Alyssa Dver, 42
Founder and CEO, Wander Wear
www.wander-wear.com
Alyssa Dver had her "eureka" moment that led to a new business when she took her son and niece to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park in Boston. “What would I do if I lost these kids? How would I find them?” she wondered to herself. Not one of the hundreds of people she asked had a good answer. At first, Dver, a patent-holding entrepreneur who had already founded and sold a company called Lead Factory that built CRM software, thought the answer might be a high-tech gizmo that would help parents locate their lost children. Ultimately, she settled on a low-tech solution: a drool-proof plastic disc with space on the back to write down contact info that could be clipped to a child's clothing. She worked at night and on weekends developing more ideas and doing market research, but hesitated about committing to another startup. That's because Dver says she enjoyed her job as chief marketing officer for Sedona Corp., which had bought her company, and offered her a comfortable set-up. She was also raising kids and her husband was going back to school.
Still, Dver says she would hesitate to watch the morning news for fear she'd hear that another social entrepreneur had beaten her to market. As Dver's 40th birthday neared, she decided to take the plunge. Wander Wear, the business she runs with her husband and children in Ashland, Mass., earned $100,000 in revenues last year, and Dver predicts it will be profitable this year. Today it sells locator tags, books, T-shirts, and hats. But its main source of revenue comes from selling sponsorships to corporations for her safety-education seminars. Dver says last year she did about 100 seminars. She plans to double the number this year.
Do you miss the money?
Of course. I'm the breadwinner for the family right now, and I have a financial obligation to all of them. I hope that Wander Wear is able to replace my consulting income but meanwhile—not a panic-free moment. That's what its like to be an entrepreneur—or more what I call, a "maturepreneur." Meaning, yes, I have a mortgage to pay for now and can't live in my car anymore!"
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