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How To Create Low-Cost Walking, Talking Advertisements For Your Brand As A One-Woman Shop

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Women 2.0 readers save $150 on the author's Smarter Branding For Startups class for creating a powerful brand. By Brenda Bence (Instructor, Udemy)

Time and again, I hear the same branding myth from business owners: “I don’t have the staff I need to focus on marketing.”

The truth is: Your marketing team is actually very large, even if you’re a solo-preneur. How is that possible?

Your marketers include anybody who can spread the word about your brand. Leveraged correctly and given the right tools, every single person you know (and every single person that they know) has the potential to become a cheerleader for your brand.

I coined this phrase some time ago: “Every time you shake a hand, you market your brand.”

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Wandy Hoh, MeeGenius Founding CEO, Raises $2.4M Series A

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A mom of three, the former VP of Pomona Capital Wandy Hoh raises funding for children's ebooks. By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0)

Children's digital reading store MeeGenius CEO Wandy Hoh raised $2.4M Series A last week. The round included investment from Sunrise Capital and Sonja Perkins through Broadway Angels.

Co-founders Wandy Hoh and David Park developed the MeeGenius product after 16 months of research and development. The startup has been around since 2010 and MeeGenius apps have been downloaded more than 1.5 million times. MeeGenius is free to download and offers digitized children's stories with useful features like word highlighting and audio playback.

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Analogies Between The Olympics And Being A Startup CEO

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There are many analogies between Olympic events and being a startup CEO here in the valley. By Laura Yecies (CEO, SugarSync)

Like many of you, our family has enjoyed watching a bit of the Olympics. While I’m usually not one to watch much TV in the evening I’ve enjoyed a few hours of watching the games. My favorites are the gymnastics (both men and women) as well as anything else acrobatic – diving, jumping etc. My least favorite is swimming and beach volleyball.

Despite the heavy “schmaltz” factor, I also enjoy learning about the athletes, their personal stories and obstacles they’ve overcome. I’m sure these are popular because many of us can

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The Real Story About The Gilt Book “By Invitation Only”

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These women not only took an opportunity and made it happen, but they navigated successfully the hyper-growth phase that brings a whole new set of challenges to early stage companies. By Deborah Jackson (Founder & CEO, Plum Alley)

At JumpThru, we have a bookshelf full of business books that cover topics such as entrepreneurship, game theory, lean start-up methodology, innovation and disruption.

These books have provided us with guidance, inspiration and new thinking on a broad range of topics. Many of these books have been released in the last 12 months and most are written by men and some are written by women like Dr. Louann Brizendine who wrote The Female Brain, a must read to reset your thinking about how the male and female brain work.

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Meet The Women in Business Challenge Finalists, Starting With Kiki Kamanu In Nigeria

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Kiki Kamanu wants to assist female entrepreneurs in Nigeria gain access to the market. By Joëlle Payet (Marketing & Communications Coordinator, BiD Network)

Since 2009, the Women in Business Challenge has provided support, coaching, visibility and finance to over 600 entrepreneurial women in emerging economies. This year, five outstanding applicants were selected from almost 300, and chosen on account of their potential for growth and the overall quality of their business plans.

During the final stage of the Women in Business Challenge, the five finalists will be coached by professionals before having the opportunity to meet face-to-face with high end investors at the Growing SMEs event at the Hague in November.

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Empowering Latinas: 3 Tips To Enter Corporate America, Succeed In A Tough Economy

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Advice for Latino young professionals to climb the corporate ladder in America. By Yvonne Garcia (National Vice President, ALPFA)

According to the U.S. Labor Department, job openings rose in July. However, the continued high unemployment underscores weakness in the labor market which must be daunting for recent graduates.

Today, even a college degree from a top-notch school is no guarantee for a job, but here is some advice young Latinas can embrace to succeed as they embark on their careers.

In today’s workplace, only those who can keep learning, stay current on business trends, find mentors and

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CodeEd: Combating Declining K-12 Computer Science Offerings

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In my research for CodeEd, I’ve learned that K-12 computer science offerings are actually on the decline. By Jenny Ye (Summer Intern, CodeEd)

This summer, I’ve been tutoring in New York and developing curriculum for CodeEd, a startup organization that has been bringing computer science to middle school girls in underserved communities since 2010. I am currently studying computer science at Harvard University and I grew up in New York City in the heart of Chinatown, where I first got involved with direct service and organizing.

Working with CodeEd has been an incredibly rewarding experience and such a great way to combine my two passions of technology and community work.

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Confusion Is Your Friend

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The most important life lesson my mathematician father taught me. By Adda Birnir (Co-Founder, Balance Media & Skillcrush)

My dad defies every stereotype of an absent minded math professor - except for the absent minded part, he is that. Otherwise he bears little resemblance to the stereotype: he is good-looking, funny, an avid surfer, and best of all, an amateur poet.

When I graduated from high school my dad gave a toast at my graduation party.

"I look forward to the day Adda sees how useful calculus is and finds that she can use science to help solve the world’s problems," he said.

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Wantworthy, Co-Founded By CEO Lauren McDevitt, Raises $1M Seed Funding

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NYC-based Wantworthy graduates from TechStars, raises seed funding to accelerate product development. By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0)

Wantworthy announced raising $1M in seed funding, led by RRE Ventures, Google Ventures, Quotidian Ventures, and several NYC-area angels also participated.

2011 NYC TechStars graduate Wantworthy aims to help you keep track of everything you want to buy, and is working on a feature to alert you when prices drop. Similar sites for social shopping/bookmarking include Pinterest and Wanelo.

Co-Founder and CEO Lauren McDevitt is a

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Female Founders To Watch: Women With Solid Technical Chops – And Own It

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For a thorough list of technical women founding companies (CTOs, CEOs, VPs of engineering and more), check out this list. By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0)

Of the five finalists for Entrepreneur Magazine's ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR award, there is a female founder - Limor Fried.

The MIT-educated electrical engineer (pictured) started electronics hobbyist company Adafruit Industries to distribute DIY electronics toys like littleBits and Arduino items. Vote for her for "Entrepreneur of the Year" for the eponymous magazine - go on, go do it!

It's been pointed out on Twitter that the recent Mashable list of 44 female founders includes hardly any technical

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Supporting Women In Tech: This Is How You Do It.

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When you’re assessing a space (virtual or otherwise) that you’re interested in being part of, one of the things you look for is evidence of other women’s presence. That’s not the only thing you look for but it matters. By Lauren Bacon (Author, The Boss of You)

I‘ve worked in tech for fifteen years. In those fifteen years, women have remained a small minority in the sector, particularly in technical jobs (read: programmers/engineers/developers). A lot of people I know have bemoaned the numbers, and discussed various ways we might address the gender imbalance, but I haven’t seen a lot of success stories (There are some – don’t get me wrong. Just not a ton.)

A few weeks ago, though, something big and wonderful happened. And it is going to change the ratio.

It happened, by the way, thanks to a bunch of smart

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Women Working And Thriving In The Video Game Industry

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Designer. Programmer. Developer. Producer. Artist. You might be familiar with these roles, but if they don’t appeal to you, there are others — you can still have a career in video games. By Daniela Capistrano (Writer, Current)

Women of all backgrounds have the opportunity to thrive in the video game industry while changing the way that women and people of color are represented in games — but they need the skills, personal habits and networks that will support their career goals.

Students: Do not believe the myth that boys are better than girls in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). It’s not true. And although STEM skills are helpful in the video game industry - and female programmers are needed - you don’t need to know how to code to work in video games (but consider learning

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How Women Lead Differently, And Why It Matters

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Long excluded from traditional power structures, women lead differently than men. Restricted access to resources has made ingenuity a matter of survival for many... By Alyse Nelson (Writer, Fast Company)

Research shows that women direct up to 90% of their income to community infrastructure and improvement, whereas men reinvest 30% to 40% of their income.

The World Bank's 2012 World Development Report finds that women with decision-making power accelerate positive development outcomes, and studies from the World Economic Forum confirm a strong correlation between an increase in gender equality and an increase in gross domestic product per capita.

It's now universally accepted that women

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Recognizing The Gap Between Hype And Reality (Living The Dream)

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We had a grand vision for the company and I believed in Daniel’s ability to execute from the technical side of things and mine to develop a business around it. By Erica Brescia (CEO, BitRock)

One of my first lessons in business came at about the age of 5 after tiring of selling lemonade and bags of baby carrots out of our makeshift stand in my driveway in northern California. My best friend and I decided to try something a little more inventive. We caught a slew of tadpoles in a nearby pond and launched our tadpole stand. Sadly, there were no takers. My father, an entrepreneur himself, took this opportunity to explain the basics of supply and demand.

The desire to start and build my own company has always been a constant in my life. The challenge that I had was that I wasn’t sure exactly what kind of company I wanted to start.

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LaunchBit, Co-Founded By CEO Elizabeth Yin And COO Jennifer Chin, Raises $960K To Grow Ad Network For Email

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A round of seed funding and a planned move to join Las Vegas's burgeoning tech scene were announced. By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0)

The rising popularity of email newsletters as a reliable source of information dissemination - being that social media is very noisy right now - spurred high school best friends Elizabeth Yin and Jennifer Chin to devise a solution for advertising in newsletters - LaunchBit.

This week, LaunchBit announced on TechCrunch raising $960k in seed funding from 500 Startups, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s VegasTech Fund and others.

Women 2.0 talked to Elizabeth Yin about the fundraising process and her tips for entrepreneurs:

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