Carrie Podber is a firm believer that proper relationships are critical to succeed in business. Podber has taken that belief into a company called echain (echaincommunity.com).

Podber, who began her career in software technology back in the mid 1990s, has spent the bulk of her career involved in start-up to expansion stage companies both from an education (how to launch a company) and capital raise standpoint.

echain was originally formed as a company called eChainReaction in 2005, where Podber connected with an investor/programmer in the interest of moving her consulting business to an online environment in order to facilitate the process of introductions that would result in investment into start-up/early stage companies.

According to Podber, the investor’s interest was to provide advice and knowledge to companies regarding why they are good or bad investments and what can be improved to make it a more viable investment; or pack up and go home. "Companies tend to continue on the path and end up in more debt and eventually have to close their doors anyway," Podber said. "We intended to help shorten that road."

After building the prototype and beta test, Podber recognized that it wasn’t just about an investor writing a check but rather the relationships in place were critical in receiving that check. echain community was formed to broaden the relationships to include strategic, synergistic and revenue as these are critical factors in a company receiving a check.

"I originally targeted the baby boomer generation because my contacts were primarily in that market, they had money to pay membership fees and we kept the community very exclusive," Podber said. "The baby boomer generation is a very difficult market for the online environment. They are not adapting the concept as well as the X and Y generation and as a result, I opened up the community to everyone."

Podber said she intends for echain to be the leader and number one online business social networking community.

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