Monday, November 15, 2010

Stacey Borden and Meghan Muntean, who earlier this year launched ChickRx, a witty health website for 20-something women, were honored with J-Lab’s New Media Women Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

In addition to their $10,000 start-up award, Borden and Muntean, both invested personal savings into ChickRx to get the project off the ground. They began laying the groundwork for the company while Borden was an MBA student at Harvard Business School and Muntean was an Assistant Vice President at a Wall Street investment bank. Now supported with $400,000 from an angel investor, the website provides well-researched health news to women in a humorous, relatable way.

Read the press release.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

San Francisco, CA—ChickRx.com, a witty health website for 20-something women, launched in beta today. Distinct in its humorous and relatable tone, the site serves as both a trusted source of expert information and a tongue-in-cheek form of daily entertainment. ChickRx plans to roll out interactive tools and community features after its launch.

Co-founders Stacey Borden and Meghan Muntean, both 26, felt a need for a health website specifically targeting their demographic and identified a void in the market. “The idea for ChickRx came from personal experience,” Borden, CEO, said. “We were frustrated that while there were comprehensive health sites for women of all ages, there was nothing that specifically catered to and understood us—20-something women off on our own, full of health-related concerns and curiosities.” Addressing this void, ChickRx delivers information with a “we get it because we’ve been there” tone, not a mother-knows-best attitude or boring textbook approach. For example, internist Dr. Andrea Ruman describes the telltale symptoms and treatments for irritable bowel syndrome in an “Ask Rxperts” Q&A piece titled “IBS: It Beats Syphilis.”

ChickRx is a DailyCandy-meets-WebMD type of resource addressing health issues that are increasingly discussed among young adult women. The site features expert Q&A, up-to-date news, product picks and celebrity tidbits across the following categories: sex & gynecology, fitness & nutrition, emotional health & relationships, dermatology, and general health.

Borden and Muntean both invested their personal savings in ChickRx. They began laying the groundwork for the company while Borden was an MBA student at Harvard Business School and Muntean was an Assistant Vice President at a Wall Street investment bank. The concept quickly gained traction, winning the 2009 J-Lab New Media Women Entrepreneurs award, out of 435 national entries.

Supported by an angel investor, the ChickRx team consists of the co-founders, health experts, savvy comedic writers and interns at Harvard and Stanford. Borden received her BA from Harvard College and MBA from Harvard Business School; Muntean received her BA from Princeton University.

“I left a stable, lucrative job because I believe in the very real need for ChickRx,” said Muntean, President. “We have zero doubt young adult women need better health information than they’re currently getting. Aside from delivering important info, we want to show our peers that they aren’t alone in their health concerns, and make them laugh at the same time. Who says an expert health site has to be boring?”

ChickRx advisors include Chris Schroeder  (CEO, HealthCentral), Trip Adler and Tikhon Bernstam (Co-Founders, Scribd), Janet Hanson  (Founder, 85 Broads global women’s network), and Susan Kare  (Principal, Susan Kare Design; former Creative Director, Apple). ChickRx is a cutting-edge health website for young adult women that presents reliable expert information with witty, relatable humor. Visit us at: www.ChickRx.com  for more information.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

We’re thrilled to announce that we recently completed our seed round of financing. Getting this funding involved developing a detailed business plan and pitching the company to investors. In addition to describing our mission and product, it was important that the business plan include a detailed budget for the year, five years of revenue and expense projections and details about our founding team and the types of individuals we’ll need to hire. We ultimately received multiple offers from angel investors.

This funding will primarily enable us to grow our team and to further develop our product to make it more social and interactive. Once the beta site is up very soon, we will eagerly solicit user feedback so we can invest our funds to build out exactly what our readers want. We are now both working on ChickRx full time and can’t wait to see what everyone thinks!

Sunday, May 30, 2010

We’re very excited to launch our beta site soon. We’re currently doing final edits on our content and tweaking the UI. We are also pleased to announce that our business plan made the semi finals in the Harvard Business School business plan contest.

We’ve had the pleasure of working with talented and patient professionals, such as our graphic artist, developer and lawyer. In working with them, we’ve realized how much launching a startup is actually like caring for your health. When you go to the doctor, they know how to treat what’s wrong (hopefully!) and what to look out for. But unless they have all the time in the world to devote to you, there may be some issues to which they just don’t pay much attention. It’s up to you to take ownership over your health and be on top of everything you need to ask or tell your doctor.

Similarly, we’ve discovered how much work on our end actually goes into working with freelancers and outside vendors. It’s up to you to take ownership over your product, make sure you ask all the right questions and get into the weeds to thoroughly review their work and suggest changes. If you care, you can’t just pass off the work and expect everything to be right - you really have to dig into the details.

We never expected launching a website to be a mini education in web design, programming, and law, but we’re proud of all the energy we’ve poured into our passion and grateful for what we’ve learned. We know we’ve barely scratched the surface and are excited to keep learning more.

Monday, April 05, 2010

Recently a lot of friends have been asking us about business plans.  We just finished ours and thought we’d share some tips.

1. Find a template - there are some good, industry-specific ones on bplan.com.
2. Your team - why are you the right people to pull this off? also, it’s okay if you don’t have all the people you need - just be clear about the hires you still need to make. Think about the timelines of who you’ll need when and communicate this via your financial projections too
3. Financial projections - find some comps so your assumptions will be as educated/justifiable as possible. As you’re putting them together figure out which line items really move the needle. Revisit your monetization strategy and really think hard about this
4. Risks - don’t turn a blind eye to what your risks are (i.e. low barriers to entry?). Address them and discuss how you’ll deal with them

Turning away from execution to write your plan can seem like a distraction, but we found it to be an extremely valuable opportunity to really clarify what we would offer and how we’d grow a successful business.

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

On Twitter of course! Here are the people we think entrepreneurs must follow:

Venture Hacks: http://twitter.com/venturehacks
NYC Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson: http://twitter.com/fredwilson
Entrepreneur and Investor Chris Dixon: http://twitter.com/cdixon
HBS Prof Noam Wasserman: http://twitter.com/noamwass
HBS Prof Tom Eisenmann: http://twitter.com/teisenmann
Stanford Prof Tina Seelig: http://twitter.com/TSeelig

Almost all of them have blogs as well, but we like to go on Twitter and get a little celeb gossip mixed into our stream of professional advice too. We hope you find their insights helpful.

Monday, February 01, 2010

As co-founders of a site about young women’s health, we have a lot to choose from. But our favorite dirty word is…. networking.

Sometimes the N word gets a bad rap, but networking isn’t just about schmoozing and BS. When you meet someone important, figure out a sincere question with which you can follow up. If you’re wracking your brain for too long, don’t waste that person’s time.

But just as important to networking is the seemingly non-important people. Some of our best milestones have materialized because of friends our age.

We’ve kept in touch with a friend who worked at 85broads.com back when we were interns. She’s the one who told us about the New Media Women competition!

A close friend is a creative writer who put us in touch with her literary agent. ChickRx coming to Barnes & Noble and the Kindle soon! (Not really, but one day we’ll be able to say that.)

Lunch to Launch, an NYC networking group for female entrepreneurs, led us to an amazing web designer.

A friend from an undergraduate club invited us to speak at NY Social Media Week.

Starting a new venture can monopolize your attention. But don’t forget to keep in good touch with your friends and keep expanding your social circle. It’ll keep you happy and sane, and maybe even help advance your business.