Sarah Prevette is the founder of Sprouter, a collaboration tool for entrepreneurs where they can share knowledge and communicate with other entrepreneurs.
So what is so unique about it? Well it is focused towards expanding the network of entrepreneurs specifically. The primary aim is to connect with those you do not know, rather than other applications which are either socially focused or mainly about maintaining relationships with people you were already connected to.
This is not Sarah’s first start up, she also founded upinion.com, a tween pop culture community. She found it more of a struggle not having entrepreneurial peers around her and so this was the bases for Redwire which rebranded as Sprouter in 2009. It also now takes on a Twitter like format where users can only use 140 characters. Sprouter currently has over 15,000 users and is rapidly growing.
Sarah is also a bit of a philantrapist and she helps spearhead the ‘Twestival Toronto’ event every year. It is an event which brings together Twitter communities from around the as part of a fundraising initiative. Twestivals are held in many locations and Sarah’s Twestival in Toronto raised $20,000 of the $460,000 total.
Sarah’s favourite thing about being an entrepreneur ‘is the privilege of spending each moment of your life working on your passion.’
Some advice from Sarah for budding entrepreneurs, well first of all, “Just go for it”, take the leap, you have to take the risk to have a chance of making it big.
Also “you are going to fail, just know that and accept it before you start!”
You will always come across problems but learn from it and adapt, nothing goes to plan, but the quicker you adapt to change the more successful you will be and it is the same whether you are working 9 -5 or you have your own start up.
“Isolation Kills” is another piece of advice from Sarah. In other words take advice, bounce ideas, get opinions, ask questions, people are a valuable resource so use them, they want to give their opinions, you never know it might be useful!
Sarah has expanded her team to four and they will no doubt grow larger in the future as Sprouters popularity picks up more and more.
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