Living Entrepreneurship Blog / Babson Entrepreneurs

Accelerator Adviser Profile Part III: Cindy Klein Marmer

We are featuring profiles of our Butler Venture Accelerator advisers. Check back for updates!

“Entrepreneurship is the act of seeing something that can be made better, and making the world a better place by resolving the problem” Cindy Klein Marmer manages the Butler Venture Accelerator program. As part of the founding group, the Accelerator is like a start-up company for her. When people hand in an assessment surveys or applications, Klein Marmer is usually the one who reviews the documents and places participants in different business stages. Klein Marmer runs weekly group explore sessions which consists of small number of entrepreneurs. Through these meetings, she helps entrepreneurs get into action and helps make their ideas become something more tangible.

Klein Marmer can be described in three words: outgoing, dedicated and passionate. She loves helping and encouraging students with their business ideas. Klein Marmer is an alum of the Babson two year MBA program. During the second year for her, she found her business partner and they both became members of the hatchery and recipients of the seed fund. Klein Marmer and her partner started a loyalty program for restaurant and hospitality. The company was called AdvantageNet. At the time, there were no gift cards for restaurants and all the certificates were made out of paper. Klein Marmer and her partner connected with restaurants in the Boston area and became very knowledgeable about point of sales systems. Through networking and conferences, they were able to learn about Del Carnegie sales course which led to an opportunity to pitch in front of Ben and Jerry’s, Dunkin Donuts and other large companies. They shared their ideas and how they can bring positive impact to these restaurant chains. “Ultimately, we ended up at a place where we did not expect but this was where our market was leading us to.” Sometimes things may not work out the way that we want, but in the end it does work out somehow. Currently, the company is dissolved but for couple years, Klein Marmer did keep the name of the company and ran the company as a career consulting company.

Cindy says that everyone has the potential to become an entrepreneur but the problem is that people are not brave enough. People need to go out there to meet with more people, talk with the people, and find what they are passionate about. They can’t just build things in their imagination. People need to take their action.