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.
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