<font color="#696969">hosted by:</font> Cynthia Dearin

hosted by: Cynthia Dearin

My Skimlinks Journey

with Alicia Navarro, CEO and Co-Founder of Skimlinks

This week on the Business Beyond Borders podcast, I interviewed Alicia Navarro – CEO and Co-Founder of London-based Skimlinks.

Skimlinks is a content monetization platform, that helps online publishers make money and gain insights from their commerce-related content. Alicia launched her company in 2006 under a different guise – it began as a social decision-making tool, and evolved several times before it became Skimlinks.

Tune in to my interview with Alicia to find out:

Her experience moving to London as a penniless entrepreneur to work on her startup idea
How she pivoted her business three times before arriving at the idea of Skimlinks
How her product management background helped her to pitch her business idea countless times and improve it everytime she was rejected
How she managed to raise a seed round in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis
How Skimlinks now facilitates more than $1 billion in sales for its publishing clients every year
How Skimlinks leveraged its existing client based to win new clients and expand into the US
The decision-making process that Alicia used to set up an office in San Francisco and then eventually move it to New York
How Skimlinks’ company culture began organically, and the steps Alicia took to codify and embed it more deeply into the business over time

I’d describe Alicia as a super-smart, super personable, “geek girl” and born serial entrepreneur. She won a university medal in computing, but instead of becoming a corporate gun, she started her own thing …. A number of times.

She’s fast-paced, she’s flexible and she’s resilient. When things get tough Alicia takes a different direction, but she never gives up. And she doesn’t see being female as any kind of impediment to her success.

I was inspired and humbled to hear Alicia talk about building her company – starting while she was living out of a suitcase in London,and where she has taken Skimlinks from there.

There are so many relevant and pithy bits to this interview – it’s essential listening for anyone, male or female who’s on the entrepreneurial journey.