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Yoxi, A Competition Platform for Social Innovation

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By Sharon Chang (Founder, Yoxi) What if changing the world could be fun? What if competitions inspired by the style of “American Idol” could yield life-changing results? What if “social entrepreneurship” wasn’t just a “profession” for a select group of people, but also a creative endeavor for everyone to embark on so they may turn ideas into action and inspire others?

Innovate for Good, Starting with Reinventing Fast Food Yoxi is a creative competition platform to discover rockstars of social innovation. During the summer of 2010, I began building this vision with a small team of passionate creative-thinkers who believed in media’s power to shape social change. We introduced Yoxi last fall with our beta competition: Reinvent Fast Food.

In this competition, 10 teams battled in a 6-week long elimination challenge through 3 rounds of video-making. The winning team garnered seed funding, industry connections for mentorship, and a loyal fan base. Currently, they’re designing an interactive program for communities to influence their local fast food. Take a look at their journey.

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500 Startups’ Dave McClure: Women Co-Founders and CEOs an Advantage

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By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0) Last week, Pemo Theodore interviewed 500 Startups Dave McClure along with several women co-founders in his portfolio: Prerna Gupta (CEO, khu.sh), Elizabeth Yin and Jennifer Chin (Co-Founders, LaunchBit).

"Women founders or co-founders are probably 20-25% of the [500 Startups] portfolio. I think there is probably some bias in investing in what we know and VCs tend to be white males from finance or MBA backgrounds who invest in white males from finance or MBA backgrounds... You invest in things that you know. So for me, I grew up around my mom who was an entrepreneur and other people... and as we've got experience as women as founders and CEOs, we've gotten more comfortable with that..."

"I do look for [women founders] now because it's an advantage. My intent is to corner the market on awesome smart women founders because there are plenty of them out and if there is any bias whatsoever, we'd like to selfishly take advantage of that," -- Dave McClure, 500 Startups.

Watch the whole interview with Dave McClure and some female founders in the 500 Startup portfolio:

Read the transcript from Pemo here at EZebis.

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Partner event: GigaOm Structure

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Women 2.0 members save $100 and receive a free report from GigaOM Pro on cloud and infrastructure when you register for GigaOM Structure here. This year, GigaOM Structure (June 22-23, 2011, San Francisco, CA) will be looking at the next wave of cloud technology and services. Anyone with a vested interest in cloud computing won’t want to miss this chance to hear about its future from the people who are making it happen. View full conference schedule.

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HBR IdeaCast: Hidden Demons of High Achieving Entrepreneurs

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By Sara Rosso (VIP Services Engineer, WordPress) I love podcasts – I wrote A Guide to Podcasts and recommended some podcasts for food lovers, tech lovers, and everyday listening. I run my own all-Italy podcast called Eye on Italy.

One of my favorite podcasts is the Harvard Business Review IdeaCast -- ideas for leadership, business, economics, and all-around smart and concise topics for entrepreneurs, managers, and idea leaders. Most episodes are

The Hidden Demons of High Achievers

The episode from last week was called “The Hidden Demons of High Achievers” with Tom DeLong, Harvard Business School professor and author of “Flying Without a Net: Turn Fear of Change into Fuel for Success” about people who feel a high need to achieve and how their fear of losing their image of competence can lead them to putting too much emphasis on succeeding the first time, and other demons that can cripple progress.

I don’t consider myself a high achiever but definitely an achiever and some of the behavior he described struck some chords within me, such as his description of a person with a high need for achievement:

"...very very smart, and at an early age have learned how to leverage that characteristic, highly competitive, impatient with other people and themselves, in most everything they've done they've been successful, hungry for feedback and mainly positive feedback, and they traditionally have overloaded agendas."

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Uncategorized1 min read
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Seeking MBA Candidates for Springworks Scholars

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By Jorge Calderon (Founder & Executive Director, Springworks) The mission of Springworks is to increase diversity in the venture community by providing access to opportunity for the future leaders of innovation.

The Springworks Scholars program identifies, develops and supports under-targeted (minority or female) business school students interested in either venture capital management or start-up management.

We are hoping that you will help identify individuals who you believe are strong candidates for the Scholars program and are matriculating to business school starting this Fall of 2011.

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Partner event: Founder Institute Showcase on June 15

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On June 15, 2011 in San Francisco, The Founder Showcase hosted by The Founder Institute will bring together leading investors, founders, and members of the press for one action-packed night to network, hear talks from leading CEOs, and help launch a startup company to greatness. With the investment and startup landscape changing dramatically, guests will be treated to opinions from two of today's most influential figures in venture capital -- Mark Suster, General Partner at GRP Ventures and Writer at “Both Sides of the Table”; and Naval Ravikant, Co-Founder of AngelList and Venture Hacks.

Women 2.0 members save 15% with discount code "w20".

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Announcing Udemy Partnership: Save 60% on Bess Ho’s Online 4-Week Class on Creating iPhone Apps

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By Gagan Biyani (Co-Founder, Udemy) Coding may seem daunting, like some wild black magic that only the select few super engineers that majored in Computer Science understand. It may seem hard to get started. Where do I go? Do I buy a book? But what if I have questions or get stuck?

Have no fear. Bess Ho is here.

Sign up to Learn to Build iPhone & iPad Apps in 4 Weeks with Bess Ho -- This online course includes 60+ lectures, 17 videos, source codes and hands-on exercises for each section.

I had the pleasure of watching Bess Ho teach a class one day. She had 40 students at the 500 Startups headquarters in Mountain View, CA for a class titled "How to build an iPhone Application". The class was only 6 hours long. I came in thinking "These guys and girls must be programmers, right? I mean they went to school and learned things like string theory and machine learning?

WRONG. Our students were everyday Joes and Janes. They had philosophy degrees and business backgrounds. Many of them were older, younger, fatter, thinner. They had nice clothes on and combed their hair in the morning. They came in with NO CODING EXPERIENCE. Many of them had never even seen a line of JavaScript. Bess had the class whip out their laptops and a short 6 hours (with 2 hours for lunch/break) later, Bess called out "OK, who wants to demo their application?"

The business executives, consultants, and marketers in the room went up one by one. They showed their iPhone applications on-screen. They worked! Read students' reviews of Bess's class here. Check out Bess Ho's class in this Udemy deal of the week to learn how for only $99 over 4 weeks (regular price is $250) -- Learn at your own pace and convenience!

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Women 2.0 PITCH 2009 Finalist Giddy Snacks in Virgin Atlantic Flights and Target Stores This Year

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By Sally Jones (Co-Founder, Giddy) How many times have you heard your friends complain about the challenge of finding healthy on-the-go snacks for their kids? We realized moms everywhere were sick and tired of feeling guilty over the snacks they gave their kids and of fighting with them over what they could and couldn’t eat. That’s when the inspiration struck… why should only the junky, artificial snacks be fun?

The Beginning of Giddy: The Team

My fellow Giddy co-founder Jill and I met while attending business school and quickly bonded over a shared passion for all things health and wellness related. When we weren’t in class you could find us training for our next triathlon or planning a festive dinner party with friends. We worked on a few business plans together but ended up pursuing more traditional paths after graduation. The entrepreneurial inkling was strong though, and a few years later we found ourselves brainstorming various ventures that aligned with our personal interests and itching to take the entrepreneurial leap.

As we began to research the kids snack market, we quickly noticed that while there was no shortage of fun snacks for kids, most of these were the same options available when we were young and loaded with artificial ingredients. On the other end of the spectrum, when you walked down the snack aisle at a natural / specialty grocery store, it seemed like all the fun had been sucked out of the kids’ offerings. Why not bring the fun to wholesome by tapping into the fact that kids love to play with their food… voila.

We arrived at Giddy’s snacktivity platform -- interactive snacks that are dipped, peeled, spread or created. By offering up fun, interactive snacks made with real wholesome ingredients, we felt we could create a differentiated and compelling offering.

Validating The Idea

Our first big undertaking was to conduct some primary research to validate the market opportunity and to create a value proposition that would resonate with moms. We conducted an online survey with over 500 parents of elementary age kids along with a large number of focus groups.

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Grubly: Invitation to Brunch with Women Entrepreneurs and Big Girls Small Kitchen in San Francisco

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By Desiree Golen (Co-Founder, Grubly) Remember Grb.ly from Women 2.0 Startup Weekend 2010?

I pitched Grubly, at the time named Grb.ly, at Women 2.0 Startup Weekend in November 2010. Since then, our team, vision, and community has evolved and grown beautifully.

Two weeks after the Startup Weekend, my best friend Cameron quit her job at the Embassy of Brazil to move to Mountain View to co-found Grubly and hit the ground running. Four months later, we launched a closed beta at SXSW and documented our crazy journey to get there. In the midst of the chaos, we stumbled upon Tim West, who formerly cooked at Facebook, trained at Culinary Institute of America, and joined Grubly as our Chief Gastronomic Officer.

Grubly provides a p2p platforms that brings unique, social dining experiences to people seeking an authentic meal, all the while putting money into the pockets of home chefs. We're in good company in the peer consumerism movement, alongside Airbnb for housing and Getaround for transportation. These companies, among others, are actively replacing outdated top-down approaches to consumerism by making it easier to find and utilize resources among everyday people.

Check out this teaser which documents our escapades at SXSW, which include galvanizing local Austin chefs to participate in an impromptu, pop-up cook off for 250 SXSW'ers!

Since March, we've grown our community in the SF Bay Area -- We've engaged with hundreds of awesome chefs with unique stories who are excited to share their creative energy with Grubsters, build their online portfolio based on a system of reviews and ratings, and make money along the way. Check out life as a Grubster here.

We've also presented at various conferences, including ShareSF, a conference dedicated to transforming San Francisco into a hub of sharing. We're growing quickly and we're very excited about next steps, which include hiring out a engineering team (ROR) to keep pace with our growing community. To learn more about Grubly, feel free to contact me.

Big Girls, Small Kitchen: Female Entrepreneurs Brunch in San Francisco

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What’s Love Got To Do With It? Everything!

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By Heidi Isern (Contributing Writer, Women 2.0) Last night I attended the event, “Face to Face: The Women Behind the Brands,” sponsored by Gilt City. Present were founding members and key executives from brands like Minted, Eventbrite, Decorati, SkinnyScoop, Ecomom and others.

Over champagne and mini cupcakes, each woman gave an interesting fact about herself before presenting her business. Interestingly, the personal story that each woman revealed was intimately tied to her company’s product. The companies were launched as an extension of personal passion.

Founder Mariam Naficy of the crowd-sourced site Minted had a personal interest in fine stationary and the (hand) written word. While dating her husband they wrote letters to each other for three years when he lived in Japan. However, you don’t have to be in a long distance relationship to appreciate accessible designs. Minted has been growingly rapidly as remote designers are connected to the stationary savvy. Minted's first contest had 600 entrants. Their last one had over 2,500. “I am bringing talent from all over the world to the buyer!” Mariam said.

Larissa Dinh, Co-Founder and Head of Product for Skinny Scoop, an information sharing site for women, is not only passionate about creating lists, but also for creating a product for women. “Most male designers think they can take some object, paint it pink, and it’s for a woman, “ she said. Larissa, however, paints more than just pink and works hard to create something uniquely of value for female information seekers. “The web is like my canvas.”

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Women 2.0 Discount to San Francisco Agile Conference

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By Angeline Tan (Founder & CEO, Agilemeister) The San Francisco Agile Conference on June 15 - 16, 2011 is a 2-day conference bringing the lean startups and agile practice communities together on the topics of lean startups, agile in IT, agile leadership and agile coaching.

Eric Ries of Lean Startup will deliver the opening keynote on delivering value through minimum viable products by pivoting often and in short iterations. View full Agile Conference program.

Understanding that all startups tend to be lean, I am offering the Women 2.0 community a bootstrapping start-up discount of $500 -- Please use the discount code "women2" to redeem the discount here.

Information technology businesses constantly demand more, faster and at lesser cost. San Francisco Agile Conference sessions focus on topics from those who have leveraged capabilities of product managers, project managers, development teams and customer feedbacks to rapidly deliver business value using agile.

Whether you are just an agile neophyte or a seasoned agile practitioner, the leadership and coaching portion of the program will focus on leaderships and coaching skills essential for continual improvement responding to the inevitable change. As an agile project leader, stakeholder, or an agile coach leading cultural change across an organization or a team, the conference program will provide a range of sessions, challenging your views while sharing tools and practices to better results. Joshua Kerievsky, an expert on agile software development will be delivering the closing keynote.

Where are the women in agile?

In organizing this conference, I noticed that there are no women responding to my call for papers.

As one of the women in the San Francisco Bay Area Agile community, I had hoped to encourage more women to participate and claim their seats at the Agile/Lean table. At next year's San Francisco Agile Conference, I want to increase the number of women presenters.

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Building Localize at Baltimore Startup Weekend (Video)

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By Marla Shaivitz (Co-Founder, Localize) The first time I heard of Startup Weekend was in March of this year, when I was doing research for an article on Los Angeles Startup Weekend's winning team, Zaarly.

I interviewed CEO Bo Fishback and found his enthusiasm and excitement for Zaarly contagious. At first I thought the hook for that article was going to be about the initial investment the team received from Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore -– I was so wrong.

It soon became very clear the story was bigger than the celebrity involvement and had to do more with the potential and possibility the team found emerging very quickly around their idea.

That interview, coupled with watching a video I came across about Philly’s Startup Weekend, got me hooked. I knew I wanted to be a part of Startup Weekend too. I registered for Baltimore Startup Weekend, committing 54 hours of my life, to something unknown but filled with the same potential and possibility.

Watch the video (above) produced about Baltimore Startup Weekend titled "The Entrepreneurial Spirit" where four teams are followed throughout the weekend -- my team Localize is one of them.

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LARK Will Be Sold at Apple Stores Starting June 14

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By Julia Hu (Founder & CEO, LARK) Startups are ridiculously hard, but so fulfilling, and filled with life. Looking back at the last week at our international launch, looking back at these last few years leading up to this, I’d love to share a few learnings as an entrepreneur, as a woman, and a new fiancée through LARK.

What is LARK? We help people sleep better, and better together. LARK wakes you up silently and feeling great -- without disturbing anyone else.

At night, LARK tracks how well you’re sleeping with an actigraphy sleep pattern sensor, packaged in a lightweight wristband wirelessly connected to the iPhone, When you wake up, see how you slept through the night on the iPhone and your personal online dashboard. Like your fitness coach, LARK has a sleep coach service designed with a pro-athlete sleep coach, that coaches you to better sleep by looking at your sleep patterns.

How LARK got started

About two years ago now, I woke up not naturally at 5am at a Saturday. This is because my boyfriend wakes up to go exercising and meditating every morning with an alarm clock, hitting snooze every time while I'd get jolted awake. This Saturday had been at the end of a busy week so I was mad at my sleep disturbance and realized this was going to happen for the rest of my life.

I pitched my idea at a one minute business plan competition at MIT (listen to the pitch here). After the pitch, so many people came up to me and expressed the same problem -- with a roommate or partner. Sharing the problem with people was powerful and I was amazed to learn that here was a dormant seemingly universal problem. I started LARK that day.

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The Women 2.0 Editorial Staff.