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Founder Friday OC: “Founding A Startup Is Like A Gambling Addiction”

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While Founder Friday isn't a 'support group', it's like a gamblers-anonymous meeting. By Yaneth Acosta (Co-Founder & President, SKINMETRO™)

Last week, SKINMETRO™ co-founder, Lisa O'rrell, and I had the honor of co-hosting the launch of Women 2.0's Founder Friday in Orange County, California. We were amused because we have tons of advice about what not to do, but we're still not sure exactly what to do - it's been four years. Lisa equates founding a startup to a gambling addiction - you throw everything on the table every day believing you're going to beat the odds and win the jackpot.

While Founder Friday isn't a 'support group' - it's an appropriate substitution for a gamblers-anonymous meeting.

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Founder Friday Launches In Orange County, San Diego

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Women 2.0 director Sepideh Nasiri attended Founder Friday Orange County and San Diego last week. By Sepideh Nasiri (Director of All Things Offline, Women 2.0)

Last Thursday night's Founder Friday Orange County was a success. You would not think of Orange County as a hotbed of startups. There were many interesting and successful female entrepreneurs in the room and filled it with great energy. In addition, many organizations were excited and reached out to help make Founder Friday bigger and better.

There were two startup founders who spoke at the Founder Friday Orange County. Fight Class founder and host Kristen Nedopak (pictured above) has a background in user experience

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Partner Event: Founders’ Series Event With VC Jeff Clavier (May 22)

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Apply for your seat at this invite-only event with SofTech VC Founder and Managing Director Jeff Clavier. Join MIT/Stanford VLAB for the Founders' Series: Startup Office Hours With SoftTechVC's Jeff Clavier on May 22 in Palo Alto, CA.

Founder of startup? Not in an incubator? Have questions or need advice from an experienced Silicon Valley luminary like an exited startup founder, high profile CEO or VC?

Apply for your seat at this invite-only event with SofTech VC's Jeff Clavier (you may recognize him as the afternoon panel moderator at the Women 2.0 PITCH Conference on Valentine's Day.

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Almost $20k Cash – AT&T Hackathon Recap (Engineers Don’t Blog)

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This is my story of how I almost won $20k. By Hadiyah Mujhid (Co-Founder, Black Founders)

This weekend I participated in the AT&T Mobile HTML5 Hackathon. I had very mixed feelings in the beginning about my participation for multiple reasons.

The first reason in which I was against participating is because I have a number of uncompleted apps from previous hackathons that I have yet to complete, and I didn’t want another incomplete project. But the top prize was $20k.

The second reason in which I was against participating

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Starting Up In Los Angeles – A Video Site For Dancers

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Developing the site was easy, but getting users, not so much. By Raychel Espiritu (Founder, Realdancers)

"My name is Raychel Espiritu and I am the founder of Realdancers." And let me be honest – that sentence frightens and excites me all at once. It’s frightening because now that it’s out in the universe, I am accountable for it. But it’s exciting because it holds a world of possibilities. My journey in becoming an entrepreneur hasn’t been an easy one. It’s been filled with lots of disappointments, setbacks, and reality checks.

I used to be a professional dancer. I went on tour with an up and coming hip hop artist, did live performances, few music videos, and other gigs that were starting to propel my career forward.

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How To Get Measurable Results With Pinterest

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Pinterest has taken an old concept - “vision boarding” - and made it new. By Erica Nicole (Founder & CEO, YFS Magazine)

It’s quite likely that your customers (depending on the audience demographic) are addicted to it. While it may appear irrelevant for your business, I wouldn’t discount the social media darling quite yet.

I’m referring to the Palo Alto-based social networking and visual bookmarking site, Pinterest. Co-founded by Ben Silberman, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp, relatively unknown entrepreneurs (until recently), the three founders managed to secure financial backing from Silicon Valley and $37.5 million in venture capital to propel their growth.

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Story Of The Hackfest – Bacon Unicorn!

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During the hackathon, we’re constantly evaluating whether “it’s worth it” on any given problem. By Anna Billstrom (iOS & Facebook App Developer, Self)

The AT&T Hackfest was in Palo Alto. Sleepy, beautiful, affluent, diverse and yet economically not-diverse, Palo Alto, at the AT&T Foundry, a neat space with lots of power, sunlight, and (oddly, but great) random doors onto the street. I kind of love that place.

We slowly formed a team - my teammate from other hackathons, Stacie Hibino, and Estelle Weyl, whom I’d admired her from a JavaScript class a few months ago, and Stacie had worked with her at another hackfest. Two friends joined and left, graphic designers lured elsewhere. A friend Kris was with us the first day.

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More Women Are Trading On Global Stage (Doing It All)

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Women entrepreneurs are building successful e-commerce businesses. By Annie Xu (General Manager, Alibaba U.S.)

Recently, some data crossed my radar that makes me think American businesswomen are embracing global online trading.

Alibaba research shows that the number of U.S.-based women registering on the site for e-commerce increased by 72% between 2008 and 2011.

U.S female users were the biggest constituency across 12 key markets studied. More than 4.2 million women in the U.S. used Alibaba in December 2011, compared to 2.6M in India and 1.3M in the U.K.

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Win A Free Ticket To OPEN Silicon Valley!

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Keynote from Salman Khan, the CEO of Khan Academy, at the OPEN Silicon Valley conference on June 2. OPEN Silicon Valley is offering us two (2) free tickets to the OPEN Forum 2012 on June 2, 2012 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

This one-day conference will give the Women 2.0 community a unique opportunity to network with and learn from seasoned CEOs, VCs, financial market experts, government policy makers and professionals from the Silicon Valley.

To apply for one of these tickets, tell us in 200 words

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How Does Your Startup Idea Fit Into The Patent Landscape?

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Free website allows entrepreneurs to visualize how their ideas fit into the patent landscape. By Anup Desai (Founder, Patent Unaverse)

Ever have an idea for a business and wonder what your competition is like? If you’re a person with entrepreneurial leanings like me, then you probably know what I’m talking about.

Typically, I start at a problem that I’m interested in solving, and arrive at a rough-draft solution to the “pain”. Then I Google to see if others have had a similar epiphany. Usually the problem is well recognized, but the solution may not be so clear.

Let’s say that now I have a unique solution, and I want to understand my competitive landscape and the competitive barriers (e.g. patents) that exist. After combing the Internet, should I proceed

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How To Make A Facebook Mobile App In Seven Minutes Flat

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Facebook Mobile App in 20, no 7, Minutes By Anna Billstrom (iOS & Facebook App Developer, Self)

I’m speaking at the AT&T HTML5 Hackathon tonight, and here are my slides, and basically my entire presentation.

OMG UNICORNS AND PONIES

Facebook has a nifty Mobile Web SDK and tutorial, and that’s what I’m going to make. The application is Unicorns and Ponies - a simple “find fun posts on Facebook about unicorns and ponies”.

I had fun making it. I just timed myself and it was 5 minutes and 30 seconds, so hopefully... if I can control the digressions and asides, might be able to do it.

This is a reprise of two different talks - “Facebook in 20 minutes” - the app was called “Popularity”, and judged your popularity on the size of your friend list. Then, re-did that talk “Facebook in 20 MInutes” - that app was “I’m Pregnant!” determining if you were talking more about babies and congratulations on your feed.

Both are server-side PHP SDK tutorials, with open graph and authentication.

Mobile web is far easier to setup, so in a way halving this talk makes sense. Here is the overview:

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The Founder Institute Seeks Female Founders, Offers Fellowships

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Founder Institute's Female Founder Fellowship program increased 30% female graduates globally. By Jonathan Greechan (Partner, The Founder Institute)

Last year, we unveiled a new program - Female Founder Fellowship (FFF) - in an effort to grow the number of female technology founders by providing free course fees for our best female applicants.

At the time, 16% of our graduates were female, and our stated goal was to double that number and ultimately graduate 175 female-led companies a year.

The FFF program helped spur a 30% increase in female graduates globally in just a few months time.

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5 Things Women Entrepreneurs Need To Know About Pitching

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YEC Women share their answers for how to find fellow women entrepreneurs to meet. By Natalie MacNeil (Co-Founder, YEC Women)

The following answers are provided by YEC Women. Co-Founded by Natalie MacNeil and Scott Gerber, YEC Women is an initiative of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the country’s most promising young entrepreneurs. Women entrepreneurs from YEC answer the question:

What do female founders need to know before pitching their company to investors for the first time?

Her Campus co-founder and CEO Stephanie Kaplan

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How Lynda Hit $70M In Revenue Without A Penny From Investors

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This article has been syndicated from TechCrunch. By Rip Empson (Writer, TechCrunch)

As Ned Flanders would say, education in the U.S. is in “a dilly of a pickle.” At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the cost of education has become unsustainable.

Student loan debt is over $1 trillion, unemployment remains high for the recently graduated, and non-traditional students — older people, single mothers, workers looking to re-train — are returning to academia and learning programs in droves, putting even more competitive pressure on already-scant on-site resources.

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The Women 2.0 Editorial Staff.