Mandi Leman

<p>The quintessential serial entrepreneur, Mandi demonstrated a flair for entrepreneurship very early. At the tender age of 11, she formed her first graphic design business, called Cosmic Donkey &ndash; specializing in business cards and printed flyers.</p> <p>Quite the tactile artist as well, she raised dumpster diving to an art form at age 17. She repurposed discarded furniture by repairing and hand painting them with whimsical themes and turning them into beautiful pieces of functional art for her family&rsquo;s boutique on San Antonio&rsquo;s Riverwalk, called Bizarre Bazaar. In 1994, she created a web site for Bizarre Bazaar, hard-coded in HTML, long before anyone knew what WYSIWYG was, and 14k modems were the norm.</p> <p>She attended workshops in advanced graphics and 3D animation at the International Film and Television Workshops in Rockport, Maine and the Santa Fe Workshops.</p> <p>While attending college and taking her varied design experience giant steps further, she founded the web design company xyber.com and a business-to-business e-commerce site, xybermart.com, using the retail experience she gained from Bizarre Bazaar &ndash; where she saw a niche market. With her unique ability to engage both left and right sides of her brain simultaneously, she coded a complex shopping cart system for xybermart, and established one of the first b2b web sites as a portal for wholesale businesses selling products to retailers. In 1998, it was several years ahead of its time.</p> <p>She was an interaction designer at a San Antonio fortune 100 company for four years, during which time she created award winning web site designs and online marketing campaigns for the company.</p> <p>In 2005, she established MediaRich as an online design agency and developed the unique business model of contracting with a matrixed team from a variety of online and local sources, working either on site or remotely &ndash; whichever works best for the client. That has allowed MediaRich to grow and shrink as needed, and to reach beyond geographical borders to find top-end talent.</p> <p>After years of freelancing and working remotely in a professional capacity, Mandi has become accutely aware of the challenges that freelancers and entrepreneurs face. This insight has prompted her to embark on <a href="http://www.blellow.com">Blellow.com</a>. Blellow is a social network allowing freelancers and professionals to collaborate, find work, and solve problems through a friendly, familiar micro-blog interface by answering the question: &ldquo;What are you working on?&rdquo;</p> <p><a href="http://www.blellow.com">Blellow</a> offers the ability to communicate with groups of people based on skills and interests. You can direct your posts, so you get better answers to your questions, relevant feedback when you need it, and can engage in conversations you are most interested in.</p> <p>At <a href="http://www.blellow.com">Blellow</a>, members can take advantage of the site&rsquo;s tools to further their knowledge, extend their network, and discover and develop new ideas to get things done.</p> <p>In her &ldquo;free&rdquo; time, Mandi enjoys travelling, scuba diving, camping, and chilling with her husband Michael, daughter Kaela, and their impressive menagerie of pets.</p>

About Me

• 1 Campaign From the launch to the finish line, these were the campaigns you ran to make something happen for your entrepreneurial, cause-related, or creative passions.
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• 2 Contributions Whether you contributed a little or a lot, this number signifies the times you helped support someone else’s idea, project, or goal.