May 4, 2012
How I Did It: Web Entrepreneur Makes Finding Right Products Online Easy
Asmau Ahmed is founder of Plum Perfect, a visual search engine that provides personal beauty recommendations to shoppers when they upload their photos. Ahmed was able to combine her knowledge of technology and chemistry to provide a resource she found lacking while shopping as a consumer. Noticing a void in the market, Ahmed, a native of Nigeria, used her experience as a “citizen of the world” and her educational background to give women of all ethnic groups a Web tool that makes shopping for beauty products that much easier.
Writer Lauren DeLisa Coleman talked with Ahmed on how she came up with the venture and how women in tech-based businesses can prosper.
Coleman: What advice would you have for other women of color looking to fund tech-based companies?
Ahmed: We are already used to working harder than everyone else. The same applies here. Network with other entrepreneurs and learn from their experiences. Black Founders has a great community of entrepreneurs, so start there. Build a team of doers — effort doesn’t count for anything in a startup, results do. Investors want to see results and a well rounded team they can trust to deliver. Become an expert in the non-tech aspects of your business. Nail down and validate exactly how you are going to make money. Articulate, very clearly, what your go-to-market strategy will be. It’ll change with time and experience – the savvy investors know that.