Posted Under: Entrepreneurship, Interview

Ladies’ Post!! Well, if there is ladies’ night, why not a “ladies’ post” and of course the point to be noted here is I’m the only guy hanging out with the ladies in this ladies post out 😉 Jokes apart, this is a GenYers’s Post actually!! Last week, I had an opportunity to chat with Arielle Patrice Scott, Danielle Leslie and Virgilia Singh, who are the founding team behind GenJuice.  What is GenJuice, you may ask! Well, that’s what I asked them along with many other questions. So read on, here’s the talk…

1. Tell me a little about GenJuice and the founding team?

GenJuice started as the beginning of Arielle Patrice Scott’s thesis during her final undergraduate year at Berkeley. Her thesis was going to discuss Gen Y/Millennial entrepreneurship and personal branding. She began holding meetups to get anecdotal evidence for the thesis, and slowly realized there was value in bringing these young entrepreneurs together. She then asked Danielle Leslie, who was an Ad Sales Manager at RockYou at the time to help her hold the meetups. Slowly, the idea for the tour came about and Virgilia Singh, who was then a management consultant for Booz Allen, joined the team to organize the tour. After two months, all three of them quit their jobs and thesis to organize the tour and the company, GenJuice.

2. So you guys broke the 9-5 jail, i.e. left corporate jobs and started this mission/tour. What’s the burning desire or dream or big goal that you are trying to accomplish with this initiative?

The number one goal for the tour was to connect everyone we met to one other person with which they can collaborate. We were 100% successful in doing just this. We know all of our attendees personally and made an seemingly impossible effort to ensure they found other potential co-founders, inspirational partners, etc. The new goal for GenJuice is to simply become the online and offline destination for Gen Y/Millennial entrepreneurs. A place where you can find similar innovative young people and hear about their projects, a place where you can receive resources to help you build upon your ventures and more importantly, a place where you can go to get inspired.

3. What is a typical unconference like? What is it all about and who would benefit the most by attending?

We cannot describe what a typical unconference is because there are no typical unconferences. Every single event during the GenJuice Tour was different. This is because we opened every event letting our attendees know that it was up to them to make the event theirs. Unconferences are led by the attendees and our team is present to ensure attendees take advantage of the open environment.

That said, one thing that was consistent across each event was a hunger. Everyone we met during the GenJuice Tour shared a hunger and determination to do something big. Most of them did not have the community or support network to tell them they were not crazy or that they could do it. Our events provided the environment for all of the craziest ideas people hide in notebooks and on napkins to expose themselves. GenJuice events simply provide the comfortable setting any young entrepreneur needs to build upon their ideas.

4. What’s next and what should we hope to see coming out of GenJuice in future?

Well, you know our big goal is to become the online and offline destination for Gen Y entrepreneurs. We will achieve that goal by building GenJuice.com into an internationally syndicated destination with several Gen Y/Millennial entrepreneurial contributors sharing their expertise and experiences on GenJuice.com. We will achieve this by creating an international meetup series for entrepreneurs to connect within their communities called GenJuice Local. Also, we will do this by holding another GenJuice Tour and soon a 3-day conference for early stage entrepreneurs.

5. So, how can we get involved with GenJuice?

If you are a Gen Yer/Millennial interested in sharing your experiences as a regular contributor on GenJuice, make sure to visit our website at GenJuice.com to sign up to be a part of the team. While you’re there, you can sign up to get notified on 10/10/10 when we release GenJuice. Also, if you are a part of a company interested in reaching the Gen Y/Millennial demographic, we have some creative opportunities for advertisers & sponsorships. You can find out about them by signing up on GenJuice.com, as well.

Hope to see everyone on 10/10/10