’m excited to hopefully share some interesting things with you tonight.

Monte: Yea, now speaking of interesting, you have an interesting experience on getting onto the web. I understand that you started your own online venture which helps you kind of get experience with what should be working well with ecommerce and what doesn’t work well and ended up being the CEO of a great organization, Monster Commerce. Tell me a little about it.

Stefanie: Sure, yea, it’s actually a pretty good story from an entrepreneurial perspective. When I was in my senior year in college, I decided that rather than sitting through classes, I would convince the professor that writing a business plan and starting an online store was a good idea, which I did, and ended up starting a store and, long story made short, I quickly became Monster Commerce’s number 1 most annoying client.

Monte: I cannot imagine that.

Stefanie: (laughing) Well, every day I would call with ideas and things that I would like to see changed. After a little while, the owner of the company said, “You know, hey if you know so much about this stuff, why don’t you become a partner in the venture”; and it actually sounded like a great idea to me. So, I agreed; and that’s how I originally got on board and, you know, we grew it from a couple of clients to today…we have more than 5,000 online stores out there. So, it’s been a lot of fun.

Monte: Wow, that’s great. That’s great. So, when I first met you about a year go, you guys started like out…didn’t you guys start out in your house or something, above your garage or out of Ryan’s house or something?

Stefanie: Yea, exactly, above my business partner’s parent’s garage. It was a true .com start-up story there…3 or 4 of us crammed in there; and if somebody had to make a sales call, they had to go into the bathroom so they could hear themselves talk. It was a…we actually had a really good time. It was a lot of fun, a lot of hours, and it’s all worth it now, I think. As of today, I think we have 75 employees; which is kind of amazing…

Monte: Oh, that’s great.

Stefanie: …how much it’s grown. But, yea, that’s where it all started.

Monte: Yea, because we came from basically the same background. I started out of a third bedroom at my house and my partner, Eric, just moved in from Michigan and he was put up in my spare bedroom, and our house was under construction, and my wife basically kicked us out because we just….first of all, being in the house, she saw me less than she sees me now and my dog would be barking in the background while we were on the phone with clients in Australia, and it was just crazy. So, uh…

Stefanie: Heh.

Monte: Very similar beginnings.

Stefanie: Yea, it does sound familiar. It’s always a lot of fun to start like that; but, it certainly makes you appreciate it when you actually have an office to go to in the morning.