Susan Defife

Susan Defife heads up the leading source of news and community on women in business -- Womenconnect.com. The site offers a variety of features catered to women business owners, including an updated news service, a directory of community leaders, and vibrant discussion groups.

How did you know how to start a business? Who taught you how to do that?

To be honest, I always say this is sort of in my genes. Both of my grandfathers were entrepreneurs. My father is an entrepreneur. I knew nothing about how to run a business. But at the same time it was all I ever knew. I grew up with people who had their own businesses. Investors hate to hear this, but sometimes it's just really instinct. I know the market. I know what the market needs. And everything I've done to run the business is around how do I meet those needs, because ultimately that's how we're going to make money -- really being in tune with the market.

Some people have said have said that in the future technology will be the great equalizer. Do you agree with that?

It is already, from a couple of perspectives. The first being that if you are a business owner, for example, you can compete with anybody because you can do business worldwide, reach a very large audience, conduct e-commerce for very little money. So as a business owner it really allows you to compete on all levels. For somebody who is looking for a career in technology, there is a severe workforce shortage and we have to use the best minds we can. It doesn't matter whether that mind belongs to a man or a woman, or a Martian quite frankly. It is really who can do the job and get it done. So from that standpoint, technology is an incredible equalizer.

Do you consider yourself a pioneer in business today?

I think we really were. It's funny, I'm not sure that we really knew how much of a pioneer we were. But when I realized later that we really pre-dated the browser I started to really realize how early on we were out there. When I started talking to people about what it was we were going to be doing in 1994, they looked at me like I was nuts and had no idea really what it was we were trying to accomplish. And four or five years later, people are coming to me and saying, "Wow! This was really visionary. It took me awhile but I'm now ready to do this." Part of the problem is that you have to be able to hold on until it catches on.

How important is networking generally, and how important is it for you and your career?

Networking generally for our audience, for example, is extraordinarily important. Women are doing business by building relationships and the networking allows them to build the relationships and to build their businesses. There are so many connections. The old girls network, or the new girls network is incredibly powerful. It really allows you to refer one another to different business opportunities and I've really seen that in the last five years strengthen.

From my standpoint, I find it very, very effective. I network a little differently than I used to, it's not strictly through women's organizations, it's really through a technology and media community, and again building the relationships and really looking at things from a standpoint of what do you need. "Here's what I need and let's figure out how we can get there together," rather than, "Well what do I need and how can I give up as little as possible to get what I need?"

If a woman starting out today were going to be doing the same thing that you did, what would be easier and what would be harder for her?

Well the easiest thing is that a lot of us have made the mistakes already. It's very easy to start looking at maybe a little more of a case study that says this path did not work for some of the others companies. But this path is working. It took us a little longer, all of us out there doing this, because we had to get through and make those mistakes. The other side of that, however, is that if you're starting now you're not a market leader. Because the others have already been there. So you can probably get there faster but you're not a market leader.

Does the glass ceiling still exist? How are isms today? Are they gone, are they getting better, are they getting worse?

In some industries the glass ceiling is very very strong. I think that's why you see so many new women-owned businesses because women have decided that's their best way around the glass ceiling. In other industries I think it's really starting to fall away. In the new technology industry I don't see a glass ceiling. But in some of the older entrenched industries it's still very much there. As result there's a real need for a lot of kinds of things that we do.