6/28/2011
Fashionista and engineer Esther Resendiz has been taking her entrepreneurial knowledge from the University of Illinois and using it to create...
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By: Lyndsey Taylor
URBANA, Ill- (June 28, 2011) Fashionista and engineer Esther Resendiz has been taking her entrepreneurial knowledge from the University of Illinois and using it to create innovations on the web.
Resendiz, who graduated in 2010, created Fashion Latte while attending the University. The site is an online shopping experience designed for women to match styles within their budget.
Fashion Latte was created in 2008 when Resendiz participated in the iVentures10 program through Illinois VENTURES with two other university students, Bernard Ghanm and Sanketh Shetty.
Through iVentures10, she received $25,000 to start Fashion Latte.
“It was 10 weeks to go from idea to prototype,” she said. “It was intense, but it was really neat having my co-founders there. We worked all day and night for 10 weeks.”
Currently, Resendiz lives and works in Mountain View, CA. Outside of her websites, Resendiz fills her time with staying fit and even competed in the Los Angeles Marathon this year.
Now that Resendiz has relocated to California, one goal is to license Fashion Latte to another online apparel start-up.
“If I can do this correctly, then I can potentially license to other companies.” Resendiz added that she is hopeful to get acquired by one of the companies that she licenses to as well.
In addition to the fashion site, Resendiz is starting an online dating advice website, DatingSauce.com. The site has been Resendiz’s full-time project and launched earlier this month.
She hopes to divide it into two sites, one for women and one for men, to seek relationship/dating advice. Five dating coaches have already signed on for DatingSauce that will chat with daters via video chat and messaging.
Resendiz and the DatingSauce team are currently working on “getting to know their customers” by organizing meet-up dates in Mountain View.
“I wasn’t interested in entrepreneurship until I started doing Fashion Latte,” Resendiz said. Attending lectures of successful entrepreneurs and her involvement in the Technology Entrepreneur Center’s events inspired her to pursue the start-up lifestyle.
She said her “formal business training” is something she values most from TEC and the engineering programs. TEC’s Patent Clinic also allowed Resendiz to have a patent drafted for her idea of Fashion Latte free of charge.
When Resendiz won first place in the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership’s business plan competition in 2009, she said it was the “highlight of everything.”
Since then, Resendiz has been going strong in getting her start-ups off the ground. She will continue to put her efforts into making the sites successful and thanks the University for being such a great resource in helping “engineers make the leap into business.”