Web site offers an online forum for entrepreneurs

At 22, Sue Tremblay was running the business side of a small magazine in Chapel Hill, N.C. “I had done internships and I had my college degree,” Tremblay said. “But I didn’t know how to do things like find insurance or do a marketing plan. It was very much trial by fire.”

To help fledgling businesspeople, Tremblay and her partner, Danny Warshay, created a media company with online content aimed at helping entrepreneurs get their enterprises up and running.

The site – RoundOne.com, based in Providence – is a resource of more than 100 articles, blog entries, white papers and more written by experienced entrepreneurs who have both succeeded and failed in business. Tremblay said the ultimate goal of RoundOne is to create an online community that will allow entrepreneurs to share their experiences in business. Tremblay and Warshay, who call themselves “serial entrepreneurs,” said the venture initially began as a resource for college students interested in beginning their own business.

“They understand the technology they want to sell, but when it comes down to ways to find money to start up … there are just so many ways to get money and they need to figure out the best way to fund it,” Tremblay said.

RoundOne.com’s beta version – the one currently on the Internet – hosts 100 original articles and more than 300 categorized shortcuts to Web-based startup information. The site also includes a calendar of events recommended for first-time entrepreneurs. Users can share experiences through blogs and discussion forums.

Tremblay said in her own experience, business school was “very academic” and didn’t explore the essentials of running one’s own company.

“I didn’t know about chambers of commerce and how to reach out to them,” Tremblay said. “I didn’t know how to connect with those resources and how to reach out and network. I was a little naïve, but I know how to do that now.”

After her experience as business manager for The Sun magazine – where she helped grow paid circulation from 14,000 to 60,000 and boosted the profit margin 350 percent – Tremblay created LatinTrade.com, an online magazine. She followed that with a string of communications, sales and marketing positions.

“After all that experience, I had a passion of entrepreneurship,” Tremblay said. “There are so many people who want to do something on their own, and often they fail.” Failures arise often because while people may have a skill they do well, they’re not precisely certain how to market it through their own enterprise.

Beginning the online community with Warshay, Tremblay said, will hopefully give those entrepreneurs who might not have much business savvy a place to exchange concerns, frustrations and successes. Since the site’s launch in September, more than 1,000 users have registered.

“We had the idea for the site last fall, but spent a long time collecting content resources,” Tremblay said. Access to the site is free.

Most recently, RoundOne.com hosted a round-table conference call on the intricacies of intellectual property. Bruce Horwitz of TechRoadMap discussed the challenges of protecting IP.

“If you’re working within the confines of a multimillion-dollar company, those questions are taken care of,” Tremblay said. “But if you’re on your own, it’s something you need to learn.”

Tremblay and Warshay are working to grow the enterprise carefully. So far, they’ve spent only $2,000 and the site’s sales effort hasn’t fully launched yet.

“We want to fine-tune some things before we have more traffic,” Tremblay said. RoundOne has developed partnerships in Latin America, Israel and India.

Tremblay currently serves as president for Providence-based Creative Circle Advertising Solutions. Warshay is founder and managing director of Providence-based DEW Ventures, a platform he is using to launch and develop a variety of new, quickly growing companies.