Editor, Author at Women 2.0

3 Tips For Early-Stage Startups Pitching To Win Investor Love

Editor21 February 2012

By Connie Kwan (Writer, TriplePundit) At the Women 2.0 PITCH Conference and Competition this past Valentine’s Day, I hung out with 300 talented and inspiring technology women to watch women-led startups compete for meetings with Silicon Valley venture capitalists.

Startup ideas range the gamut from financial management for solo-entrepreneurs (Prosperity) to coupons for doctor visits (DocPons).

The top 9 startups were chosen from a pool of over 200 applications to publicly pitch at the Valentine’s Day PITCH

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Why Your Next Board Member Should Be A Woman

Editor20 February 2012

By Aileen Lee (Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers)

Good questions have been asked lately of tech companies without gender diversity on their boards of directors. While women comprise 51% of the population, they make up only 15.7% of Fortune 500 boards of directors, less than 10% of California tech company boards, and 9.1% of Silicon Valley boards.

Why should we care? For one, women are the power users of many products and it’s just smart business to have an understanding of key customers around the table. Could you imagine a game company without any gamers on the leadership team or board?

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The Power Of Cooperative Outreach (Diversifying PyCon)

Editor20 February 2012

By Jessica McKellar (Software Engineer, Ksplice, Oracle)

I want to share an email I received recently from a woman named Pam. It is a response to an email I sent to the DevChix mailing list, calling on DevChixen to attend PyCon, the largest annual Python conference, and submit posters for the PyCon poster session:

"Holy wow. I’ve had your email starred since you sent it, and only just now realized that you’re the Jess who was at PyStar Philly. Because of this email:

I decided to try to go to PyCon... Read More...

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Quick Survey For Female Startup Founders

Editor20 February 2012

By Pokin Yeung (Writer, Pokin on Product) Is there something unique about female founders? Are there any characteristics that all startup founders have in common? Do things like birth order, family unit, family history of entrepreneurship, childhood experiences, or other factors have any influence on your likelihood to start a business?

I am curious and hoping you are also curious enough to help me out.

If you are a female startup founder, please take this quick survey.

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5 Lessons Learned From A Day With 1000 Women Entrepreneurs

Editor20 February 2012

By Thomas Korte (Founder & Managing Partner, AngelPad) I was invited this week to judge the Women 2.0 PITCH Competition. I blocked out the day with one goal: give a lot of feedback and advice to entrepreneurs. And I am glad I did.

The conference was unlike any I have attended in recent years. 1000 women-tech entrepreneurs, many of them not from Silicon Valley, skipped Valentine's Day to listen to the learnings, inspirational and success stories of fellow women entrepreneurs. 99% of the audience were women and Dave McClure, Naval Ravikant, Jeff Clavier and myself were the only men on stage.

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Alice Wang’s Spark Box: Toys For A Child’s Developmental Benefit

Editor20 February 2012

By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0) A former investment banker, entrepreneur Alice Wang watched her extended family grow in size with the arrival of three babies. She found it inspiring to see how the families experienced parenthood, and subsequently, how quickly the children got sick of toys.

She thought there had to be a better way to test toys with the child and provide some educational value to the experience.

This was the spark that launched her startup Spark Box, a toy rental company providing an eco-friendly way for parents

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Why Don’t More Women Go Big With Their Business?

Editor19 February 2012

By Jazmin Hupp (Director of Awesome, Tekserve) With few female entrepreneurs to look to, MIT Sloan hosted a panel on how women can go big with their own businesses. The panel included Joanna Rees (Founder of VSP Capital), Katrina Markoff (Founder of Vosges Haut-Chocolat), Alexandra Wilkis Wilson (Founder of Gilt Groupe), and was moderated by Fredricka Whitfield (Anchor, CNN).

What Is Getting In the Way?

Joanna thinks that fear and giving up after set-backs get in women’s way. Some women quit after their first major

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Accelerating Diversity In Startups With StartX (Bridging the Divide)

Editor18 February 2012

By Jessie Arora (Education Consultant, Stellar K12) Demo Days can be pretty exhausting events of information overload as you try to capture the energy of the various pitches and teams (Y Combinator has 65 this round) while connecting with all the impressive folks in the crowd.

However, I was pleasantly surprised by the latest batch of StartX accelerator companies that launched at their Demo Day.

The event began with quick pitches from their 9 startups, followed by dinner and plenty of time to speak with the teams

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Chief Digital Officers: Perry Hewitt, Rachel Sterne And Angela Wei

Editor18 February 2012

By Leslie Bradshaw (Contributor, Forbes) In recent interviews, we’ve talked about the lack of women in the technology world, but we haven’t yet touched on the need for more women in leadership roles in academia.

In 2009, The White House Project found that women hold just 23% of the leadership roles in academia, this despite the fact that for over a decade women have outnumbered men in college enrollment.

My interview today focuses on an individual who is making waves in both pools: tech and academia.

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Friday Roundup: All Things PITCH-Related, And Then Some…

Editor17 February 2012

By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0) Thanks to everyone who joined us for the fifth annual Women 2.0 PITCH Conference & Competition on Valentine's Day.

For those who missed it, the PITCH conference rocked the house. Here are 9 lessons learned from the day, as well as a guy's perspective on Women 2.0 moving the needle for women entrepreneurs.

The day was filled with love and startups, as speakers like Facebook's Katie Mitic reminding us that the job is only 1% done - building tech products is a labor of love and passion.

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Women 2.0 PITCH Conference Rocks The House

Editor17 February 2012

By Megan Conley (Founder & Principal, Social Tribe)When I signed up for the Women 2.0 PITCH Conference a few months ago, I wasn’t entirely clear on what I was getting myself into.

I was pretty sure of two things: women + startups = I’m in.

In the Bay Area, startup buzz is omnipresent…pretty much like God (or coffee, whatever your religion). Everyone’s working on a small, stealth, no-name company that’s going to change the world... or how you take notes, which will eventually change the world. With so much noise, it can be hard to separate the talk from the walk.

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For The Men Who Missed It – The Women 2.0 PITCH Conference

Editor17 February 2012

By Jenna Hannon (Writer, TechZulu) Just like the sky scraping investment banks of Wall Street, the technology industry tends to be a sausage party. A Silicon Valley conference is a room full of suits, with the occasional skirt suite. So when I heard about Women 2.0 PITCH Conference & Competition at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, I couldn’t help but feel like it might be a hall of crickets with a few passionate women warming the front row. I was mistaken.

A 50 car line stacked up the street from the conference entrance filled with women idling, applying mascara, brushing their hair, and finishing early morning conference calls.

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Founder Friday Mixers (March 2 in SF, Silicon Valley, Santa Monica, NYC, Madrid & Barcelona)

Editor17 February 2012

By Sepideh Nasiri (Corporate Sponsorships & Events Director, Women 2.0) Women 2.0 is hosting six global Founder Friday networking mixers for women entrepreneurs and their friends on Friday, March 2, 2012 in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, New York City, Madrid and Barcelona.

Founder Friday San Francisco will be... Read More...

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Founder Friday Mixers (March 2 in SF, Silicon Valley, Santa Monica, NYC, Madrid & Barcelona)

Editor17 February 2012

By Sepideh Nasiri (Corporate Sponsorships & Events Director, Women 2.0) Women 2.0 is hosting six global Founder Friday networking mixers for women entrepre... Read More...

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Photos From Women 2.0 PITCH Conference & Competition 2012

Editor17 February 2012

By Erica Kawamoto Hsu (Online Media Producer & Photographer, Kuishimbo) The 2012 Women 2.0 PITCH Conference & Competition on Valentine's Day was amazing - the agenda and speaker lineup made me realize it was something I had to be at.

I brought my camera to the PITCH Conference on Tuesday to shoot candids at the event. But I kept stopping - to speak to the amazing women entrepreneurs I was meeting.

Each person that I spoke to or I shot for the Sit With Me campaign had their own startup - and would show me what they were working on their smartphones.

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