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Happy Business Marriage Part 1: The Background Check

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By Heather N. Shafer (Intellectual Property Attorney, Independent) The creative endeavor is one of the most beautiful relationships that two or more people can enter into together. Creative ventures thrive on collaboration and there is no law against how many can join the venture. However, it is important to know a sobering effect of joint works and inventions under both the patent and the copyright laws:

If there is more than one inventor or creator -– each inventor or creator owns an equal and undivided interest in the whole invention or creation.

This means that each of the co-inventors or co-creators can

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Disrupt Yourself: Throw Out Your Current Performance Metrics

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By Whitney Johnson (Founding Partner, Rose Park Advisors) Notwithstanding the considerable career and financial (I am the primary breadwinner) risks involved, it was time to leave my comfortable perch and become an entrepreneur. Time to disrupt myself. We typically define disruption as a low-end product or service that eventually upends an industry. But I've found that the rules of disruption apply to the individual too. Or as thought leader Jennifer Sertl writes, "innovation ultimately begins on the inside."

Six years into my mid-career move, here are some lessons learned from my personal disruptive trajectory:

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Changing the Ratio at SXSW 2012 Starts with the Vote

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By Emily Gannett (Co-Founder, Change the Ratio) So what constitutes an amazing panel? Well, great content presented by smart people, of course, but another initiative important to the SXSW 2012 planning team this year is diversity. As the tech industry continues its rapid evolution, diversity of voices has been key in this growth with women-lead initiatives leading the charge.

Which means that in 2012 we should be seeing even more amazing panels led by women, right? Right -- but it couldn't hurt to vote for a few, just to be safe. To that end, Change The Ratio has

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Silicon Valley’s Scarcest Resource: Technical Founders

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By Laurie Segall (Reporter, CNN Money) Tiffani Bell, a NewMe participant and founder of online appointment booking site Pencil You In, relied on her coding chops to get her startup ready in time for Demo Day -- an event where Silicon Valley investors gather to field pitches from companies seeking funding.

Bell studied computer science at Howard University and went on to intern at IBM and Hewlett-Packard before working as a Web developer for a government contractor.

"It's important to have a technical background to make

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Women Get Mentored, Men Get Sponsored: The Failure of Mentors

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By Cassie Phillipps (Executive Producer, Failcon) I believe it’s not that women need more mentors; it’s that we need to change our relationship with mentors. Erin Wolf made the distinction, and I think it is very valid, that “Women get Mentored. Men Get Sponsored.” If you want to get ahead in business, you need to find mentors who are far more advanced than you, who can (and will) actively influence things in your favor.

This also reflects the problem with the statistic above: that only 25% of people had active mentors. If someone has not agreed that they are your mentor, they will not go to bat for you or seek

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Success Largely a Matter of Hanging on After Others Have Let Go

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By Mara Lewis (Co-Founder & CEO, stopped.at) Entrepreneurs often get asked how many times they’ve failed. It's a typical question in Silicon Valley and one that most of us answer by listing how many startups we’ve built (and how many startups we’ve buried). Failed startups are like entrepreneurial battle scars. The more you fail, the more bad ass you come across... but the real question we should be asking is –- how long did you keep trying before you gave up?

It’s easy to engineer a prototype, test the market potential, and if it doesn’t get above the noise in the first few months -–

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Partner event: App Developers Conference and Hackathon

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App Developers Conference (ADC) and Hackathon are taking place October 26-27, 2011 in Santa Clara, CA. The conference addresses key components of app development, discovery and revenue. Coverage focuses on apps for mobile devices and tablets. More than 50 speakers from Pandora, Walmart, Smule, Samsung, AT&T, Churn Labs, Netflix, Nissan, Nielson, BMW, Pulse, Microsoft, OpenFeint, Qualcomm, Intel Capital, lolapps and others are participating. Save $100 with discount code "women2vip".

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Rebuttal to Penelope Trunk: Redefining Life’s Blueprint

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By Heidi Isern (Contributing Writer, Women 2.0) I live in an amazing ecosystem of women who defy convention, reinvent the rules, and passionately take risks to better the world around them.

This isn’t everyone’s habitat and the team at Women 2.0 brought it to my attention. We were sent "A Blueprint for a Woman’s Life” by Penelope Trunk. It wasn’t any blueprint I wanted, nor a doctrine I wanted the women I care about to pay attention to. Perhaps she wrote it to incite controversy and its natural follower, dear ol’ fame. Perhaps she really believes

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Black Founders Host Pitch Party (September 8 in San Francisco)

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By Nnena Ukuku (Co-Founder & CEO, Black Founders) What is a Pitch Party?

A Pitch Party is a chance for founders to practice their pitch and receive feedback from investors.

Confirmed investors in attendance will include Gwen Edwards (Golden Seeds), Nancy Pfund (DBL Investors), Cameron Lester (Azure Capital Partners), and Bryce Roberts (O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures).

You can register for the event here. We have slots for 10 entrepreneurs to pitch for 3 minutes each.

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Fostering More Female Tech Entrepreneurs

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By Ellen Lee (Contributing Writer, Intuit Blog) When it comes to women working in Silicon Valley technology businesses -— particularly women at the helm — the numbers remain painfully small.

Less than 5 percent of tech startups are founded by female entrepreneurs, estimates Shaherose Charania, co-founder and CEO of Women 2.0, an organization that helps foster female tech entrepreneurs.

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Serial Entrepreneur Reframes “Having It All” (Work/Life Balance)

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By Monisha Perkash (Co-Founder & CEO, LUMOback) “You can have it all, just not at the same time.”

These were the words of advice from a well-intentioned mentor who was trying to help me figure out how to pursue an entrepreneurial career and also start a family.

I knew she was trying to be reassuring, but I bristled at her words. To start with, I disliked being told that there were any limits to what I could pursue. Further, I wondered, if your 30s are when

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Why Speed Networking is Better than Speed Dating

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By Melissa Fudor (Program Manager, Women in Wireless) Whether you're looking for Mr. Right or to meet "the right people", the goal behind speed networking and speed dating is pretty much the same -- to make connections and build relationships in the shortest amount of time. But adding names to your rolodex rather than your little black book may not only be a better use of your time but a lot easier too.

Here are the top three reasons why speed networking is better than speed dating:

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(Video) The Evolution of Pitching Onstage as a Startup CEO

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By Ellie Cachette (Founder, ConsumerBell) At the BlogHer conference, I ran into the Director of BlogWorld Expo and told her how much time I've taken into pitching. "You're kidding!" she exclaimed.

No. From rewriting logic flow of my pitch, to studying my body language, my phrases, tones, colors I wore... We would film me presenting to team members late in the office and employees got to chose which facts or tidbits they liked the most.

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Mobile Future Forward? The Next 5 Years in Mobile in One Day

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By Chetan Sharma (President, Chetan Sharma Consulting) The global mobile industry is the most vibrant and the fastest growing industry. Just look at the 2011 numbers -- $1.3 Trillion in industry revenue, more than $300 Billion in data revenues, more than 6 Billion subscriptions, more than 1.6 Billion devices sold, almost 500 Million smartphones sold. The mobile ecosystem has become much more dynamic, lightning fast paced, and breathtakingly unpredictable.

Mobile Future Forward on September 12 in Seattle, Washington is a premier mobile thought-leadership summit that attracts the industry leaders, innovators, and doers to brainstorm

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Partner event: WIE Symposium (September 18-19 in NYC)

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On September 18 and 19, 2011 in New York City, Sarah Brown, Arianna Huffington and Donna Karan will host the annual WIE Symposium (Women: Inspiration & Enterprise). Designed to inspire and empower the next generation of women leaders, the dynamic women’s conference is timed to coincide with the Clinton Global Initiative and the UN General Assembly. The event features powerful speakers, lively panels and an inspirational awards ceremony. Women 2.0 members save $100 on an early bird tickets with discount code "WIE2587" (expires August 29).

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The Women 2.0 Editorial Staff.