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4 Reasons Why You Should Apply To PITCH With Women 2.0

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By Rebecca Lipon (Application & Judges Coordinator, PITCH Competition 2012) Pitching your early-stage startup is hard work -- and investigating funding sources is a serious task for those who want to go big.

There is no secret sauce for startup success, but early exposure to VCs is a key component in getting investment and iterating on your product. With the mission of increasing the number of female founders starting startups, Women 2.0 created a path for women to gain feedback, coaching, and exposure to the best venture capital firms and startup executives.

This is the Women 2.0 PITCH Startup Competition.

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Calling All SF Entrepreneurs: Big Companies Need Your Help

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By Arielle Patrice Scott (Founder, GenJuice) You have the capacity to think outside of the box, the guts to go where no one else will dare to go, and the ability to recruit teams who will believe in your ideas passionately enough to work for their promise. Now, your talents can be useful beyond your own business.

These skills are highly sought after by the largest companies in the world. They struggle to innovate and think of new business opportunities. In fact, most of the truly innovative ideas get marked with red tape within the bureaucracy. Once assigned this fate, the idea has no chance to grow further.

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Starting Up Rentalia and Toprural, Top Travel Startups in Spain

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By Marta Esteve (Co-Founder, Rentalia) Editor's note: Marta Esteve is co-hosting Founder Friday Madrid on November 4, 2011. FREE RSVP for Founder Friday here.

When I was 15, they asked me at school to write down how we imagined we would be in the year 2000 and I remember that I said I saw myself as a businesswoman. Quite interesting now I look back.

Perhaps I was influenced by the fact that my father had ventured out into the business world and came back home at night talking about his projects with a sparkle in his eyes.

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Number of Female Fortune 500 CEOs At Record High

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By Laura Petrecca (Contributor, USA TODAY) A record has been set for female leadership: More women are slated to take the reins of Fortune 500 companies than ever before.

Wednesday, pharmaceutical firm Mylan said Heather Bresch will succeed Robert Coury as CEO. Tuesday, IBM tapped Virginia "Ginni" Rometty to succeed Sam Palmisano, making her the first female CEO in the company's 100-year history. Both appointments are effective Jan. 1.

If no women step down before

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Zombies Invade 500 Accelerator, Hungry For BRAAAAAAAAINS

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By Christine Tsai (Partner, 500 Startups) In recent weeks, residents of this quiet suburb have reported strange activity concentrated in the downtown area of Castro Street. There have been numerous sightings of zombies lumbering up and down Castro, mouths agape, in search of three things.

Noted by many Castro St business owners, they hear only these words over and over: “BRAAAAAAAINS. CUUUUUUUUUSTOMERS. MOOOOOOOOONEY.”

Extreme caution should be heeded. The 12th

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Four Ways to Market Your Mobile App (Creating The Virtuous Loop)

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By Aurelie Guerrieri (Corporate Development, SendMe) Apps are either hits or misses -- or are they?

What if you have a great idea for a safety app, a fitness app, a personalization app, or a privacy app? You build it with sweat equity in your garage, and after weeks or months of agonizing over every feature,  it finally gets uploaded to the app store, and… nothing. Lots of really good, useful apps get buried amongst the mazes of the app stores.

The thinking used to be that if you build a good app, users will come. These dreams were fueled by stories of games

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Easy as Pie? Teaching Code Literacy (Giving Tech Talks)

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By Sarah Allen (Founder, Blazing Cloud) I’ve been doing technical talks for over 20 years, starting with guest lectures as a TA in college.

One of the main reasons I started giving tech talks professionally was because I didn’t see women doing it and felt that it was important for there to be a diversity of voices.

I spoke often to very small groups and women’s groups before I started speaking at conferences, and have found that speaking experience has elevated my status as an expert

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How to Avoid “Pink Ghetto” Software Development for Women

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By Gloria W. Jacobs (Senior Freelance Software Developer, NYC) The expression "pink ghetto" when used in context of software development, refers to jobs (which are often offered to women and people new to the field) that will not help you grow your skill set or experience in productive ways.

During an economic crunch, these types of "pink ghetto" jobs become more prevalent and cleverly disguised. Students, minorities and women tend to be caught up in these types of offers -- not knowing how to see through a bad deal, or how to look for better alternatives. After reading this article, you will learn to recognize "pink ghetto" work. I also suggest ways to find better options.

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When An Idea Has Legs: appSmitten Off to a Running Start!

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By Ellen Pack (Co-Founder, AppSmitten) The three of us sat around the table. We were pretty excited, but would we still love our latest startup idea in the morning? Well it turns out we did, this one had legs.

The idea had come to us naturally. We were hanging out with our smartphones, excitedly sharing new app discoveries with each other.

Anna was talking up GasBuddy, I was raving about Fooducate and Sarah was all over Pulse. As we chatted, we realized that none of us went seeking

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Earthly Pursuits Accomplished in Entrepreneurship (Barcelona)

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By Ariadna Mateu (Co-Founder, Innovalley.us) Editor's note: Ariadna Mateu is co-hosting Founder Friday Barcelona on November 4, 2011. FREE RSVP for Founder Friday here. "What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes? Here is the key to your earthly pursuits.” -- Carl Jung

The best path between two points is not always a straight line: in fact, we often have to take many turns before going back to the beginning convinced that there’s is no better starting point.

I don’t remember making an entrance to the world of

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“Stories of Leadership” Free Event on November 2 in Menlo Park

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By Tara Chklovski (Founder & CEO, Iridescent) The Technovation Challenge is a technology and entrepreneurship program for high school girls, founded by Dr. Anuranjita Tewary (Sr. Data Scientist, Linkedin) and implemented by Iridescent, a national, science-education nonprofit.

Over the course of ten weeks, girls work with professional women in technology to develop mobile phone apps. The girls learn to use a visual programming language called App Inventor. They present their phone apps and business plans to a panel of VCs at a high visibility “Pitch Night” event.

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Leah Busque, TaskRabbit Founder, Interview with Foundation

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By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief) Kevin Rose interviews Leah Busque (Founder, TaskRabbit) for his new series Foundation. She talks about a love for efficiency, math and computer science, and going to a small women's college to be one of six computer science majors.

After graduating, she worked at IBM as a software engineer where she had to decide between a career at IBM or starting her own startup. The real prototype came when she left IBM and spent her summer coding -- she calls it one of the funnest summer of her life.

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Moving Your Startup Forward, Even If By A Tweet

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By Brandy Alexander-Wimberly (Founder & CMO, Buyvite) I am currently in startup mode on Buyvite, a business that received funding and support from Rocket Ventures. Buyvite is expected to launch in the coming months and is a product based in the social commerce space. Joining forces with Rocket Ventures, a local seed fund and incubator has been invaluable in taking my concept to the next level.

This is one of the most important things an early stage founder can do -- Align yourself with a group dedicated to helping startups. This will not only help position your concept for funding, but most can also assist with team building.

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The Women 2.0 Editorial Staff.