Postcards

Oprah's OWN moment: Stedman's note inspired the dream

by Patricia Sellers

Oprah Winfrey arrived on cable this weekend at long last. And I do mean long.

When I interviewed Oprah in her Chicago office a few months ago, she pulled a piece of paper out of her desk drawer. It was a note, scrawled in pencil, that Stedman Graham, her boyfriend, wrote to her when they were on vacation together in April 1992. Oprah had never shared the note with MORE

World's grandest cookbook: foiled by Amazon

by Patricia Sellers

Don't plan on buying Nathan Myhrvold's 2,400-page Modernist Cuisine for your beloved this Christmas.

The six-volume tome by Microsoft's (MSFT) former chief technology officer was due out in December and is currently listed for $451.25 on Amazon.com. But Myhrvold told me yesterday that a glitch waylaid the on-time delivery of his years-in-the-making labor of love.

Modernist Cuisine flunked Amazon's package durability tests. Not once but three times.

Most Amazon (AMZN) customers MORE

TIME's take on Powerful Women

by Patricia Sellers

This week, TIME Magazine presents the 25 Most Powerful Women of the Past Century.

Interesting that TIME, Fortune's sister magazine at Time Inc. (TWX), includes just two businesswomen on its list. Both -- Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey -- are entrepreneurs. Since her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO), is struggling these days, Martha didn't make this year's Fortune Most Powerful Women list. Oprah, whose power keeps expanding and MORE

Meet the 2010 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs

by Patricia Sellers

Entrepreneurs not only drive economic recovery but also create better ways for us to do everyday things. Howard Schultz improved the way we drink coffee. Reed Hastings enhanced our at-home movie viewing. Steve Jobs beautified computers and the ways we use them.

The 2010 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs are not necessarily building the next Starbucks (SBUX) or Netflix (NFLX) or Apple (AAPL). But who knows? Everyone can dream, and MORE

Behind the JetBlue founder's new startup

by Patricia Sellers

"Azul is JetBlue in Brazil," says David Neeleman, who may be the most ambitious entrepreneur the skies have seen since the Wright Brothers.

You know Neeleman as the guy who created JetBlue (JBLU), altered the airline industry (in a customer-centric good way), and eventually got booted by his board for lax management during an epic ice storm.

Now Neeleman is in Brazil, working Latin America's largest, hottest growth market MORE

How to build a startup: her best advice

Startup fever is in the air.

Well, it was this morning, at least, when too many people packed too small a room in Manhattan's Soho to hear women entrepreneurs and other experts talk about launching businesses.

Most at the breakfast were young (Next to me: a poised twentysomething who told me, first thing, that she works for a big health care company and "I want to quit my job.")

The best advice came MORE

Tory Burch talks about her greatest mentor

by Patricia Sellers

This year's Most Powerful Women "Evening With..." dinner in New York featured the theme "Building a Legacy" and my conversation with two women who have done exactly that:  CNN vet Christiane Amanpour and former Xerox (XRX) chairman and CEO Anne Mulcahy. Another highlight of the evening was the mentor tributes: Fortune MPWomen talked about the greatest mentor who helped lead them to success.

Fashion entrepreneur Tory Burch did one MORE

Young entrepreneurs dish advice in Silicon Valley

by Patricia Sellers

While last week I interviewed superstar women -- former Xerox (XRX) chairman and CEO Anne Mulcahy and CNN veteran Christiane Amanpour -- about what they plan to do in the second half of their lives, this week is about entrepreneurs.

I'm just back from Silicon Valley, where I moderated a panel of five twenty-somethings who founded companies that could be the real deal someday.

The session, sponsored by Intelius, was MORE

Nancy Pelosi: Health care reform equals entrepreneurship

By Stephanie N. Mehta, Executive Editor

House Speaker (and powerful woman) Nancy Pelosi told a group of media executives and editors that the recently passed health insurance reform bill will lead to new jobs by enabling would-be entrepreneurs to take professional risks such as starting their own companies.

"The entrepreneurial spirit of America is unleashed," she said, because the bill allows people to leave unsatisfying jobs they keep only for the medical MORE

Women and finance: a hot market to tap?

Venture capitalist Theresia Ranzetta, who wrote Tuesday's Guest Post about how Silicon Valley can best enable entrepreneurs, did some serious enabling herself this week.

Her firm, Accel Partners, announced a $4.5 million investment in LearnVest, a start-up aimed at women who control household purse strings but are fairly flummoxed by the challenge.

It's apparently a big market. "Seventy million 18- to 50-year-olds--women--control 80% of household financial decisions, and no one is targeting MORE