On this episode I had the pleasure of speaking with Sara Margulis, co-founder and CEO of Honeyfund and the companion site Plumfund (www.honeyfund.com and www.plumfund.com). Honeyfund began when Sara and her the fiancé Josh were looking for an alternative to a gift registry for their wedding. Instead they wanted so set up a honeymoon registry where their friends and family could gift components of their awesome honeymoon.

The site worked, and then, their friends and their friends’ friends all wanted a honeymoon registry page for their weddings. Viola and startup is born. Honeyfund grew organically for a number of years and customers began using the site to fund other needs and charities. To segregate the traffic Sara and Josh launched Plumfund to help fund all of the people and things we love. Both sites were growing nicely but Sara and Josh decided to appeared on ABC’s Shark Tank and wound up receiving offers from three sharks, ultimately striking a deal with Mr. Wonderful himself, Kevin O’Leary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uelp3-lOvD4

Honeyfund is based in the Bay Area town of Sebastopol in the North Bay’s Sonoma County. It’s a beautiful area known more for vineyards and dairies but, is also home to many tech companies as well.

Sara discusses her transition from Marketing Director at a San Francisco University to tech entrepreneur. She walks us through some of the challenges she’s faced along the way and how life and business changed after their Shark Tank experience. We talk about the Shark Tank process (except for the NDA parts) as well as Sara’s take on the Bay Area way of business.

It’s a fun interview with lots of great takeaways for your business, wherever you may be.

As always, I welcome your comments and feedback. If you have questions for Sara or me please feel free to reach out and we’ll do our best to get back to you as quickly as possible.

Recorded on March 27, 2017, on SiriusXM Channel 111, Business Radio Powered by the Wharton School. Bay Area Ventures airs live on Mondays at 4:00pm Pacific Time, 7:00pm Eastern Time. For a list of upcoming and past guest information visit www.donaldlandwirth.com and click on the Show link.

#onlinemarketing #venturefinance #entrepreneurship #startup #sonomacounty #giftregistry