Audio File:& Download MP3Transcript:& An Interview with Genevieve Thiers Founder, ContactKarma and SitterCity.com Date: May 7, 2012 [intro music] Lucy Sanders:& & & & Hi, this is Lucy Sanders, the CEO of NCWIT, the National Center for& Women in Information Technology. This is another in our series of& interviews with women who have started tech companies and we've got& a great serial entrepreneur to talk to you today.& With me is Larry Nelson W3W3.com. Hi, Larry. Larry Nelson:& & & & It's a pleasure to be here and I'm looking forward to this very,& very much. Lucy:& & & & & & & & & & & & Well, we've got with us today Genevieve Thiers who is a serial& entrepreneur in many spaces. In preparing for this interview, I& learned quite a bit about a couple of marketplaces. For example,& the need for childcare services. It's an 18 billion dollar market& and projected to grow 39 billion by 2015.& Genevieve, who was the founder of Sitter City recognized the& importance of this marketplace and perhaps she will tell us more& about it in this interview when she really set out to tap into it.& Long story short, Sitter City, very successful. She has moved on to& start another company called Contact Karma, which is really a B to& B, business to business matchmaker of sorts, which really uses a& combination of deals and recommendations and trusted contacts to& match business users with service providers. Genevieve has been& recognized nationally.& We are very happy to have you here today, Genevieve, to be talking& to us. Welcome. Genevieve Thiers: Well, thanks for having me. Lucy:& & & & & & & & & & & & So why don't you tell us just a little bit about what's going on at& Contact Karma and if you want to throw any other stories about& Sitter City, we'd love to hear them, too. Genevieve: & & Sure. Well, one of the great things going on right now is that& Chicago is undergoing a tech renaissance really. It's very& exciting. I don't know if you guys have been keeping tabs on& Chicago's tech entrepreneur scene but we have a number of groups& here who have been very staunch advocates of the space.& Particularly the CEC.& It's just been really exciting. They've recently launched this& wonderful new co-working space in Chicago called 1871. It's& something like 300, 400 companies all in one spot. All tech& companies, all in that early disruptive phase. So as you can& imagine I'm in heaven.& & I actually have a couple of things I'm co-founding right now,& mostly with new, emergent women entrepreneurs. So, it's been a real& unique thing to springboard into from my Sitter City experience. Lucy:& & & & & & & & & & & & We've heard Chicago is quite the hotbed and we have had several& interviews now with women tech entrepreneurs from Chicago.& Genevieve, can you tell us a little bit about how you first got& into technology. You are a serial entrepreneur. It sounds like& that's continuing. How did you first get interested and what do you& think are the particularly interesting technologies today? Genevieve:& & & & & & & Well, frankly, how I got involved in technology is a pretty funny& story. It was a complete and total accident. I was an English and& Music major in college and trained primarily most of my life in& opera since the age of 11. I'm primarily a performer which is very& interesting.& I fell into tech. I was sitting in my college dorm room my senior& year of college in the year 2000. I remember I saw this nine months& pregnant mother climbing up 200 steps, posting fliers for& babysitters. It was too early for me to go to opera school, my& voice wasn't quite ready. Your voice usually matures around the age& of 30 and I was in my early 20's.& I thought, "Oh gosh, here is something else I could do. I could& create a solution to this problem. Why isn't someone taking all the& caregivers in the city or the nation and put