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Global Women’s Summit for Entrepreneurs (Kauffman FastTrac)

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By Alana Muller (President, Kauffman FastTrac) Where will you be while millions of people around the world engage in lively, meaningful, important discussions about the entrepreneurial ecosystem? I, myself, will be at the Kauffman FastTrac Global Women’s Summit on Wednesday, November 16, 2011 in Kansas City, MO. Won’t you join me to startup your idea?

Over the past few years, my colleagues and I at Kauffman FastTrac have had the opportunity to work with a number of women in entrepreneurship. Consistently, they have told us that the topics on their minds include building effective boards

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Women 2.0: Number of Women Founders Doubled in Past 3 Years

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By Sarah Perez (Writer, TechCrunch) Women 2.0, an organization whose goal is to increase the number of female founders in technology startups, is sharing some good news today: the number of women starting companies has doubled over the past three years. The new data comes from a survey of its own community, which includes everyone from actual founders and co-founders to aspiring entrepreneurs.

Back in 2008, Women 2.0 ran the same audience survey and found 25% of its community were women founders. Today, more than 50% of its audience say the same.

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Interview with LOLapps Co-Founder and Head of UX Annie Chang

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Editor's note: LOLapps co-founder and head of user experience Annie Chang talks to Women 2.0 about her startup, one of the fastest growing social companies with over 1MM user generated applications and 4 very large social games.Women 2.0: How did you get started on LOLapps? Annie Chang: I sat in the audience as Mark Zuckerberg announced the new Facebook platform in May 2007, and I was inspired. Many web applications that I had pondered building, as well as several projects that I had worked on previously, required

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Notes from Bloomberg Empowered Entrepreneur Summit in NYC

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By Carol Massar (Co-Anchor of "Street Smart", Bloomberg TV) It was fun to be a part of the Bloomberg Empowered Entrepreneur summit in New York City, an event in partnership with Women 2.0, among others.

There were some great takeaways, including momentum to the idea that going public is not the endgame for young companies. We continue to hear that from different venues.

Today, EDventure Holdings' Esther Dyson was

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Women 2.0 Celebrates 5 Years of Growth and Inspiration

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By Shaherose Charania (Co-Founder & CEO, Women 2.0) I moved to Silicon Valley in 2005 and almost always was the only woman in the room at business, technology or entrepreneurship networking events.

Then one day, I met a guy named Noah Kagan who introduced me to a few awesome women he knew. He said, “I want you to meet these women, I think you should do something together.” He booked a room at the Palo Alto Facebook office for us where he worked; and without any formal security clearance (this was back in 2005), we the founders of Women 2.0 met, talked and conceived the

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When Should You Pivot, Jump, or Shoot? (LaunchBit)

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By Elizabeth Yin (Co-Founder, LaunchBit) "Pivot" is probably the most overused word in the startup community. Everyone is pivoting his/her company from this to that. So how do you know when you should pivot your company slightly, jump to a completely new business idea altogether, or just shoot for the moon with what you have?

My friend Rishi recently wrote a post about how he thinks many entrepreneurs pivot too early -- they don't give their businesses enough time to prove or disprove its hypotheses. I think he writes a very fair post -- it does take

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From Finance to Fashion (and Acquisition) and Now… Food!

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By Suzanne Xie (Co-Founder & CEO, Lollihop) I got the idea for my first company, Weardrobe, in college when I developed an obsession with spreadsheets and tracking my closet for purposes of efficiency. It wasn't much of a surprise when I joined the world of finance after college to work with Excel some more. After a year at Goldman Sachs, I had some extra time after-hours, and the spreadsheet seemed like a fun project to pick back up.

We originally started Weardrobe to give girls a virtual closet, similar to the one Cher had in the movie Clueless. In less than a month, we created a functioning site

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How To Change the Way People Behave (Startup Lesson Learned)

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By Helen Belogolova (Co-Founder & CEO, Venuetastic) A lot of times with a startup, what you really hope to do is change how someone makes a decision -- whether a purchase decision, a what-tool-to-use-for-a-specific-purpose decision, or a how-do-i-know-i-can-trust-this-tool decision.

Most of the time, changing the way someone behaves is very difficult, especially if you’re dealing with spending money. People get used to making decisions a certain way and breaking those habits is our task as startup founders. Understanding how people make those decisions and how to break those habits is hard, but

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Networking as a Woman (A Man’s Perspective)

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By Larry Chiang (CEO, Duck9 & Stanford University EIR) I see patterns. Pattern recognition is a critical skill set for VCs to master. The pattern I see is that networking as a tall Asian engineer with Supermodel looks is uber similar to how a female founder should network. We both can't get to and meet contacts if there is a slew of people just monopolizing our time (because they want to bang us).

You see, I say the things that others won't say (or write). I risk this because in my opinion, there are some insights I have that others do not. We as women need to play with the idea of...

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Women 2.0 Startup Weekend (November 18-20 in San Francisco)

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By Angie Chang & Christina Gunarto (Organizers, Women 2.0 Startup Weekend) Women 2.0 and Startup Weekend are partnering on November 18 - 20, 2011 at The Hatchery in San Francisco, CA for Women 2.0 Startup Weekend! We provide the co-working space and brain fuel, and you bring the energy and innovation to build something big over the weekend. Both men and women are invited to get your ticket for Women 2.0 Startup Weekend now! Maybe you have an idea, maybe you don't? Maybe you started a startup before, maybe you haven't? Maybe you are a developer, a designer, a do-er? Bring an idea, or just yourself! Come to join a team and start a project (or company) over the weekend. We will be hacking and building for 54 hours!

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Ideas on Smartphone and Handset Innovation

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By Liz Kerton (President, Telecom Council of Silicon Valley) Mobile devices are increasingly at the center of our lives, and these connected wonders are taking on increasing roles in organizing, entertaining, connecting, and updating us. The technologies that are put into these devices continue to stretch their functions, improve their usability, and make last year's phone look obsolete.

The finished products are often first shown at CES, but the technologies that make the whole product are first shopped around Silicon Valley by the usual cadre of entrepreneurs and R&D groups.

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Bringing Together Women Who Code in the Bay Area

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By Sasha Laundy (Founder, Women Who Code) I love startups and the vibrant technical community in the Bay Area. While many men were friendly and helpful to me, I grew tired of being the only technical woman at event after event. I craved a space -— just one night a month! —- where I wasn’t the only one. Where I didn’t constantly have to prove myself with every introduction, and where I could see what other technical women were accomplishing. So I launched Women Who Code.

Two months later, I have been overwhelmed by the community response. More than 300 women have joined

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Can Product “Disruption” Become a New Paradigm?

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By Sarah Tavel (Senior Associate, Bessemer Venture Partners) Facebook is an incredible company, and it’s incredible for many, many reasons. But one of the things that most impresses and amazes me is Facebook’s relentless reinvention. The company has disrupted its product, and therefore its users, on multiple occasions. I’m sure everyone remembers the backlash Facebook weathered when it launched its newsfeed. And of course, we’re still less than a month into Facebook’s newest disruption, this time to its profile page.

Facebook is in rare company. Microsoft, to its credit, disrupted its Office product suite by introducing the ribbon (which was probably a great change for my mom, but drives me

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How to Get Out of Your Own Way: Get Inspired at Women Rock It

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By Evan Bailyn (Bestselling Author & Co-Producer, Women Rock It) We all have a sneaking suspicion somewhere deep inside of us that maybe we just can’t do it. Maybe we will fail. And we really don’t want to fail. So if something seems risky to us, we think “Better to avoid it. It probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway.”

Ignoring all the logic -– the fact that we learn more from failures than from successes, the fact that failure actually breeds success –- we plod along absolutely terrified of some faceless embarrassment.

We all feel this way. The insecure teenager, the first-time entrepreneur, the placid-faced CEO, the seasoned

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The Women 2.0 Editorial Staff.