When Carissa Ganelli attended Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University to obtain her MBA, she recalls encountering male prejudice regarding women”™s math abilities. “None of them wanted women to be on their math teams, believing we didn”™t have what it took to solve problems and win,” she said.
In case any of those guys haven”™t kept up with the news, please note that Ganelli went on to enjoy an accomplished career as a marketing executive in the emerging e-commerce market where she applied her analytical skills to create successful digital and mobile strategies for top brands. And more recently, in a sector still dominated by males, she founded and is CEO of LightningBuy, a Bridgeport-based startup that will dramatically simplify how e-retailers sell, and consumers purchase, products via mobile devices.
It”™s been nearly three years since Ganelli decided that the next chapter in her remarkable career would be as an entrepreneur. She quit her job and labored hard to develop and test the product. In February 2012, she was ready to pursue financing by pitching the business to angel investors. Amazingly, on just the third pitch, she raised the eyebrows of some investors and a conversation began about her business model. She was not prepared to hear what came next ”” an offer of $1 million to help launch LighningBuy. It”™s a sum that exceeded what she projected to help pay start-up costs.
But after careful consideration, she turned it down. “As tempting as $1 million sounded,” Ganelli recalls, “some of the things that the investors said gave me pause, especially relating to the tremendous potential my product would have in a multibillion-dollar market. One of them said: ”˜This can be huge, have you considered going public?”™ I thought it prudent to wait and revisit financing as we were very close to getting some clients. Once that happened, the potential value of our company would be greater and would also give us leverage to secure financing at even better terms.”
Ganelli notes that saying no to the angels was the most important business decision she made. A month later, the company received a $30,000 grant from the CT Center for Advanced Technology Inc., which paid for patent, trademark and other startup costs. Then, in November, Lax.com signed on as the first client. The lacrosse e-commerce retailer used LightingBuy for daily deals it ran on Facebook. “The performance was an amazing 8 to 14 percent conversion rate, which is unheard of,” Ganelli said. Other clients followed.
Meanwhile, the company”™s application for additional funding with the Connecticut Department of Economic Development was under review. Earlier this summer, it was approved and LightningBuy received about $300,000 in grants and loans. Today, the company, which started with just Ganelli and co-founder Jeffrey Oh, who heads business development, comprises 12 employees. Recently, it was selected as a “2013 Tech Company to Watch” that will be featured with other startups at the seventh annual Connecticut Innovation Summit, Nov. 7, in Wallingford.
Ganelli was smitten early by all things digital. She served as vice president of marketing at Webloyalty, a direct-response online marketing company where she launched and ran the Official NASCAR Members Club. She was also a vice president at Digitas Modem Media and a Digital Strategist working on strategies for Guinness, Newman”™s Own and IBM, among others.
Ganelli”™s inspiration for LightningBuy sprang from her analysis of the mobile commerce market where purchases typically require consumers to have PayPal accounts and where those same purchases necessitate completing several pages and multiple clicks to facilitate the buy. Her vision for a streamlined process resulted in LightningBuy”™s “Single Click Mobile Checkout” that gets e-commerce retailers selling on mobile devices without a mobile site or an app. They can sell directly from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Search or any ad unit with just one line of code. There”™s no development work for them to do. And consumers don”™t need to create an account, register in advance or download an app to purchase via credit card.
Gannelli”™s tech development team initially raised objections to creating a browser-based product, but Ganelli, first and foremost a problem solver, did not take no for an answer. She attributes tenacity as key to her success, which she learned from her Sicilian ancestry. “My parents came from nothing and achieved great success,” she said. “My father put himself through medical college and became a surgeon and my mother was a teacher and then a chiropractor.”
Going to Bryn Mawr College “was incredibly beneficial to my personal development. The 100 percent total woman”™s environment showed me that nothing could stop me from becoming a high achiever as a woman.”
Her brush with male stereotyping of women at Kellogg was amusing at best. Then, now and looking ahead, loftier goals have guided her. She points out that by 2017 mobile commerce will represent about 25 percent of a $100 billion-plus U.S. e-commerce market.
Ganelli has done the math.
