Moonfruit Lounge - Moonfruit in the news

Wendy Tan White helps you find the 'Business in You'

leila — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:42:00 +0000

At Moonfruit, one of our biggest aims is to help small businesses get online easily. So who better than our very own CEO, Wendy Tan White, to be one of the faces of the new Government Campaign 'Business in You'.

Business in You is a major new campaign from the Government, in conjunction with the private sector, to encourage UK businesses to start up successfully and grow. Their aim is to ensure that small businesses have the resources and support to help them grow and expand over the next few years. The initiative will offer workshops, web-based seminars, video tutorials and some free services from partners.

Wendy was with the Prime Minister, David Cameron, at the launch of the campaign in Yorkshire on Monday. The day of the launch was Chinese New Year and Wendy presented the PM with a Chinese Calendar and mentioned that the year of the Dragon brings the opportunity for great success or great failure. Both agreed that they are gunning for the former!

Wendy will be one of the featured entrepreneurs on their nationwide poster campaign, alongside Richard Moross (our friends Moo.com) and Paul Lindley (Founder of organic baby food, Ella's Kitchen). You can see what Wendy has to say about how she set up Moonfruit and her top tips for anyone starting out - Wendy's Interview.

So, if you're in the UK, look out for the campaign!

How online and social commerce is opening doors

Clare — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:10:00 +0000

Joe White writes: As the web continues to evolve, smart businesses look to use its new features in ways that can help them expand, compete and remain profitable - even at a time when the economic outlook seems bleak. This is particularly true when the web gives us opportunities to make money.

When Moonfruit.com was created, its aim was to allow anyone - from individuals through to small business owners and beyond - to control, maintain and customise their online identities, without needing big budgets or technical expertise. Together with the proliferation of social media platforms, this created a more equal playing field for people vying for online exposure.

Since then, people's online priorities have progressed from controlling their presence to boosting their sales. Online platforms use a number of methods to focus on money-making: traditional ecommerce, where people can buy products or services online using electronic payment; ad-supported platforms, which offer a service or content funded by commercial advertising; and paywalls and micropayments, which allow sites to monetise individual units of content.

What's new in ecommerce?

So why has ecommerce been so important for smaller businesses with a mandate to grow? Since launching our ShopBuilder tool - which allows people to publish online shops across a number of platforms, including their own site, Facebook and mobile - we have seen some innovative ways to make money using ecommerce functions. Some of these go way beyond simply selling products for payment.

Our customer Yoga Bellies, a pre- and post-natal yoga class that takes place across the UK, has done something very interesting with ShopBuilder. Its online shop function collects customers' payments for classes that take place offline. Similarly, the King's College London Symphony Orchestra is using ShopBuilder to allow people to purchase concert tickets in advance of the event.

While this isn't new in itself (most people have purchased tickets for a concert or holiday online), Yoga Bellies and King's College are integrating ecommerce into real life without using the complex online registration or billing systems required by tour operators and ticket vendors. This is hugely significant for small businesses and micro-traders because it removes some of barriers that may have inhibited growth in the past: customers not carrying the right cash, for example, or not possessing a chequebook.

Ecommerce vs. social commerce

Social commerce is a concept that builds on ecommerce by adding interactivity and sharebility to the traditional buy/sell structure. A number of studies have shown that people trust the recommendations made by their family and friends online more than they trust other types of promotion. It makes sense: Why would you trust an advert or even a third-party endorsement when you can access unbiased advice from the people you know in real life?

Facebook is a particularly fertile platform for social commerce not only because it has so many users, but also because ecommerce functions have started to be integrated with company pages. It's powerful because it allows people to buy within their own network without needing to visit other websites - and because they can engage with the brand in ways their friends and network can see. This process introduces a viral effect into the selling chain, and enables smaller businesses to grow organically using popular platforms such as Facebook.

We originally launched ShopBuilder to allow site owners to set up shop wherever their customers wanted to buy, and to fill a gap in the ecommerce market. So it's interesting to see that our users are most excited about one specific ShopBuilder feature, and that's Facebook integration! Thousands of our shops are already using this feature to publish their whole product catalogue into the social network to allow buying and selling inside Facebook itself. It will be even more interesting to see how they innovate with social and ecommerce in the future.

See the original article here

Moonfruit nominated in Website of the Year award

Clare — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 10:50:00 +0000

We are thrilled to have made it through to one of the 24 finalists in the Good Web Guide's 'website of the year' awards from a strong field.

The winner will be announced by Jo Malone at the awards reception to be held on Wednesday 16th November at the Royal Institution.

Details about all the shortlisted sites can be found here.

There is also a second category called 'The People's Vote'. The organisers believe it will be a good test of which site is the most proactive on the social media front. The winner of the People's Vote will be announced at the reception as well.

If you click on the following link, you will be taken to a page where your vote will automatically be taken, click here. Visitors can only vote once.

Please help us to do well in (or win!) the People's Vote – and of course, we'll keep you posted about our success in the main event.

Startup Accelerators and Internet Bubbles

Clare — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 11:34:00 +0100

Joe White is COO of Moonfruit.com. He wrote the blog (below) for Reuters' The Great Debate UK series.

All this week Seedcamp, a UK-based internet startup accelerator, has been running its headline annual event Seedcamp Week in London.

As an accelerator, Seedcamp has mimicked a successful process established in the U.S. by Y Combinator, Techstars and others of taking early stage internet entrepreneurs and running them through an intense programme of mentoring and business development. Mentors are laid on from different disciplines and work with the entrepreneurs each day. They cover founders, product experts, venture capitalists, marketing specialists and more. The best ideas at the end of the programme get funding to get started. Seedcamp Week brings the best of the best from the Seedcamps throughout the year and around the world for a final London mentor and pitch feast.

Seedcamp has grown its fund to €5m this year and made some other announcements to bolster its success. There’s no doubt that a tie-up with Dave McClures’s 500 Startups will boost Seedcamp’s profile (disclosure: Dave McClure is also a Moonfruit investor).

But there are two questions that have plagued internet tech financing in recent months: Can Europe produce internet companies that rival their U.S. cousins in terms of success and influence? And are we in a tech bubble?

Let’s deal with Europe first. Seedcamp Week ends today – start-ups this time ranged from grabcad.com and farmeron.com, bringing the internet to engineers and farmers, to compilr.com and transferwise.com hoping to disrupt the software compiling and foreign exchange transfer markets respectively.

In my mind, for the UK to really produce world beaters with $1bn plus valuations, we need to have start-ups that play to our strengths. The UK and London in particular have strong industries in finance, design, music, and the marketing and creative industries. Some of these talent pools should help a great deal in the 2.0 world of slick UI and simplified design. NYC has done well to distinguish itself from the Valley based on a similar city profile to London, with companies like tumblr, foursquare and etsy.

Mint.com (started in 2006 in the US and acquired for $170m in 2009) was complimented for being a design-led site that happened to sell personal finance software. Wonga.com, which provides short term loans, is a UK champion in this ilk. It has similarly great, simplified design, is based in financial services, and with £73m revenues in 2010 and strong growth a high value IPO may be on the cards. Also in this vein is betfair.com, sourced from our national love of gambling, and zopa.com, providing peer-to-peer lending, sourced from the UK’s love of fairness and new found suspicion of banks. Successes like moo.com, last.fm and spotify.com show the influence of the design and music industries.

And now to the bubble. There’s been a lot of talk of tech bubbles, Angel bubbles and accelerator bubbles. Marc Andreessen says we’re not in a bubble and public tech multiples are too low, while Steve Blank says we are in a bubble, particularly at the Angel end which is playing out “by the book”.

The first Internet bubble took a long time to build, from the Netscape IPO in 1995 to the Nasdaq peak in March 2000 and subsequent crash. The U.S. was buzzing for a few years before the money, buzz and funding started to flow and build in Europe. New players piled in and more money chased fewer opportunities. Investors went further afield to chase them.

Moonfruit and I lived through that crash. We took VC funding in January 2000, and launched our business. We had no idea how close to the crash we were, and I don’t think we appreciated how long the boom had already been going when we joined the party. We have a post-crash happy ending, but this is not common. More and more of the U.S. VCs closed their European funds after the crash and many have not come back.

So what does that mean for Seedcamp and 500 Startups? Is this tie-up a sign that Europe is heating up? Is too much money chasing too few opportunities in the Valley? Too many accelerators? Are we beginning the last hurrah? I hope not.

As Mike Butcher from Techcrunch said in a recent interview, Seedcamp’s example spawning more accelerators in Europe could be a case of “a rising tide lifting all boats”. But even if the tide goes out those funds will have been injected into the economy and we’ll be left with more experience and knowledge.

For the original article, click here.

Stylist Masterclass: Wendy Tan White gives some tips to budding entrepreneurs.

Clare — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 11:26:00 +0100

From Stylist magazine:

Wendy Tan-White, founder and CEO of website-building company Moonfruit, recently joined us for our weekly Lunchtime Masterclass.

This web chat is now closed - but you can read the full transcript from the discussion in the comments section, below.

Why angels are worth the effort

Clare — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 16:06:00 +0100

Wendy Tan White is the founder and CEO of Moonfruit

Once your business has the proof points to make it a success, an injection of capital may be required to help it scale. At this early stage, it’s much more common to get it from high net worth individuals who have made money as entrepreneurs (angel investors) and who are willing to take more of a risk. They offset this with the belief they can make a difference using their experience. Alternatively you can apply to modern seed funds like Seedcamp, Hackfwd, Ycombinator and 500startups. They use an ecosystem of experienced entrepreneurs to mentor their investees.

Why would you take angel investment or seed fund over a bank loan or a VC fund? Because real entrepreneurial experience is invaluable. If you’re growing a tech business, you’ll ideally be able to find an entrepreneur who understands this sector. In the USA, a strong culture of entrepreneurialism has meant that many people who have built and sold tech businesses have re-invested in other young companies. This ecosystem is not as mature in Europe but is definitely improving.

I saw this illustrated at the Dublin Founders Summit last year, which included the founders of Twitter, Skype, and YouTube. MicroVC Dave McClure, founding partner of 500startups.com, who is now an investor in Moonfruit, asked the European investors and entrepreneurs in the audience to raise their hands if they had bought an expensive car. He then asked them to keep their hands up if they’d invested money into a start-up or seed fund. Out of at least 25 hands, only three stayed up.

12 months on there are several new seed funds in Europe, including Passion Capital and Springboard. Things will continue to improve as more European entrepreneurs exit. To take advantage of this, you need to pick an angel in the UK with experience in the sectors relevant to you. Choosing the right one is vital. So how do you identify the right investor? And how can you persuade them to work with you?

One of the best places to start is to look at other companies that you consider to be related to yours, and find out who their investors are. You’re more likely to secure capital from someone who understands your market, and they are more likely to be valuable to you.

To then get your business in front of your chosen angel, you need to be very well prepared and also willing to go that extra mile. Angels are often incredibly time pressed and it can be difficult to get a meeting with them. If you know someone in common, ask them for an introduction: they are much more likely to take a meeting through a recommendation. You may have to really go out of your way to meet them. I know of one start-up that flew from London and gate-crashed the Dublin Summit for a ten minute meeting with an angel.

It’s a fine line between perseverance and stalking someone, but if negotiated well, it’ll be worth the effort to get the right combination of capital and experience into your company.

This article recently appeared in Growing Business. To see the original article, click here.

If you liked this you may also like:-

A bubble with substance
The rise of women entrepreneurs
Simon Duffy: "There's nothing like the early stages of a new business"

The legal curse of running a small business in London

Clare — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:27:00 +0100

Joe White is co-founder and COO of website builder Moonfruit. He's grown the business across a decade to an international company with Silicon-Valley-based backing. But White has had his fair share of headaches along the way. Here are his tips for small businesses looking to avoid legal hot water.

Running a small business in London can be a battle at the best of times, particularly in terms of managing your own time as it is one of the most valuable resources in the company. You need things done correctly, you can't do them all yourself, and you don't want to be distracted by things you shouldn't have to worry about. I should know, as COO/CFO of the number one hosted website builder in the UK, Moonfruit.com. We're a DIY website builder for consumers and small businesses to share their passions online, based in central London. Legislation affecting your business can seem like one of those extra things you just shouldn't have to worry about, but it is real and does matter. Some of it is a real pain, some of it is good discipline with real benefits. The main kinds of legislation that affect the running of your business are:

Employment law: essentially, this concerns the relationship between you and your employees. From payment rights to varying types of discrimination.

Consumer protection: this looks to ensure that consumers are treated fairly by businesses and to ensure product quality is satisfactory.

Tax and regulations: anything from payroll taxes, VAT and corporation tax, to filing accounts and statutory documents.

It's your responsibility as a business owner to make sure you take notice of all these things. But this doesn't mean you have to do it all yourself. My first piece of advice would be to make sure you have an accountant who is looking out for the day to day stuff, particularly payroll and taxes. The revenue aren't particularly sympathetic to people who pay incorrect tax and a competent accountant will make sure you do. It is an additonal outgoing but - trust me - accountants are worth their weight in gold.

On the legal and employment side of things, treat people fairly, with respect, and you'll be okay in most cases. If you find yourself in a tricky situation, then take advice. There are several business services that will offer standard contracts and process documents (e.g. dismissal), so you can use these to save money. Smarta offers a business software bundle that includes legal and accounting software, so that can be helpful here. Most importantly, don't be afraid to do something for fear of regulation or concern that it's all too complicated. Seek to do things the right way and take advice if you're unsure, but don't get paralysed. Most government agencies want you to succeed and will work with you to help you comply, even if it's tidying up after the event! Some laws can even lead to a benefit for your business. Understanding that EU law requires us to give customers a 60 day right of refund for digital purchases has allowed us to promote this effective 60 day money back guarantee to our customers - to their delight! So it's not all bad :-)

Further reading: FREE Business Briefing: How to interview; The Comply or Die ebook

This article first appeared in SMARTA See it here

Webuser: Gold Award

Clare — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 16:23:00 +0100

The following article appeared on the Webuser blog recently in a group test of online website builders. Moonfruit received the Gold Award but we were also pleased to see that our partners came 2nd and 4th.

The full article in pdf format can be found here Moonfruit_Web_User_review_Aug_2011121.pdf while the review of Moonfruit is reproduced below:

Moonfruit ❘ ★★★★★

If you’re looking for a simple way to put together a website that looks like it’s been designed by a professional, Moonfruit leads the way. Its attractive website isn’t just a shallow bid to get you interested, but a genuine indication of the kind of site you’ll be able to create.

Considering the calibre of website it aims to produce, Moonfruit is amazingly easy to get started with. To begin the 15-day free trial, just register a username, email address, and a password. Click one of the eye-catching templates (there are 100, and every one of them looks great) and your website appears in front of your eyes, ready and waiting for your content. Click a text box to enter new text, or click an image to change it.

There are some elements, however, that you can’t immediately change. Moonfruit uses a master page, which acts as the base layer of your website. This holds the elements that appear on every page, such as the title and navigation. It’s a neat system, once you get your head around it, since it ensures key elements are identical on every page. This makes your website look coherent and well-designed.

The basic package costs £4 per month, for which you get 500MB of storage for a single website. The number of pages is unlimited, and you get 10GB per month of bandwidth. This is actually not a huge amount of space, but it ought to be enough to hold a modest website with plenty of content, and you won’t be restricted by the page count.

If you double your payments to £8 per month, you can have a domain, PayPal integration, twice the storage and bandwidth, and the ability to create five websites. If you’re feeling really ambitious, there are also £15- and £35-per-month packages available. The first offers 2.5GB of storage, 15 websites and unlimited bandwidth, while the ‘full-throttle’ package gets you 5GB of storage and a whopping 50 websites.

Verdict: Moonfruit has led the pack in offering attractively designed websites that are easy to set up. This latest incarnation is no different, and offers a collection of gorgeous templates to choose from and a good smattering of features to play around with. The site is split into two layers, so you can’t muck up the overall design by changing things on your various pages. If you find that adapting the templates is a bit tricky, there are blank ones available that let you start from scratch.

Price: From £4

Features: ★★★★★

Performance: ★★★★★

Ease of use: ★★★★

Value for money ★★★★

Overall ★★★★★

For the original Webuser page, please click here

Geeky world of IT loses its appeal as a career choice

Clare — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:55:00 +0100

The participation of women in technology appears to be falling. In the UK, women accounted for just 18 per cent of technology professionals in 2010, down from 22 per cent in 2001.

There are a host of powerful women in the top echelons of internet companies, including Carol Bartz, chief executive of Yahoo, Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook, and Marissa Mayer, vice-president of location services at Google. But they remain something of an anomaly.

Women account for just 6 per cent of the chief executives of the top 100 technology companies in the US, and just 22 per cent of the IT workforce overall, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology. None of the UK’s most prominent listed technology companies are run by a woman.

What is more, the participation of women in technology appears to be falling. In the UK, women accounted for just 18 per cent of technology professionals in 2010, down from 22 per cent in 2001.

“I am surprised that the statistics aren’t moving upwards,” says Wendy Tan White, founder and chief executive of Moonfruit, a UK-based technology start-up that provides services to small and medium-sized businesses. “If you look at Facebook, Groupon and Zynga, some of the fastest-growing technology companies at the moment, most of the customer base is female. It is one of the most fertile times for women to get involved in technology.”

Overt sexism or discrimination does not appear to be the problem. “There is nothing institutional that is stopping women. It is not misogynistic,” says Alicia Navarro, founder of Skimlinks, an online advertising technology company.

Click here to read more

Real Business: Interview with Wendy Tan White

Clare — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 15:26:00 +0100

Moonfruit's Wendy Tan White on losing it all, getting it back, and buying £795 Louboutins.

Name: Wendy Tan-White

Age: 40

Company: Website builder Moonfruit

Turnover: $6m

First job: I was sponsored by Ford during my computer science degree at Imperial College. I worked each summer at one of the Ford offices in Essex. I ended up programming assembly line control systems using green screen dumb terminals connected to their mainframes. Far cry from the mobile, social, e-commerce tools we build SMBs in today's internet, cloud server powered world!

Dream job: I did a design MA at Central Saint Martins while I was on maternity. Would love to be a set designer using smart textiles to create sensory experiences which blow your mind. ;)

Car: The joys of young kids in London. Toyota Corolla Verso (smallest of the 7 seaters!) __ Economy, business or first-class__: Premium economy. Can work comfortably but don't feel like I'm burning our hard-earned cash!

Most extravagant purchase: Beautiful, snakeskin, 5" Louboutins – £795 (technically a present from my husband!)

Most played song on your iPod: "Rolling in the deep" by Adele

Best business book: Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A Moore (an oldie but still very pertinent for marketing technology products)

Worst business moment. NASDAQ crash in 2001. Making 58 staff redundant, many friends, some family.

Proudest business moment: Raising $2.25m in September 2011 because of Moonfruit's accelerating growth with my husband, Joe White and best friend, Eirik Pettersen.

Business mentor: Richard Duvall, the launch director of Egg and co-founder of Zopa.com. (He head hunted me into Egg, supported my move into being an entrepreneur, but sadly passed away few years ago.)

Next big thing: Angel investor. Particularly supporting new businesses and women entrepreneurs in male and female teams. There has never been a better time for women led-businesses in terms of investment and understanding market opportunities. The majority of purchasers and social media users online are women.

Startup Donut: Wendy Tan White - the website pioneer

Clare — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 17:18:00 +0100

Some call her the UK’s first lady of technology. She’s also CEO and co-founder of Moonfruit, the trading name of DIY website construction tool SiteMaker, which helps those with limited knowledge to create professional-looking websites. Some 3.6m such sites have been created using Moonfruit’s software since it launched in 2000. But as Wendy Tan-White explains to Mark Williams, sometimes you’ve got to fail to succeed

Perhaps it was inevitable that Wendy Tan-White would end up working in IT. Born in Salford in 1970, her family moved to Cumbernauld in Scotland with her dad’s job when she was two. “Few people worked with computers then, dad was ahead of his time. We moved to Reading when I was nine, dad got a job with Racal, which became Vodafone. Mum did a degree and ended up working in IT, too.”

At grammar school the teachers filled pupils with self-belief, Wendy recalls. After A-levels, she did a degree in computer science at Imperial College in London. “I went from an all-girl school to a course where only seven out of 120 students were female. I was living in halls in South Kensington, it was all very new and exciting. At Imperial we were using state-of-the-art equipment ― and the internet ― it was only 1989.”

To read more of this article click here:

Start up TV: Wendy Tan White - Mother of Moonfruit

Clare — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:54:00 +0100

The story of how Wendy started Moonfruit, almost lost it in the dot.com crash and nursed it back to full financial health. You can also hear an interview with Wendy.

To read this article click here:

SKY NEWS: New Tech Bubble

Clare — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 15:22:00 +0100

Recent news of LinkedIn’s increased value to over $3bn has raised alarm bells regarding overvalued tech companies. With the likes of Groupon’s estimated worth of $15bn, there are concerns that we’re in a tech bubble all too familiar to the one a decade ago, whereby investments shoot up from non-tech savvy investors to create over-inflated valuations. Guest blogger Wendy Tan White, founder and CEO of Moonfruit.com, comments.

My view is that firstly I don’t necessarily believe LinkedIn is overvalued. They have products in the pipeline that can crystalise more value from their customer base and increase revenues.

With regards to whether we’re in a tech bubble, well a bubble starts when valuations of a business starts to diverge from the underlying true market trend. This happened in 1999 when crazy valuations were happening for companies with no revenue! It's different this time around as companies have real revenues. Groupon is only 2 years old and is already generating $1bn in revenues.

I think it's too early to confirm if there is a bubble, but there are secondary indicators that give me the impression of the early stages of one. For example, the valuations of companies at the early angel investor stages, the valuations on the secondary markets of Facebook and Twitter, and the planned IPOs of these companies, could all point to the makings of a tech bubble.

This can start to bring in investment from wider non-tech investors, and the start of a bandwagon begins. Once Facebook IPOs are announced ostensibly later next year this will fuel investment by those non-tech savvy investors previously mentioned, who will participate in less successful companies at over-inflated valuations.

People point to the Facebook IPO as being the equivalent of the Netscape float in 1995, and the peak of that bubble didn't happen until the end of 2000. We’ve learnt a lot from this cycle and the market information that wasn’t available last time. I think Facebook’s coming IPO will accelerate the cycle, and potentially bring about a peak of investment in the next 2/3 years.

We experienced the first bubble raising VC investment in 1999, and just scraped through the dotcom crash when many didn’t. This time we have real accelerating revenues and are attracting investment for the right reasons – raising $2.25m series A investment in September 2010, and funding from silicon valley-based 500Startups in March 2011. As such, small and medium businesses are paying for our simple, intuitive, design led website builder in droves.

I'm constantly watching to see what part of the cycle we're in and how that affects Moonfruit’s business. But the first priority will always be to run and accelerate a sustainable business, and think about the market valuation second.

For the original article, please click here

Moonfruit turns to Zendesk customer support system

leila — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 10:50:00 +0100

Moonfruit is the United Kingdom’s leading hosted website builder. The company makes it easy for anyone to set up business or personal websites. Moonfruit has a rapidly growing user base around the world – in fact, one-third of Moonfruit’s users are located in the United States. Customers have used Moonfruit’s design software to build more than 3 million websites.

Read the full story here - http://www.zendesk.com/customer/moonfruit

Method - Case Study on Moonfruit

leila — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 10:59:00 +0100

Method's case study on Moonfruit can be found at - http://method.com/#/home/all/detail/case_studies/moonfruit

HOW TO: Sustain Momentum After Startup Success

leila — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 10:52:00 +0100

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A young company works and works on its first (or next great) product. Blood, sweat and tears are sacrificed. When the product is finally finished, they share it with the world. And, guess what? The world loves it. Mainstream media, blogs, Facebook, Twitter — everyone is talking about this young company. “Buzz” has been created.

Read the full story here - http://mashable.com/2011/04/06/startup-momentum/

GeeknRolla: Tech start-ups reveal cost-cutting tips

leila — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:01:00 +0100

While traditional businesses around the world struggle with their bottom line, hi-tech start-ups are making use of all the latest money-saving tools at their disposal.

Read the full story here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12962023

Entrepreneur of the Year!

leila — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 15:51:00 +0000

Our Founder and CMO Wendy Tan White was nominated for the 'Entrepreneur of the Year' Award at the CWT Every Woman Technology Awards which was held in Central London today. The awards, which are in association with 'Women in Technology' are a celebration of inspirational women working within the technology industry in the UK.

Wendy was up against some tough competition from Alicia Navarro, CEO and Co-Founder of Skimlinks and Juliet Tzabar, the Managing Director at Plug-in Media.

Shortly after 3pm, we heard the good news that she'd won! So a huge congratulations to Wendy - we're all very proud!

Reuters - Moonfruit wins funding from Silicon-valley company 500 Startups

leila — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 17:03:00 +0000

Tech startup Moonfruit.com, which provides web design and building tools to small businesses consumers, is to relaunch after attracting funding from Dave McClure, of Silicon Valley-based group 500 Startups.

Read the full story - Moonfruit wins funding from Silicon-valley company 500 Startups

Shiny Shiny - First Mummy Bloggers, now Mummy Entrepreneurs

leila — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:39:00 +0000

This year sees a lot more small business starting up online and many of these new businesses are started by women.

Brit start-up Moonfruit helps small businesses and amateurs build websites. They updated their site yesterday and we interviewed their founder - Wendy Tan. What she told us about Moonfruit is interesting for anyone wanting to set up their own small website, but her observations about Moonfruit's customers paint an interesting picture of e-business in 2011.

Read the full article - First Mummy Bloggers, now Mummy Entrepreneurs: Why we all want our own websites now