High Hopes

Names and ages: Mie-Yun Lee, 31; Brenda Chin Hsu, 32

Company name and description: BuyersZone employs technical talent to develop and operate a Web site, http://www.buyerszone.com , to help busy entrepreneurs evaluate and purchase office equipment and services.

Based: Watertown, Massachusetts

Founded: 1992

Start-up costs: $20,000

1999 sales projections: $2 million

Number of employees: 15

Testing the waters:To acquire and retain the best technical expertise, BuyersZone initially hires software engineers on a consulting basis. This gives the company a chance to evaluate their technical skills and how they work with other employees before bringing them on board. "It's hard to evaluate [technical] employees by resume only," Lee says. "This way, we can work with them to see how they communicate with us."

Way to grow: With sales increasing at an ultra-fast clip of 30 percent each quarter, BuyersZone has been forced to institute many policies for managing its brisk growth. Among them: forming partnerships with such companies as Excite, Netscape and Yahoo; monthly meetings to assess operations and goals; and the development of a "great ideas" database to document employees' thoughts on new products and company operations.

What a pair: Realizing she lacked the necessary skills to grow her business, in 1996, Lee went in search of a CEO with strong sales, marketing and financial-management experience. She found it in Hsu, who now oversees BuyersZone's strategic and operational activities. "It was too big an idea for me to do on my own," admits Lee, who is now editorial director. "I needed someone with a vision that would complement mine."

Contact Sources

BabyCenter, (415) 537-0900

JetFax Inc., fax: (650) 326-6003, http://www.efax.com

Strategos,http://www. strategosnet.com

This article was originally published in the March 1999 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: High Hopes.