Anderson building on Maggie with Boise Entrepreneur Week award  

A startup company designed to help women advance their careers with tech sales is moving forward with its mission after tying for second place in the pitch competition during Boise Entrepreneur Week (BEW) in October. 

Jenny Anderson’s presentation on her startup firm, Maggie.io, garnered the $5,000 runner-up award. She tied with Crimson Medical, which also earned $5,000 in the BEW Pitch Competition: Two-Minute Drill Edition.

The concept behind Maggie is to develop a community of supportive women who obtain free training, mentorship and job assistance to find high-paying, hard-to-fill positions in tech sales. Anderson said women come to Maggie looking for the ability to leave low-wage, unfulfilling jobs and land lucrative, work-from-home opportunities. They may be coming from poverty situations as single moms or be in other circumstances where they’re struggling to get by. 

She knows about this firsthand, since she came from a background of poverty, and business-to-business and tech sales turned her life around. 

More than a third of single mom-led households in Idaho are living in poverty, Anderson said.  

“This is unacceptable. To me, tech is the answer, and tech sales specifically. You can get trained and be  job-ready in  six weeks, then placed with an employer in fewer than  90 days. Entry-level roles start around $45,000-60,000 base and average $72,000 with bonuses. Why wouldn’t we want Idahoans, especially moms, in those jobs? The pandemic shifted most of these roles to remote, so we no longer need to wait for those companies to come to us; we can bring the talent to them.” 

Anderson said her $5,000 winnings will help cover normal operating expenses she’s paid for herself, such as web hosting, online workspaces, marketing  and branding. She’ll also put the funds toward building an aggressive social media campaign to continue attracting women to Maggie, including videos, webinars, podcasts, blogs and content, as well as creating high-quality content for the curriculum. 

She was surprised by how her participation in BEW built momentum for her business.  

“Since the competition, I secured a partnership with a company that is also in the sales bootcamp space. I’m attracting women to Maggie and leveraging their self-led learning platform and hiring network, while also providing content, weekly live sessions, mentors, community and interview prep that helps women break into the industry with confidence,” Anderson said. 

That partnership, with sales training bootcamp firm Aspireship out of Scottsdale, Arizona, “is allowing me to go both fast and far,” she said. Corey Kossack, founder and CEO of Aspireship, provided insights into Anderson’s BEW pitch and helped her understand the business model of not charging clients or requiring an income share. 

Before that, Anderson was the sole operator of Maggie, with the idea of mentoring people and helping them navigate their job search. But, she said, it wasn’t enough, and she started building her own content and curriculum. 

“I’ve been going fast for nine months,” Anderson said, and “the next phase of Maggie will be to go far, even if it means slowing down. To do that, I’ll need to take on co-founders or funding to hire help.” 

For the short term, she’s helping to get the women in the current cohort through her program and hired. Long term, she wants to cultivate partnerships with workforce and economic-development organizations “to  bring this program to every corner of the United States, potentially expanding beyond just women, but also beyond just sales roles in tech.” 

Anderson is a Venture College Incubator participant and Boise State University student studying business administration, management and operations.  

Regarding the BEW competition, Norris Krueger, one of Anderson’s mentors, said, “You’ve got to hit the ground running, and most people have severe difficulty doing that.” Krueger is a senior subject matter expert for entrepreneurial ecosystems and learning, and a board member of VentureCapital.org. 

“You really want to start with something powerful to engage the audience,” Krueger said, “and end with something powerful that ties it all together.” 

Anderson shined on this concept and on having a handle on what it takes to go to market, Krueger said. “Some people are very passionate about their business and have a poignant story that can tug at the heartstrings,” he added. But it won’t take off until somebody who knows what they’re doing is in charge. 

“Jenny fits that bill,” Krueger said, with her strong sense of business savvy. “It’s like she was (created) in a laboratory to run this business, and to grow it.” 

Krueger indicated he was flummoxed her concept hasn’t been picked up before this. “We really, really need this, and there doesn’t seem to be a huge downside to it,” he said.

Using a horse-racing metaphor, Krueger said Maggie is run “by a great jockey, on a great horse, on the right course.” 

“(Anderson will) always be able to find clients,” Krueger said, “and think about how easy it would be to clone this around the world.” 

“I love Maggie’s concept and the story behind it,” said Tiam Rastegar, co-chair of BEW and executive director of Trailhead, which puts on BEW. “I believe that social impact- driven  businesses, like Maggie, are positioned to thrive as consumers and investors shift their preferences and behaviors.” 

More information on Maggie can be found at maggieco.io.