By Poornima Vijayashanker (Founder & CEO, BizeeBee) About a year and a half ago, I left my first startup job at Mint.com (where I was the second employee and sole femgineer) and founded my own startup -- BizeeBee. The decision to leave Mint post-acquisition was because I had seen a project through, and because I wanted to return to the startup scene. Graduating with degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering has given me an insatiable appetite for creating and innovating. I desperately wanted to return to the roots of startup where I would have the freedom to build from scratch. Coming from being an early employee at Mint and seeing how Aaron Patzer put the product and company together, I felt confident in having my own startup. Having been in the Bay Area for nearly 7 years, I had built a large support network of advisors, colleagues, and friends willing to help me out.

My vision and goal for BizeeBee last year was to start a company focused on helping small businesses and to successfully launch a prototype with paying customers. The inspiration for BizeeBee came out of practicing yoga and working with studios for nearly 7 years. Every studio I visited had the same pains, and I thought that they could easily be solved using software. I spent 5 months doing market research, paper prototyping, and talking to a a variety of small businesses before I began building the initial prototype.