Editor, Author at Women 2.0

Engineering Serendipity

Editor7 January 2012

By Catherine Cook (Co-Founder, MyYearbook) When John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale reach for the same pair of black gloves in the movie Serendipity, they meet and fall in love. The goal of social discovery applications is to engineer this kind of serendipity. By leveraging demographic and interest data, and by providing good reasons to interact with strangers, this emerging category seeks to make meeting people feel fun and natural.

And it’s not just about dating. Most people I know I met through serendipitous encounters.

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Why Learn How To Code

Editor7 January 2012

By Gina Trapani (Creator, ThinkUp & Todo.txt Apps) Codecademy's Code Year is a weekly lesson for people who want to learn how to program. Over at Slate, Farhad Manjoo explains a few good reasons why you might want to do that at all, with a quick quote from me.

When Manjoo emailed, he asked, "What are some good reasons for people to be more familiar with programming?" I replied:

"First and foremost, learning to code demystifies tech in a way that empowers and enlightens. When you start coding you realize that every digital tool you have
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Women Entrepreneurs Share Stories Online At The Story Exchange

Editor7 January 2012

By Victoria Wang (Co-Founder, The Story Exchange) One of the things I hear again and again is that women need role models. After working for years in the financial world, it's something I personally know all too well. Throughout my career, I had often wished there were more senior women for me to share experiences with and to learn from on issues both business and work/life related.

That's why we started The Story Exchange to bring the stories of successful women entrepreneurs who can be role models to other women, wherever they are.

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Startup Weekend’s Eventful Year: 260 Hackathons In 202 Cities WIth Startups Raising $30M+

Editor6 January 2012

By Robin Wauters (Blogger, TechCrunch) Startup Weekend, whose mission is to kickstart and foster startup communities worldwide through events and networking sessions, had a very lively 2011.

According to internal statistics shared exclusively with TechCrunch, the organization held a total of 260 events in 202 cities, in 67 countries (you can find the obligatory accompanying infographic below).

All in all, the ‘startup weekends’ attracted some 21,316 people, who collectively formed 2,817 teams.

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Q&A: What Should I Look For In A Mentor?

Editor6 January 2012

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.

The YEC promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to youth unemployment and underemployment and provides its members with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of a business’s development and growth.

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Pooja Sankar Raises $6M For Her EduTech Startup Piazza

Editor6 January 2012

By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0) Piazza Founder and CEO Pooja Sankar blogged on Women 2.0 a few months ago: "As a teenager, I never went outside alone, spoke to a boy other than my brother, or wore jeans or a short skirt."

The former Facebook engineer went to an all-girls high school in India and then was admitted to IIT Kanpur, India. She was one of a handful of girls in the midst of many boys. Pooja described herself as "shy and studied alone, while the boys worked together - benefitting tremendously from the collaboration."

As the founder and CEO, Pooja built Piazza to provide a collaboration tool

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Strong Female Entrepreneurs To Follow On Twitter

Editor6 January 2012

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.

The YEC promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to youth unemployment and underemployment and provides its members with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of a business’s development and growth.

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Sibling Entrepreneurs Using Kickstarter To Fund 3D Eyewear

Editor5 January 2012

By Einy Paulsen & Kine Paulsen (Co-Founders, Ingri:Dahl) Looking back over the last year, my sister and I have done a lot of things that people told us would be impossible. We got celebrities to wear our glasses, we got to be a part of LA fashion week, and we got press in major publications – all without spending many marketing dollars. What was our key to achieving our goals? Doing things our way and blocking out the people that told us that we couldn’t!

My name is Kine, and in April last year I launched Ingri:Dahl with my twin sister, Einy. We had lived in the world capital of movies, Los Angeles, for a few years while studying at USC

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Can A Middle-Aged Mom Launch A Startup? Maybe.

Editor5 January 2012

By Erica Etelson (Founder, Sharemore) When I started telling friends about my plan to launch a startup, eyebrows were raised. People who know me wondered aloud how I would fare without going to the gym, sleeping eight (okay, nine) hours a night and being home by five o'clock to spend unhurried time with my family.

They have a point: I’m a 44-year old mother who does not have the expansive time and energy of a single, childless 23-year old. Is it possible to found an e-commerce website without losing my life? Tech founders have

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Why The Web And Global Financial Systems Need Female X Factor

Editor5 January 2012

By Twain Liu (Founder, Senseus) The global financial crisis is causing $100+ trillion of effects to our households, communities and economies, and its root causes go beyond the behaviors of a few dozen bankers and the responses of regulators and politicians.

The system’s failings are actually also in the code and mathematical models underpinning the technologies that are supposed to support intelligent decision-making but which are sub-optimally smart because their Y logic is missing female X factor.

Since 2008, there have been calls to increase the

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Strategies For Effective Networking (Be A Good Date)

Editor5 January 2012

By Lauren Perkins (Founder & CEO, Perks Consulting) Networking events are a fantastic way to meet new business prospects, potential partners, and leverage relationships within your existing network for referrals.

These events can certainly seem intimidating if you don’t have an action plan to keep you focused and on task.

To make the most of networking opportunities, business women can treat each event as they would treat a date. Following the same rules that you would typically follow on a date provides some guidance for how to prepare for the event, what to do

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The Most Powerful Gender

Editor4 January 2012

By Jim Gilmartin (President, Coming of Age) According to a new Nielsen study “Women of Tomorrow: U.S. Multicultural Insights”, women are the world’s most powerful single demographic. They control the majority of household spending decisions, their influence is growing, and they are increasingly exercising this new-found power in a variety of ways.

From 21 countries, representing 60% of the world’s population and 78% of GDP, there is one very positive commonality: women believe their roles are changing for the better.

As overall consumer demand shrinks and

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12 Things You Haven’t Tried To Improve Your Startup’s SEO

Editor4 January 2012

By Jazmin Hupp (Director of Awesome, Tekserve) “Best practices are things you should have done if you had thought of them first.”

If all your competitors are doing it already, you won’t get the returns you’re looking for by jumping in late.

Try taking best practices from other industries and reusing them.

This quote is from Byrne Hobart, who taught the Advanced SEO course at General Assembly I attended last week.

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Partner Event: O’Reilly Strata Conference On Big Data

Editor4 January 2012

Strata 2012, the leading big data conference, happens February 28 - March 1, 2012 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Strata debuted to a sold-out crowd last year and has become the leading event for the people and technology driving the data revolution. Strata delivers the nuts-and-bolts of building a data-driven business—the latest on the skills, tools, and technologies you need to make data work. Women 2.0 members save 20% on Strata conference tickets with discount code "WOMEN".

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DailyWorth Raises $2M From Joanne Wilson, Howard Lindzon

Editor4 January 2012

By Ben Popper (Contributor, BetaBeat) 65% of women are the CFOs in their household, meaning they make the principal financial decisions.

When serial entrpreneur Amanda Steinberg was looking to create an email business, she fixated on improving women’s financial smarts, something she had struggled with as a new mother buying a new home. And so DailyWorth, a sort of DailyCandy for money, was born.

The company has just raised $2 million from a group of angel investors led by Joanne Wilson and

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