Editor

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Patents, Pivots, (Good) People: DNA Guide’s Evolution

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By Alice Rathjen (Founder & President, DNA Guide) My latest company DNA Guide is a physician/patient engagement tool for personal genetic data. We’ve built a full genome browser for the iPad and eventually want to offer an electronic medical record (EMR) solution that uses a person’s DNA for their user account and has a map of both their genome and their body.

Most Health 2.0 entrepreneurs have a similar story as mine. They or someone they cared about suffered from a disease and they want to change the world. We’re on a mission to create companies that force those responsible for our current health care system to change the way they do business or find themselves out of a job.

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Entrepreneurs Should Say No to Silicon Valley’s Bully

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By Vanessa Camones (Founder & Principal, theMIX agency) As the head of a public relations firm that represents tech startups, I’m well aware of the pressure that entrepreneurs face to get attention for their young companies. There’s no question the goal of hundreds, if not thousands, of startups is a profile in TechCrunch. It can make a company -- or at least that’s the commonly held view.

But it’s also a gamble that’s often not worth taking because TechCrunch founder and editor Michael Arrington has proven he’s willing to use TechCrunch as his personal vehicle for settling scores. It’s why I advise my clients to steer clear of him.

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UX Methods and Prototyping Tools to Communicate Your Startup Vision

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By Alexa Andrzejewski (Founder & CEO, Foodspotting) When people ask me for advice on how to take an idea and make it real, my number one tip is to share your idea with anyone who will listen. This was also lesson one in the Women 2.0 workshop I took when I was first considering turning Foodspotting into a startup: The value of sharing your idea far outweighs the risk that someone is just sitting around with nothing better to do than steal it!

In fact, in building Foodspotting, I've realized that taking an idea and making it concrete is the most important thing you can do as a startup founder. Can you picture that?

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Intro to Django Workshop, Hackathon (July 23 in LA)

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By Esther Nam (Co-Organizer, PyLadies) The Los Angeles PyLadies are continuing their summer series of hackathons with a Django-themed day sponsored by Mahalo, in partnership with the LA Django Meetup Group.

The Django web framework is a great way to learn Python while quickly building and deploying a simple and useful web application or two, which is why beginners are highly encouraged to attend.

Participants will begin by going through the Django Tutorial under the expert tutelage of PyLadies developers.

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Better Luck Bootstrapping with B2B Businesses

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By Carina Koo (Co-Founder, Momentus Media) Now that we’re a startup with some success, we meet a lot of people who want to learn from our story. Since we started playing with Facebook over a year ago, we’ve built Facebook apps and marketing campaigns used by millions of people. But one of the things people find most interesting is how we are bootstrapped.

The short version: We built a simple product that was meant to be sold right from the get-go.

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From Web Designer to Django Webapp Developer, Tracy Osborn Launches WeddingInviteLove

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By Tracy Osborn (Founder, WeddingType) At first, I thought my life’s path lay in programming: I was in high school, building table-based websites and deduced that if I was good at HTML, I would be good at programming. But literally the first day of my classes in computer science, I realized something was wrong; I was building programs that spit out numbers, working on algorithms, and nothing was visual: everything was text. After a year and a half of struggling to learn Java, I switched to art & design where I worked on the opposite of what I learned in computer science: everything was paint, design, sketching; and I was 10x happier than what I was. At that point I thought I wouldn’t do programming again.

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From An Idea to A Growing Startup, Cal Students Make The World Safer

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By Jennifer Toney (Founder & CEO, WeMakeItSafer) Thousands of products, accounting for hundreds-of-millions of individual items, are recalled each year for safety defects; yet, historically, only about 20% are ever returned or fixed.

Most people simply do not learn about recalls on the items they own, a problem that leads to thousands of preventable injuries and deaths.

Our mission in building WeMakeItSafer was to improve product safety. By developing new technology that would bring

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Thermometer on Startup Investment in Spain in 2011

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By Patricia Araque (Founder & President, Ellas 2.0) The document prepared by Ready4Ventures notes that only 4 of the 66 investors interviewed for the report are women, and only 4 of the 109 entrepreneurs who participated in the surveys are entrepreneurs.

These numbers make clear what we are trying to change in our work at Ellas 2.0 -- the shortage of female talent in the industry.

Other significant data is worth noting that 72% of entrepreneurs used personal savings and family support to launch their projects and 43% believe subsidies as a primary source of funding.

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A VC: Fred Wilson on Building Mobile Startups with Founder Labs

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By Ana Hevesi (Team Member, Founder Labs) Union Square Ventures partner and Founder Labs mentor Fred Wilson has worked closely with early stage companies for years. We caught up with him at his office to talk about his investment philosophy, the startup ecosystem, team dynamics and mobile startups.

Founder Labs: What do you think some of the key areas for growth are in startups generally, and in mobile?

Fred Wilson: There’s so much opportunity out there, its kind of hard to give you a couple of specific interesting categories, but in mobile, the most interesting applications on the market today are ones that can deliver an experience on a mobile device that you couldn’t have had on a desktop or laptop, whether that’s a geo-located experience, real-time, or one that takes advantage of the capabilities

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10 Highest Paying Jobs Right Out Of College

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By Lauren Mobertz (Contributing Writer, HerCampus) Graduation brings with it a few unsettling novelties and sudden expectation that we have the money to pay full price.

How can we avoid starvation after graduation while still managing to live on our own and work off our student debts?

According to CareerBliss and Payscale, there is a way to live comfortably right out of college. We report to you 10 of the highest-paying entry-level jobs for college graduates.

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Startup Lessons Learned: Seattle Startup Beer2Buds

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By Libby Tucker (Founder & CEO, Beer2Buds) “If only I could drink that!” Beer2Buds was born after my friend from Sweden sent a virtual beer in an email on a long Friday afternoon while stuck at the office. Not only was the idea of the beer great but also we were able to rediscover great memories we had made years before, while studying abroad together.

Most ideas start with a problem that you personally wish to have solved and you realize there does not exist a good way of solving it now. In this case, I wanted to solve the problem of buying a friend a beer from 4,000 miles away.

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Building HowdyHood, A Neighborhood Network

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By Nirupama Mallavarupu (Founder, HowdyHood) I have lived in seven different cities in the US, yet I never really got to know my neighbors in any of these places. Two years ago, we came back from an overseas trip, jet-lagged, to a house in a New Jersey suburb nearly destroyed by a flood due to a burst frozen pipe. Our neighbors, meanwhile, were unaware of our situation until the construction crews arrived.

This experience motivated me to change this situation. I built HowdyHood, a website to connect neighbors

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Starting A Startup From Scratch With Founder Institute

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By Andrea Lo (Founder, Piggybackr) A year ago, I was working in a corporate consulting job crunching numbers and pushing papers, struggling to find a larger sense of purpose. Today, I am busier and happier than ever, founder of my own early stage startup with the help of the Founder Institute, a part-time startup incubator.

What I learned is that there are resources and people out there interested in helping you succeed, if you take the first step. And if you don’t know where to start, consider enrolling in a startup incubator. There are full-time, part-time, specialty, and...

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The Women 2.0 Editorial Staff.