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The Women Who Built Google+ (Ada Lovelace Day)

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By Marshall Kirkpatrick (Co-Editor, ReadWriteWeb) Today is Ada Lovelace Day, a day dedicated to celebrating the world's first computer programmer and to share inspiring stories about women working in science, technology and math.

Surely some of the most significant technical work done by women since this day last year includes the creation of what is said to be the fastest-growing social network in history, Google Plus.

Launched on June 28, 2011 and just opened to the public at large late last month, Google+ is a feature-rich social network

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Lessons Learned From Serial Energy Entrepreneur Deirdre Lord

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By Christina Vuleta (Founder, 40:20 Vision) I had the pleasure of interviewing Deirdre Lord of The Megawatt Hour, a subscription information service that helps businesses procure and manage power by making the process simple, and transparent. This is her third venture in the retail electricity business.

Deirdre emanates a quiet energy and strength that surely helped fuel her longevity in energy entrepreneurship as much as it reflects a passion for innovation. Her career spans a diverse set of experiences from helping develop the private sector energy business

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Interview with Zuhairah Scott, Founder and CEO of Kahnoodle

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By Lauren DeLisa Coleman (Contributing Writer, The Atlanta Post) Time for the third installment in my profile series on cool African-American females who are fellow colleagues with me in the tech space.

Lean in and ponder as Zuhairah Scott, Founder and CEO of Kahnoodle, a startup that helps busy couples build awesome relationships. According to the company’s description it is “the first mobile productivity tool for couples that provides a “relationship dashboard” which visually tracks how well each person is meeting the others’ needs and allows couples to set goals

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Apply to the Free Founder Showcase Pitch Competition

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By Jonathan Greechan (Partner, The Founder Institute) Are you a seed-stage startup looking for funding or exposure? Apply to the Founder Showcase Pitch Competition, where previous presenters have raised over $20 million without ever being required to pay a dime. To apply for your chance to present on-stage, click here.

Any company less than two years old with less than $250,000 USD in funding is eligible, but the Application Deadline is Sunday, October 9th. To see our previous presenters, visit the new Founder Showcase Hall of Fame.

The Founder Showcase event brings together leading

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Crowd-Funding for the Missing Middle (InVenture)

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By Laura Spiekerman (Research Analyst, Kopo Kopo) Shivani Siroya sees potential in entrepreneurs like Ms. Lakshmi, who distributes ice cream to high-end shops in India. Despite the demand in the market, her inventory and staff limit her to only 4 shops.

In the United States, a small business lender might provide financing to increase her inventory and sales staff. Instead, Lakshmi will leapfrog traditional small business lending, which is largely unavailable in emerging markets, and reach for a loan crowd-funded by investors in the United States.

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The Real Dirt On Being An Entrepreneur (A Founder’s Story)

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By Heather Hilleren (Founder, Local Dirt) Sometimes you come across an idea that seems so simple, so obvious, that you think “why has no one done this before?” leaving you no choice but to do it yourself. It would simply be criminal not to solve this problem.

This was the start of Local Dirt.

The idea came after working at a natural foods grocery store and watching their best intentions fall flat. They started buying from two dozen local farms when they opened, dropping more

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Astia CEO Answers the Question: Why Entrepreneurs, Why Women

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By Sharon Vosmek (CEO, Astia) I recently posted a response to an October 3 blog post by Mark Suster "Why Aren’t There More Female Entrepreneurs?", and I thought my comments should be translated more broadly.

Below is a version of my post which is intended to clearly articulate the value proposition for:

  • Why [high-growth] entrepreneurship?
  • Why women [high-growth] entrepreneurs?

The simple answer to both -- jobs and innovation.

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Connecting the Dots: Steve Jobs

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By Jean Hsu (Android Developer, Pulse) The Pulse office was jolted suddenly this afternoon as coworkers announced the news coming in from Twitter. Was it a rumor? A few minutes later, TechCrunch and other sources posted confirmations, but many of us were still in disbelief.

Where would we all have been in a world without Steve Jobs? Many of us would never have met each other, and I’m almost certain we wouldn’t have been in that office working together on Pulse.

The ability of one man to have

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Is There a Female Mark Zuckerberg?

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By Gina Bianchini (Guest Contributor, Fortune) I know beyond Zuckerberg at Facebook and Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Google (GOOG). What is the background of social and consumer technology founders, my peer group? Are they more technical than I am?

And by the way, did they get it right on their first try, or did they fail first and try again?

If you disregard gender, they actually look a lot more like me than like Mark Zuckerberg, who was a computer science

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Culture Kitchen: From Designer to Silicon Valley Startup Founder

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By Abby Sturges (Co-Founder, Culture Kitchen) Editor's note: Abby Sturges is a host of Founder Friday Palo Alto on October 7, 2011 - Join Women 2.0 and Culture Kitchen at Color's office for Founder Friday Palo Alto. RSVP for free here. Environment is everything.

I am a firm believer that the environment you choose to surround yourself with has everything to do with what you are capable of and that anyone is capable of shaping their environment. It’s easy for these environments to shift quickly and it’s up to you

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Your Startup is Inferior to That Guy with the Mobile App for Golfers

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By Caperton (Contributing Writer, Feministe) Seeing more female-lead startups in male-dominated fields would be awesome. It’s on the list of other things to work toward: Getting more girls and women interested in tech fields. Gaining widespread recognition for women already in tech fields. Supporting women in all areas of the workplace, top to bottom.

Helping more women into C-level positions, and then helping them help other women up behind them. And, yeah, giving interested women the opportunities for entrepreneurship that have traditionally been the territory of men.

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A Campus Champion for Women in Computer Science

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By Ari Levy (Writer, Businessweek) Editor's note: The percentage of female comp sci majors at Harvey Mudd College has tripled since the arrival of President Maria Klawe.

Klawe, 60, (...) arrived in 2006 from Princeton University, where she was dean of the engineering school. On her watch, the percentage of female computer science majors at Mudd, one of California’s prestigious Claremont colleges, has more than tripled, to 42 percent.

Nationally, women account for 14 percent of college graduates in the field, according to the Computing Research Assn.

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Startup CFO: What Do They Do, and When Do I Need One?

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By Betty Kayton (President, Innovative CFO) A Chief Financial Officer (CFO) means different things at different times in a company’s history.

The CFO at Apple, for example, will spend most of his time on investor relations (keeping Wall Street happy) and overall strategy.

By contrast, the CFO at a startup with under 50 people will spend most of her time on operational matters such as:

  • designing/implementing systems
  • developing a library of forms (employment agreements, outbound software license agreements…)
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Limited Not By Our Abilities, But By Vision (HIT)

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By Lisa Suennen (Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Psilos Group) “I hadn’t given any thought to the fact that it was theoretically a ‘women’s conference before I walked into the room. I’d just promised the organizer, a friend, that I would come,” said Vance Vanier, CEO of Navigenics.

“But walking into the room full of women had quite an impact; I realized how much I stood out and it was worth noting. It made me realize what women experience when they go to events like this."

Vanier was commenting on his experience as a male

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Startup Lessons Learned: Overrated Talent, Deliberate Persistence and Belief

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By Neng Bing Doh (Founder & CEO, HealthCrowd) All birds chirp or make sounds, but not all birds sing. Songbirds are a special group of birds and scientists believe that songbirds are born not knowing how to sing -- they learn their songs over time. Similar to the human language, bird songs are learned, not inherited, thus birds that sing better are essentially, superior learners.

I have come to believe that talent is overrated, and that like the songbird, each one of us can excel at anything we want.

Like many in Silicon Valley, I began my career

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The Women 2.0 Editorial Staff.