Audio File:& Download MP3Transcript:& An Interview with Talia Mashiach CEO and Founder, Eved Date: April 23, 2012 Lucy Sanders:& & & & Hi. This is Lucy Sanders and I'm the CEO of The National Center for& Women and Information Technology or NCWIT. And with me today is& Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. Larry Nelson:& & & & Hi there. I'm really happy to be here again. This is a great& series. And the women technologists and entrepreneurs I think are& just fabulous. Lucy:& & & & & & & & & & & & We've had some great stories. And today's going to be no exception.& Today we're interviewing Talia Mashiach, the CEO and Founder of& Eved, an online meeting and event marketplace. Eved connects buyers& and suppliers -- it's all very cool -- in the meeting and event& industry through an easy-to-use online platform which I understand& was created through some years of professional services.& And then they kind of created a secret sauce and created an online& platform to help people who have events and people who supply& events. I was reading online that this can help reduce event spend& by as much as 25 percent which is something we could use at NCWIT,& I have to tell you. Larry:& & & & & & & & & & & [laughs] Yeah. Lucy:& & & & & & & & & & & & We have meetings all over the country and we're definitely going to& check Eved out.& So Talia is a recognized entrepreneur. She's been inducted into the& Chicagoland Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame as well as being named& one of the Winning Women by Ernst and Young. So we're really& excited to talk with Talia today.& Welcome, Talia. Tell us what's going on at Eved. Talia Mashiach:& & Thank you very much. I'm really excited to be here.& We've had a lot of excitement going on in the last year. As you've& mentioned, we launched our online meeting event marketplace first& in January 2012 and have continued to get great traction on it. We& measure our success based on a number of transactions. Our goal is& to move the $263 billion market that's transacting offline, online& through Eved. And we did about $7.5 million in transactions last& year... Lucy:& & & & & & & & & & & & Wow. Talia:& & & & & & & & & & & ...for the full year. And we're already at over $5.5 million for& the first three months of this year. And we're really fortunate to& do a really nice infusion of capital and get support of some really& great VC's. And so the company's on a very exciting path. And it's& very intense and fun and challenging. Lucy:& & & & & & & & & & & & Well, it sounds like great growth for a new company. Larry:& & & & & & & & & & & Boy, I'll say. Lucy:& & & & & & & & & & & & Well, you know the event business is tough business and so anything& that helps and saves money I'm sure will be quite popular. Larry:& & & & & & & & & & & Yeah. Years ago when we had a business where we did a lot of& events, I wish we had known you.& [laughing] Lucy:& & & & & & & & & & & & Absolutely.& So Talia, tell us a bit how you first got into technology and as& you look into your crystal ball, what technologies do you think& will be particularly important in the future? Talia:& & & & & & & & & & & You know I always loved business. And especially my passion is& around automating business processes.& I was exposed to technology back in 2000 when I launched a company called techcloseouts.com. And this was like way back when people& didn't really have much in websites, certainly not e-commerce. That& was all just beginning to start.& And what I did was I sold overstock computers from Dell to small& businesses. And what I was doing was I was taking those orders by& phone and then faxing the orders into the warehouse. I was moving& it around and trying to manage all the clients.& And I just thought there needed to be another way to do that that& would be so much faster. And I said, OK, why don't I bu