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The Women Behind Hot Silicon Valley Startups, Named by Business Insider

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By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0) Jessica Scorpio, one of the co-founders of Getaround is missing from the list of Getaround co-founders on Business Insider's "20 Hot Silicon Valley Startups You Need To Watch". Getaround lets you rent cars from each other. Follow her on Twitter at @jessicascorpio.

StyleSeat co-founder Melody McCloskey made the list as well. She says StyleSeat's market is a $40 billion beauty/booking niche where most small businesses depend on word-of-mouth referrals. StyleSeat gives beauty professionals tools to manage, build and grow their businesses.

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5 Ways to Get More Women in Venture Capital

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By Deborah A. Farrington (Founder & General Partner, StarVest Partners) The 2011 Forbes Midas List ranked the top 100 venture capitalists based on M&A and IPO exits. As one of the two women included on this year’s list, it was disappointing to see that only two had made the cut. This begs the question: Why so few women on the list, and why so few women in venture capital in general?

Why is it important for more women to enter venture capital?

The career possibilities are terrific and I believe that more women in venture capital will contribute to growing better, stronger, more sustainable companies.

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How to Build Award-Winning Apps at Hackathons

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By Bess Ho (Mobile Architect, Archimedes Ventures)  

My winning luck in hackathons has been generating interest and curiosity from my peers, so I've been asked to blog about making it at major competitions and hackathons.

I won the "Best Healthcare" award at my first iOS Dev Camp in 2009, then I won again at iPad Dev Camp in 2010. I won at Muther Hackathon a month ago before I entered iOS Dev Camp 2011. These are not the only awards I have earned in my career. I mention these competitions because these mobile events are recognized widely by a fast-growing industry with the best

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Mobile Game Compares Decisions with Famous Female Leaders’

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By Sharon Wood (Founder & CEO, Stone Creek Entertainment) I spent the first half of my career in agencies, focused on entertainment marketing and digital entertainment. Midway through my career, I fell in love with digital games -- not just for the fun games give the player, but for the immersive emotional connections and aspirations the player gets from the experiences, the decision making and the communities that games create.

Watching my teen daughter revel in games as much as the boys did, I hoped for games that she could play through her lifetime, not just while she was young.

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Damn The Metrics, Full Speed Ahead!

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By Ellen Beldner (Director of User Experience, Groupon) A/B testing is useful, important and a valuable part of the software production process. Note that I didn't say part of the "design" process.

You can use A/B testing to compare two radically different versions of an idea or to optimize within a single design. A/B testing can move the needle a bit, and it can serve as a cover-your-ass sanity check before launching something. But it alone won't get you to an entirely new zone of user adoption, happiness, or conversion rates. Unless you're a design thinker and understand why

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Defying Stereotypes: 10% Tipping Point for Women Angel Investors

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By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0) Researchers at the University of New Hampshire Center for Venture Research found that women angel investors gain strength in their numbers. They defy the stereotype of women as cautious investors -- stereotypes that are prevalent when women consist of less than 10% of an angel group.

“In the context of this research, this means that when there are few women in an angel group, the stereotype of cautious investing is accentuated. As the number of women increases, there is less of a stereotype

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Women Who Seek Capital for Their Businesses Can Save the American Economy

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By Victoria Pynchon (Co-Founder & Principal, She Negotiates) According to the Atlantic, the debt ceiling crisis isn’t even real. The authentic crisis is jobs.

According to McKinsey and Co., America needs to create 21 million jobs by 2020 and isn’t getting there fast. "According to the entrepreneurship-focused Kauffman Foundation which just released in Washington a set of proposals called "The Startup Act", all new net job creation in the US comes from young firms — which are en masse performing today far below par and could use a boost

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Mozilla Seeks Program Manager for Open Web Innovation Incubator WebFWD

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By Lukas Black (Build & Release Engineer, Mozilla) Ok, I'm a little biased -- full disclosure: I work for Mozilla. But even if I didn't, I suspect I'd be impressed with the amount of amazing innovation and hustle that Mozilla's community puts out towards making the open web more accessible to everyone.

Recent projects like Popcorn and Butter are changing the way we work with video on the web. Hackasaurus is reaching out to kids, getting them to move beyond consuming the web (read-only mode) to being able to build and design their own web experience (read/write). Addons SDK, Open Web Apps, Browser ID,

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11 Lessons Learned from Mobile TV Startup TheChanner

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By Nina Alastruey (Founder & CEO, TheChanner) It was on a trip to MipTV, a TV conference held in Cannes, while contemplating a wi-fi enabled PocketPC, when the first idea about theChanner came to me.

Mobile, Internet.. That meant to me the way for people to discover a new world of content and news wherever they come from. Mobile devices would be the centric personal device, allowing user interaction over the internet. I imagine viewers around the world meeting others, sharing their thoughts, participating, and deciding the new premium TV for the future.

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Startup Lessons Learned by Dana Kanze of Moonit

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By Dana Kanze (Co-Founder & CEO, Moonit) I've heard the (annoying) phrase time and time again, "If you knew just how hard it is to start a company, you'd never do it." True, but what's the fun in that?

A few years ago, my co-founder and I waded out of our respective mind-sucking finance jobs and into the fun and exciting world of online media when we founded our company Moonit. This is just the beginning for Moonit but light years ahead of where we were last summer, when we were taking a whack-a-mole approach to our ever-growing list of pesky "cannot be replicated" bugs.

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10 Usability Takeaways for Web Developers (Don’t Make Me Think)

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By Aihui Ong (Founding CEO & CTO, Love With Food) As a web developer, I can easily write code and whip up new features. But are they usable? Would my users understand how to use them? I’ve built features that none of my users like or use and I have to painfully demolish my code to remove them! Yes, I have separation issues! I’ve been coding less now and reading more about design and usability. I have come to realize that I can build new features but that doesn’t mean I should.

I’ve heard so much about this book “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug and indeed, he shares

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A Woman Entrepreneur’s Strategic Guide to Intellectual Property

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By Jill Hubbard Bowman (Intellectual Property Attorney, Independent) Some economists estimate that 75% of a scalable company’s value is based on its intellectual property. Without legal protection, the company’s public IP could be freely used -— even by competitors. Obviously, investors care about the scope and quality of a company’s IP protection before they invest. Consequently, intellectual property protection is the linchpin of a scalable company.

In my experience as an IP attorney, however, few entrepreneurs really understand the value of IP. Even fewer know how to use IP law strategically to protect the company’s IP assets

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You’re Invited to PyGotham in New York (September 16-17)

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By Gloria W. (Organizer, PyGotham) With 20+ years experience in embedded systems and app design and development, I am organizing a NYC-based Python conference this September 16-17.

While inviting speakers, I realized that if I truly want diversity in this conference, I need to invite speakers from many areas of tech, not just from the Python community. This has led to a really interesting line-up of invited speakers and topics, while still maintaining a Py-centric core. I invite the Women 2.0 community to attend PyGotham (September 16-17th, 2011 in New York).

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Is Your Product a Vitamin, a Painkiller or a Drug?

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By Sarah Tavel (Senior Associate, Bessemer Venture Partners) It’s become commonplace to describe products as either painkillers (“need to have”) or vitamins (“nice to have”).

Painkillers are products that address existing needs/pain points. Companies selling painkillers harvest customer demand; the prospects are already searching for someone to fix their problem and take their money.

Vitamins on the other hand don’t really address an immediately apparent need.

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The Women 2.0 Editorial Staff.