http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52660-2000Aug30.html

Women's Site Disconnected
Washington Post
By Shannon Henry
Thursday, August 31, 2000; Page E01

One of Washington technology's Internet content pioneers is shutting
the doors of her company today, having run out of money and potential
buyers.

Susan Williams DeFife started WomenConnect.com, a Web site aimed at
professional women, in 1994 from the sun room of her McLean house,
where her kids would sit in the kitchen nearby and watch Mom talk to
venture capitalists and install computer after computer in the
windowed room.

DeFife eventually moved to real office space in McLean, ran a staff of
25 and raised $5.5 million from area investors including John Burton
of Updata Capital, Mid-Atlantic Venture Funds and Women's Growth
Capital Fund.

Her site offered lots of original content for women. Some of the
stories focused on why women should have a strong handshake, how
workaholics can reclaim their weekends and how to resign gracefully. A
resources section advised how to find child care, and the site held
live online chats on issues such as how to find the right career.

DeFife slowly but steadily built the business, becoming a well-known
speaker in the tech community and forming partnerships with CNNfn and
Lycos.

Then the Internet market took a nose dive in April. All of a sudden,
potential investors who once cared only about how many "eyeballs"
WomenConnect.com could draw were demanding profitability, of all
things. It didn't help that other, better-known women-only sites such
as iVillage and Oxygen.com also started to struggle.

"I was surprised how big and fast the drop was," says DeFife, 39. "On
April 14, the rules changed overnight."

DeFife says WomenConnect.com lost 90 percent of its value in a couple
of weeks.

"We tried to turn the ship," she says, by drastically cutting expenses
and laying off several workers, but it didn't save the company.

DeFife says she talked seriously to three companies over the past nine
months about selling WomenConnect, but each deal fell through. "The
likely acquirers are having their own difficulties," DeFife says.

DeFife says she can't blame the downturn in the market for all her
problems. She says she did not understand how much money she would
have to raise to expand or "scale" the company. She thinks she should
have taken in more investments when she had the chance, instead of
priding herself on how slowly she burned through money--compared with
other Internet companies.

And then there was another obvious problem: "We didn't have enough
traffic."

DeFife says her experience taught her that maybe women don't
particularly want women-only Web sites.

"Women are not going to women's sites to spend their money," she says.
And a prediction: "You're not going to see independent women sites
existing within a year."

But she does think the business-to-consumer market will make a
comeback.

Two weeks ago, DeFife realized the company wasn't going to be bought
and she'd have to let her remaining 17 employees go. The site will
remain up for another 30 days, and DeFife will try to sell the content
database and maybe even the domain name. Then the servers will be shut
down permanently.

"It's tedious," DeFife says of the unplugging process. She's not sure
yet if she'll file for bankruptcy or liquidation, having just about
$300,000 of debt outstanding.

She says she's not taking a vacation after this experience but wants
to jump back into the next thing and has no intention of leaving
Washington. "I was here when it started to percolate," she says.

So what may be the next thing for DeFife? She's not ready to say.

"I want to do the early stage again," she says. "But I want to do it
right."