Founder of Fetch Plus: Many Women Carry the ‘Survivalist’ Mentality

In celebration of international women’s day and all things feminine, we have also decided to have a panel discussion on female entrepreneurship at the upcoming Startup Asia Singapore 2013. That’s probably, or rather, the only all-female panel that we are going to have (I sound rather bitter here), so you’d better be sure not to miss out on panelists such as BillPin’s Aileen Sim, Luxola’s Alexis Horowitz-Burdick, Quality Time Lab’s Meri Rosich, and The Athena Network’s Gina Romero.

On top of all the other awesome women mentioned, we are also honoured to have Carmen Benitez, founder and managing director at Fetch Plus joining us on the panel. For today’s post continuing our female entrepreneurship series, we’d like to give a little background on Carmen and her entrepreneurial journey. She tells us how she strikes a balance between work and family by compartmentalizing and seeking help from family and friends.

A huge fan of art, music, and reading, Carmen also looks up to to female models such as Estee Lauder and the latter’s commitment to the brand. Her advice to fellow female entrepreneurs? Read on and you’ll find out.

Tell me a little about yourself.

Carmen: I am a relentless driver and a passionate observer. While I love pushing through barriers and getting to the point, I have also learned through experience and good mentors’ actions that patience is a good benefit to one’s ultimate goals. I am totally into technology, but that’s not necessarily just cloud-based systems, applications, or gadgets. I love learning about space, fractal design, and other influences that help me piece things together.

What does your startup do, and what is your role?

Carmen: Our company, Fetch Plus, develops Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) social media marketing technology for major brand franchises, global media companies/publishers, and telcos worldwide. I serve as the founder and managing director, heading both the technology and product teams.

How and why did you get started in this industry?

Carmen: I’m a survivalist, which is something I think many women could carry and use to their benefit. I was that kid who would inadvertently raise my hand and volunteer to do or fix something when I didn’t necessarily have the “skills” to do it. That type of survival attitude started at a very young age where I was one of five kids in a household of immigrants. I was the kid who sat in the front seat of the car, learned navigation and mapping in order not to get lost; I was the kid, at age of six, was selling sno-cones (a type of shaved ice with colored fruit-flavored syrup, pictured right, from Carmen) using commercial grade dessert machines out of my parent’s garage; I was also the kid managing my mother’s accounts and sales transactions by the age of 11 for her alterations business.

In college, I remember raising my hand when I was in a work-study position for the office of the university’s president to build the staff database. After college, I moved with my then husband to a very large state school university town and felt lost. So I started working on a project called Vusion, that used mobile and photos to connect college students and offered mobile coupons to places like Starbucks for them to meet. This was early 2004. Subsequently, an incubator out of Athens sent me to Boston to meet up with some other college kids with a college network. Those college kids were the Winklevoss twins and that network was ConnectU.

Unfortunately (and fortunately), Facebook launched and I, with permission from the Winklevoss twins, went south to try to promote ConnectU to colleges not yet hit by Facebook, but the wildfire was already set. And I ran out of money. But that experience shaped me significantly as I knew then that technology was the spreader and generator of wealth.

After this, I went into marketing and kept raising my hand at my employment to fix things through technology. I then realized my commitment towards raising my hand and fixing was a great reason to move into entrepreneurship.

Why did you choose to move to Singapore? (FYI, Carmen is currently based in Singapore.)