Amanda Steinberg, Dailyworth

Maybe I have been trapped in a bubble but I have not come across many women who are serial entrepreneurs.  Amanda Steinberg who is the brains behind Dailyworth has been creating businesses for years…hence, a serial entrepreneur.   

As a senior at Columbia University she built a Y2K gift project to see if she could build her own company.  That didn't pan out to something big so after graduating from Columbia University, Amanda found herself at CitySoft heading up the NYC office. CitySoft which began in 1996 and has evolved into a web-based software program called Community Enterprise that is an open source platform for social sector organizations.  What is amazing is that during the time Amanda was at CitySoft, she did work with MOUSE, where I was the Chairman of but we never met. 

After leaving CitySoft, she became the Internet Operations Director for ACLU where she created a data base for ACLU on fund-raising and document search.  Amanda can write code so her vision of what she could do at ACLU was realistic. 

At this point, she met her husband, got married and soon became pregnant.  Amanda knew she wanted to be able to create her own company so that she could essentially own her own life.  She started a company to do online fundraising called Soapbxx.  ACLU was one of the first clients.  This platform aids non-profit organizations by building websites that allow them to engage with their community through conversation and fund-raising.  Although Amanda has moved past Soapbxx, as a founder she is sitll involved as Soapbxx is a company that still exists today. 

Prior to Soapbxx she built a company called Therapyloop which is a group supervision community for therapists.  Therapists need speak to other therapists about their patients so many times a month and not all therapists live in communities where they have that access.  It was a subscription model which scaled but not to the profitability she had hoped for.  She is also a member of Joomla which is a community of open source developers.  Joomla provides free apps for their members yet there are also apps that are available to buy.  Amanda built an app to sell at Joomla but this wasn't a big idea either. 

Like we all have, she and her husband made some financial mistakes as they begun to look at their money and buy a home.  In her gut, she knew that she wanted to start a daily newsletter business.  Not sure what it was going to be but just had a feeling about this.  Amanda took a course 2008 on women and money through the Social Venture Network.  It was during this course that her idea for Dailyworth began to form. 

65% of women are CFO's of their households.  Women don't save as aggressively as men and the majority of women end up with less money when they retire than men.  Kind of not surprising as most women enjoy their assets by buying things from clothes to housewares.  Amanda wanted to help provide a daily email geared towards women that would advise them on budgets, saving and fundamentally a better understanding on how to manage their cash.  Thus, Dailyworth was formed.  A daily email newsletter to help women budget, save, invest, spend and earn and of course plenty of crowd sourcing and social media tossed in.  Smart idea. The Daily Candy of money. 

Amanda is impressive.  As a web developer she not only knew how to build the platform she also has the skills to delegate which she learned through other jobs that she held and the companies that she built.  Understanding that tech is a platform to reach millions of women who are interested in managing their money intelligently.  I really think she is on to something here. 

In complete transparency, I was introduced to Amanda through a friend who is an investor.  I was pretty sure this was not something that would interest me at all.  After spending two hours with Amanda I was totally impressed with her as an entrepreneur and with the idea and growth potential of Dailyworth.  I am going to be investing in Dailyworth and looking foward to be part of the team.  Sign up for the newsletter and tell me what you think.