Life began unconventionally for Shaa Wasmund. As a child she led a hippy
existence in California where her mother lived on a Native American
reservation — Wasmund’s first name is Navajo for Sunshine.
Her happy childhood was shattered when her parents divorced when she was 11,
forcing her mother to return to Britain destitute. “We lived in a homeless
hostel for 18 months. It was horrible,” said Wasmund. “I remember my mum
telling me to look around the tiny room where we lived with my younger
brother, and saying, ‘It’ll never be this bad again, so don’t be afraid to
take risks when you grow up.’ I think that’s where I got my drive.”
Wasmund won a scholarship to the London School of Economics, and in her last
year there won a writing competition. Given the chance to interview whomever
she wished for a glossy women’s magazine, she chose boxer Chris Eubank.
Impressed by Wasmund’s knowledge of boxing and her media nous, Eubank asked
her to work for him. “I was hardly 21,” she said, “but I accepted his offer
and even managed to get the degree.”
Her entry into the world of boxing promotion was a crash course in business
survival skills. “My first job was to meet Chris the next morning with
sports promoter Barry Hearn and fly to Manchester where I was told I would
have to put on a big fight at Old Trafford with 48,000 people. It was
literally sink or swim."
Wasmund thrived in the boxing world and said that is where she learnt how to
deal with “eccentric alpha males”. “I also learnt some of the best business
lessons from Chris and Barry. Flying to the US to negotiate with Don King
was eye-opening. You don’t build a $700m empire like he did without having
some serious business skills.”
When Eubank retired from boxing, Wasmund accepted a job offer from
vacuum-cleaner innovator James Dyson, who she said was “an amazing mentor”.
Then, in 1999, at the height of the dotcom boom, she had a chance encounter
with pop star and businessman Bob Geldof, founder of Deckchair.com. As a
result, she joined his internet travel website.
Wasmund was keen to start her own venture, however. So a year later, using her
now well-established business contacts, she raised £6m in start-up funding,
recruited a team of 20 people and set up Mykindaplace.com, a combination of
an online teenage girls’ magazine and an early social-networking site.
By partnering with large companies, including Freeserve and BSkyB, which
provided funding and drove traffic to the site, she was able to make quick
progress. With such big backers she could also secure sponsorship deals that
made the site commercially viable in an era when many websites were not
making any money at all.
As the business grew, however, Wasmund realised she did not want to stay and
manage a concern that had achieved what she had wanted it to. “I like seeing
an opportunity and making it happen by bringing in talented people,” she
said. “I’m good at that, at building rapport with people.”
So in 2006 Wasmund sold half her share in the business, which by now was worth
£10m-£15m, to BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster 39.1% owned by News
Corporation, the parent company of The Sunday Times. She put her money into
property and semi-retired. “I travelled for a while, saw friends and then
got bored. I think that once you’re an entrepreneur it’s in your blood and
you find it hard to do nothing.”
“I went to a fight and sat next to Don King. He told me to get back into
boxing and I went to work for him for a while but it made me realise that
while boxing is a personal passion, my business passion was with the
internet.”
Biding her time, Wasmund mentored other would-be entrepreneurs and began
talking to potential backers. She spotted an opportunity to create a site
for the business community that was not being well served by government
advice services. Called Smarta.com, her latest venture is an online
community for entrepreneurs to help each other build their companies.
It grew out of her passion for talking to people and advising them. “I like
collaboration and joint ventures and I think that’s a valuable skill these
days — being able to work with other businesses to make the sum greater than
the parts.”
Wasmund advises start-ups to work hard on the relationship with their bank
manager — “more important than it has ever been” — and to manage cash flow
well or risk destroying the business. The other big lesson she has learnt
herself is the growing importance of the internet. “For many businesses it
will end up being pretty much core to everything they do,” she said.
Wasmund said luck had played a role in her success, but it was also partly
self made. “Luck has come into it, but I think luck is often simply about
seeing an opportunity and seizing it.”
