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How To Stay Focused While Being A Visible, Active Member Of The Female Tech Community

There are always interesting engineering events on the weekends in Silicon Valley, such as hackathons. By Julia Grace (Co-Founder & CTO, WeddingLovely)

As the CTO of a small startup, my days are almost always spent head down, focused on our business and building our technical infrastructure. I'm writing code, fixing bugs, building features, thinking about what's next on our product roadmap and figuring out how we'll get there.

The adage is that most startups fail because they lose focus. The problem is that it can be difficult to focus when you also have to ensure that potential investors, future employees, and the tech community know that you exist.

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A Founder’s Tale: The Kickstarter Kraze

Writer's Bloq just launched a Kickstarter campaign introducing themselves to the world. (Golden quills if you support!) Here's a piece on what the experience has been like far for the Founder. By Nayia Moysidis (Founder, Writer's Bloq)

Every time you support, I tear up. I know I'm not supposed to say that. Founders shouldn't show a soft side. Because we've been told that showing emotion is equivalent to being weak. That admitting to feeling pain is a shade of cowardice. I disagree.

We're not supposed to tell you that business is personal, to share the secret we all know is true: we care. If we didn't care - obsessively so - we wouldn't be spending every waking moment and rare sleeping moments researching and thinking and perfecting a product that's invisible to a judgmental world.

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The New Girls’ Network: The Science Of Office Politics

Mothers are 79% less likely to be hired, only half as likely to be promoted, offered an average of $11,000 less in salary and held to higher performance and punctuality standards than an identical woman without children. By Joan C. Williams (Author, The New Girls' Network)

Advice literature for women is a crowded field and a predictable one. Most advice falls into one of two woefully inadequate camps:

1. Man up! The most common advice assumes that the problem is that women need to act more like men. Men tend to negotiate harder, act with more confidence and go after plum assignments that will require them to stretch and swagger. All this is good advice - sometimes, for some women. It will work for you if you tend to act in traditionally feminine ways: modest, happy to play support roles and attuned to the comfort of others

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Entrepreneurs’ Economic Confidence Slipping While Older Entrepreneurs Maintain Optimism, Says Kauffman/LegalZoom

Optimism for the economy exists between older entrepreneurs and those between 18 and 40 years of age. By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0)

According to the third-quarter Kauffman/LegalZoom Startup Confidence Index released last month, expectations for the U.S. economy declined overall while significant optimism emerged between older entrepreneurs and those between the ages of 18 and 40.

The study found that almost 40% of startup founders believe the economy will deteriorate over the next year, an increase from 36% in the second-quarter survey and 31% in the first-quarter survey. Entrepreneurs who were somewhat confident in future profitability fell from 43% in second quarter to 40% in the third-quarter

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“Women Unfiltered” – 2013 SXSW Panel Picker Submission

Living the dream and sharing the reality - get unfiltered advice from women in charge. By Rudina Seseri (Partner, Fairhaven Capital)

I am looking forward to a substantive panel and to a healthy discussion, which addresses not only the issue of how women in the tech ecosystem approach their careers, but also how the evolution of digital media has created new opportunities for the advancement of women in traditionally male-dominated fields.

The panel is titled "Women Unfiltered" and provides unfiltered advice from women in charge - exploring topics ranging from career advice to personal stories of challenge and achievement from these three female executives (a Fortune 500 Vice President, a Partner in a Venture Capital firm, and an Agency President) who

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Women In Business Challenge Finalist: Lois Gicheru Of Solafrique

"Everything worth having is worth working for, so never give up." - Lois Gicheru (Founder, Solafrique) By Joëlle Payet (Marketing & Communications Coordinator, BiD Network)

Lois Gicheru, this week’s Women in Business Challenge finalist, was born and raised in Kenya, and through her business endeavors is starting to resolve issues regarding access to clean, sustainable and consistent energy in Kenya.

With little proven reserves of oil or gas and an erratic supply of hydro-electric power, advances in consistent renewable energy are highly advantageous for Kenya, allowing it self-reliance. It was these inconsistencies in the supply of electricity which prompted Lois Gicheru to form Solafrique.

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L’Oréal Supports Women Entrepreneurs, Offers $25k Cash Prize

L'Oréal will award one finalist team at the PITCH NYC Conference & Competition a $25,000 cash prize! By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0)

This year, we've seen an energetic new wave of businesses focused on the female market, thanks to the L’Oréal Women In Digital Program which put a stake in the ground, focusing on women working in technology and digital marketing by providing recognition, testing opportunities and recruitment opportunities from the beauty industry.

Recently, the L’Oréal Women in Digital Program awarded five women entrepreneurs identified as pioneers in the new beauty industry: Bettina Hein (Founder & CEO, Pixibility), Doreen Bloch (Founder & CEO, Poshly), Kathryn Minshew (Founder, The Daily Muse), Sarah McIlroy (Founder & CEO, FashionPlaytes) and

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