the biggest threat is its own patent. plus, entrepreneur of the year jessica heron celebrating her second success, stella and dot. and tracking disease through tweets. all that and reporters seidel of national public radio and sarah lacey of tech crunch this week on "press here." >> good morning, everyone. my first guest sold her first

company at age 25 for $90 million. and then she really got her act together. her second company a named after her grandmother is much bigger though in many ways far more simple. >> stella and dot is like mary kay or tupperware. stylists sell jewelry out of their own homes or at parties. its founder, jessica heron, said the company's purpose is to give women freedom to work part-time. a nice side benefit is the company is practically printing money. >> and the award goes to -- jessica heron, stella&dot. >> ernst & young named her one of the entrepreneurs of the year, one of the most prestigious awards in business. >> this award goes to the 20,000

entrepreneurs. >> jessica, ceo of stella&dot recently sank $37 million in the company, 10%. easy math that makes the company worth $370 million. joined by lois and sarah lacey of tech crunch. so, first company 90 million. second company worth 370 million. two for two, have you ever failed? >> well, i think that any success is actually just a stream of failures strung together and you just keep going. >> what sold for $90 million. >> a company i co-founded out of business school. it was sold to the knot. >> the one you sold out of business school. >> well, i founded it out of business school. >> oh, well, that's different. >> years later. years later. that's right. >> it's an honest question in silicon valley, in the value of failure, not that i'm wishing you any failures, two for two.

they're just out of the ballpark. >> i look at it a little bit differently. none of any businesses are incarnation in the beginning. there were lots of maneuvering with the idea and evolving it and testing it and trying it again. this company is the result of so many learnings you could call failures. >> i'm curious, i was talking to you start up recently, starting to do quite well. they're in a business having to do with material. it's geared toward a woman clientele. they were saying investors often are not like the kind of -- >> they don't understand it. >> because it's mostly men. when you started this company did you feel investors didn't get it because it's for women. >> it's very interesting. when i co-founded weddingchannel.com that's when e-commerce was taking off. at that time i partnered with

venture capitalists. when i went to do this one i went back to doug and i said, here's the thing. i'm going to transform home-based opportunities for women. we're going to start with accessories and it's going to be huge. i'm pacing it around -- i was pregnant at the time. i looked like you. so going into venture capitalists in a business they don't understand, being a women, in her baby-making years, luckily he believed me enough to say you're in, i'm in. >> i would love to follow up on that. this is a huge controversy we write a lot about. women who come out of the woodwork, the men tell them, look, we're not going to find you. you're pregnant, no. and i've been of the belief there's not some conspiracy of men keeping women out of being entrepreneurs. i would love to hear your view of someone who has been successful, pregnant, building women-themed businesses, who is now out trying to be a man. >> before you start that, who

also had made $90 million. >> right. >> off her last venture. >> off a women-themed business. >> i have always seem my gender as a nonissue. if anything you stand out. it has changed a lot. i have seen a lot more women started there are today than there were a decade ago when i started my last business. >> but there are actual stats. >> if it's not this conspiracy keeping women down, you know. >> i know exactly what it is. a lot of it was my motivation to start stella&dot as an alternative for women. when we were doing wedding channel we had the luck of being on oprah.

all these women said i want to be an entrepreneur. i want to do when you do. and i thought, no you don't. the reality is sometimes the american dream is sometimes the american nightmare. most people don't want to risk a ton of capital, work 90 hours a week, especially not when i wanted to start a family. so there's that real struggle with balancing do i want to be an entrepreneur, or go the route of balance. so with the motivation, what would be the solution for the modern woman? it escalates your commitment to being a very full-time endeavor. or how do you go do everything, product design, marketing, distribution. can you give a better platform where they can be an entrepreneur. women still do the majority in the household. >> right. >> and as long as that's the case it's going to be hard for women to have equal responsibilities at work if they're not equally splitting the responsibilities at home. so those two are closely

connected. >> yeah. i'm curious with regard to that, what is it like? the women who work for you what is the experience like for them? how many hours do they spend? what does it pay? >> it's widely variable. when they're going through lots of changes and life stages. so women that are stylists, we have lawyers, daughters, women in college, 60% doing it on top of another full-time job or outside the home. and we have people who earn $300 a month or $400,000 a year. the beauty is rather than being on a corporate track where, you know, you have to have a certain expectation, you can do this at your own pace. so you might say, okay, i'm going to pull back a little bit and put the foot on the gas and still be tracking towards a really great future. >> there are all kinds of different direct sales ideas. what makes yours worth so much

money? there are probably other jewelry companies and candle companies. what made yours successful? >> i think it is not a direct sales company. rereinvented the model. i'll tell you what that means. the combination of in-home trunk shows, which is similar to what other people do. but making that a more efficient and faster growing model by making it multichannel. so our stylists have fully blown e-commerce sites. and social media so they can grow their business faster than has ever been done before. and design is the difference. it's working because the stylists are making money because the customers love our product. we have taken a front end to back end approach.

a woman deserves a great business. the product has to be irresistible. >> we were talking about failures. you must have along the way come through a long period to figure out what worked. >> yes. what's comical is i started doing everything out of my living room. i made the jewelry and it was so not as cute as it is today. i was able to partner with the great design team. as we have grown we have been able to hire and attract the best of the best. and, you know, they love working at stella&dot. we take all three of those things very seriously and staff accordingly. >> you did jewelry design too? >> blight did. she's the design side. >> did you feel like there was stigma you had to overcome? >> my mom has a friend who sold

tupperware and every christmas all you got is tupperware. i hope she doesn't watch the show or we'll never get any more tupperware ever. >> i was equipsed there had to be a better way. so it took me two years that we could fundamentally change consumer's vision and impression what a home-based business platform was. what's icky is high pressure sales tactics and ho-hum product that doesn't offer a great value. but you say, wait a minute, personal service, what's wrong with that. if you take it and you combine what's good about it and then surround it with best in class delivery, packaging, e-commerce there's nothing icky about it. >> we have about a minute left. your metrics are insane. what worries you? when you walk into the office and say that's a sign we're growing awfully fast

and we need to throttle that back or we're not going to have that personal connection with all of those women who are selling for us? >> we're focused on the mission. we're not in it to make this year's numbers. we're here to be a billion dollar -- multibillion dollar global brand that changes the lives of women around the world. we have patients for that. we will only grow as much as we can delight our customer with every order. i also realize we have to hire ahead of the curve and act like the company we want to be in two years. so that means hiring the right people, planning for capacity, growing customer service ahead of it, just making the right decisions. >> ceo of stella&dot. thank you for being with us this morning. >> thank you. >> this show is all about opportunity and entrepreneurship. all of it threatened by the very patent system designed to protect them. look, every day we're using more and more energy.

the world needs more energy. where's it going to come from? ♪ that's why right here, in australia, chevron is building one of the biggest natural gas projects in the world. enough power for a city the size of singapore for 50 years. what's it going to do to the planet? natural gas is the cleanest conventional fuel there is. we've got to be smart about this. it's a smart way to go. ♪

welcome back. recently the radio program "this american life" spent an hour looking at silicon valley patents and it sounds boring but it's not. it can create jobs and you will be sued. almost right away by someone you have never heard of over a patent that could describe almost anything. you might be sued, for instance, by oasis research. here's a short clip as the reporters for this american life go to the offices of oasis research. >> he led us into a narrow corridor lined with name plates. >> suite 190, oasis research, llc. >> not a holiday. but the door was locked. through the crack underneath you could see there were no lights on inside. >> does it have any employees that you know about? >> not that i know of.

>> if you don't mind, i'm going to knock on the door and see if there's anyone here today. >> i know this is a cliche but we have come a long way. >> laura seidel created the hour-long report. it was disheartening. to hear that nonexistence shell companies are going to shut down by start-up just -- that's not silicon valley. >> no. you know, you would think sit not silicon valley. and i have to say we started out on this. we really knew nothing about it. other than i had heard a term patent troll. oasis research don't make anything. we never found anyone to talk to. we found their lawyer who wouldn't tell us who owned the company.

so this is a company suing people with a patent that we went to the patent office and discovered it was a vague patent that had to do with cloud computing. and it was now being used to sue at&t, godaddy, all these companies. all of them just settled because to go to court is expensive. it's $2 million to $5 million in one of these patent suits. >> that's the thing. it's not just oasis research. it is a tiny speck of sand. there are thousands of researchers out there with empty offices. >> there are. >> and it is also not only at&t or godaddy is dealing with. any entrepreneur you talk to you get to a certain point and this is an automatic thing you get. >> like that suit the other day. >> i saw that. >> and there's so many we don't hear about. you talk to any entrepreneur in the valley and you hit a certain point of getting funding and it's like having the power guy

come. it is a fee you have to pay to be a start-up in silicone value. >> it is a company former cto of microsoft. they have 35,000 patents. he went around saying we're here to protect you from these lawsuits. >> join my patent co-op and you won't have anybody suing you. >> exactly. but here's the thing. you know, we had somebody in the piece, chris saka, a well-known investor compare the business model to another well-known business, the mafia. >> i say, listen, it would be a shame to something that happened to your little start-up. you send me a check and that won't happen. and then if you don't -- >> let's give them the benefit of the doubt. it is actually somewhat of a mystery to me. what his intentions were with

the business and what really goes on with the business. there are clearly these pieces. how they are causing bad ripple effects. do you think they have gotten trapped in something? do you think they started out gentlemen lit matly wanting to solve these. let's help the investors. but let's also help it from keeping litigation. as you point out, they're a venture backed company. their idea -- >> let's look at it this way. all right. i will give them the benefit of the doubt. they started out wanting to help inventors. but ultimately they got $5 billion worth of investment from people who expect a high return. and to make that back. thus far they have made $2 billion. to make that back there's really no way to go forward without

getting everybody to sign up. if people don't sign up you have to say you need to sign up. >> or there's going to be a penalty. within the piece, oasis research, here's the hook. was a patent formerly owned by intellectual ventures. they have a back end deal and they're making money. we're not telling oasis research what to do. but, you know, i said, come on, you must know they're probably going to sue people. >> for the viewer that got a little lost. >> i'm sorry. >> big company full of patents sells it to no employee company nobody can figure out who it owns. little tiny company sues all of these people and the big company says i don't know what's going on. as it turns out there is a financial relationship there. >> correct. >> if oasis research gets money some of it gets filtered back up again. >> you have to wonder. maybe they started out thinking this is a great way to -- there's this myth we have in

america which intrigued me about the loan inventor, the genius going back to one of our founders ben franklin with the kite discovering electricity. it's in the constitution. and i believe patents and intellectual property are important. i was in no way in this piece trying to knock that. sometimes he's not a great business person but he has a great idea. shouldn't he be rewarded? we want to reward that person. that was the idea he started out with. you have to have an office that grants patents, good, valid patents particularly in the realm of software. a lot of those patents really are vague and easily used to sue people. >> some of the software engineers who received the patents as part of their company participation, look at the patents and say i guess that's what my software does. i don't even know if this patent

makes sense. the guy who wrote the software. >> what's scary about it is it's not just a matter of these companies. the software companies, web companies are the biggest amount of jobs. >> correct. >> right now in the country. this is sort of where america is still incredibly. >> we have about 45 seconds. what do we do? >> a lot of people have asked that and i think it's a question of whether or not congress would act. there is a patent reform act in congress but a lot of people say, as far as i can tell it doesn't really address this problem. some say maybe the courts. we need to get rid of software patents completely. >> software patents are relatively new. >> yes. they came into being in the mid to late 90s. the courts basically said you've got to do this. >> laura seidel's report on american life at cc1: thisamericanlife.org. >> thank you so much. up next on "press here" you are what you tweet. using twitter to track the

nation' health. cc1:cc1:cc1: cc1::

welcome back. researchers at johns cop minutes university to see if twitter could be used to measur: the nation's health. computers would look for words like flu in order to track the spread of influenza and even determine if people got the properly treatment. michael paul is one of the scientists working on the research. he's halfway to his ph.d. in computer science at johns hopkins. undergrad at one of the best computer science school, university of illinois, champagne/urba champagne/urbana. you looked to twitter to see who had the flu. >> that's basically the idea. people are sharing all sorts of on gs about their livescc1: twitter.

boring, mundane details about their everyday lives, including their health. so, for example, you have a sore throat and you stayed home from work. you want your boss to know you're not lying, so you tweet about it. >> or you're just covering your track. >> or you have a hangover and you say you have a sore throat. influenza.k for flu, cc1: what other words would i expect you would not look for? >> allergies is another obvious candidate. obesity, high blood pressure. people tweet that they're having trouble falling asleep. so we label that as insomnia. getting information that's actually useful from what people are tweeting? >> yeah, actually. we want to see if what we're reading from twitter matches the real world if we can get information that's useful to people, right?cc1: so we looked at government statistics, what the rate of the flu and our statistics on

match. :to see ifcc >> and? actually match really well. >> no more or less healthy than average people. can you1: tease? geographically you can follow what happens as far as certain people go? allergies. different. there are different allergy seasons and they start different times of the year but also different parts of the country. by u.s. down the tweetscc1: state and looked at the allergies, the rate of allergie: in different states. so february it's still winter in the north so there's little activity. but in the south you can see there's some spikes. and of course come april everyone is suffering. it moved out west and northeast. google did1: something similar, right? >> google has a flutrends. they search for medicine, flu

treatments. so google does something similar. they can plot the rate of flu over time that core lates with government statistics. >> and in real-time. >> google is real-time too, i guess. i guess the key difference in google or any search engine you type a word into a box. on twitter people tell stories about their lives.cc1: >> i don't need to search for -- to me it's not -- >> you're looking for information on google. on twitter, you're sharing information. >> how representative, though, is twitter of the general population? you know, i think when you really look at it, i looked at some figures.

there's 66 million active users. they will skew young. how do you factor that in? >> you know, that's a really important question. that's a challenge. we want this to be as representative as possible. and that's really hard to get on the internet. so twitter is pretty good because there are so many users. the popularity is increasing. it used to be dominated by young actually that'scc1: changing. but certainly it is biased. people are actually the healthiest and maybe less interesting from a health researcher's perspective. but it's hard to get around that fact. >> how many years until this -- about 30 seconds left -- until this is useful in the medical field? or will it be useful? >> i think it will be useful. in 20 years there will be so much data out there. we have been talking to public health researchers and they're very excited about this.

there's actually a lot of interest in this and we can keep going. >> michael paul from johns h hopkins university. cc1:cc1:cc1::

your homework this week, listen to this american life on itunes or thisamericanlife.org. you can find it on our website. thank you for making this part of your sunday. xxx. cc1:cc1:cc1: