Idea Lab

As Thanksgiving approaches, we wanted to take this opportunity to reflect on the past few months and offer a few words of thanks.

This past August, after winning the MTV-Knight Foundation Young Creators Award, appearing in Entrepreneur Magazine, and participating in the summer-long DreamIT Ventures incubator program, Beanstockd relocated to New York City. Since the move to the Big Apple, we brought on 5 new staff members including three interns, a PR Director and an SEO Website Marketing director. These are some of the most hard-working staffers we've ever had, and it's been great having so much fresh energy on the project. We've also recruited a wonderful new NYC-based writer who will be heading up our music event coverage and artist interviews.

This October marked our first return to Harvard, where Beanstockd was born, for the Harvard Undergraduate Women in Business Conference where Sandra and I were invited to speak on behalf of Beanstockd. It was a wonderful experience meeting aspiring young entrepreneurs and speaking with them about the process of building our organization. As an added perk, while we were there we met Bobbi Brown! Look for an upcoming feature on green initiatives at Bobbi Brown Cosmetics.

This month, as you may have read, Beanstockd was named one of 35 finalists for the 2009 WeMedia Game Changers awards. Other finalists include Twitter, Digg, NPR, BlogHer and The Huffington Post, and we are flattered to be in such great company. They included a nice little write-up on us as well. Please vote while you're there - it takes under 5 seconds, and one award will be decided by community choice!

Finally, as we reflect on the past few months, we must say thanks again to all our mentors, advisors, and supporters that have helped make Beanstockd so successful over the past (almost) year and a half. In particular, everyone at DreamIt Ventures, our mentor from The Musser Group, our two amazing lawyers at Ballard Spahr, Paul Bottino at Harvard TECH, everyone at the Harvard Green Initiative, and of course, The Knight Foundation, just to name a few.

And with that, the Beanstockd Team wishes everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!