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How Does Your Startup Idea Fit Into The Patent Landscape?

Free website allows entrepreneurs to visualize how their ideas fit into the patent landscape. By Anup Desai (Founder, Patent Unaverse)

Ever have an idea for a business and wonder what your competition is like? If you’re a person with entrepreneurial leanings like me, then you probably know what I’m talking about.

Typically, I start at a problem that I’m interested in solving, and arrive at a rough-draft solution to the “pain”. Then I Google to see if others have had a similar epiphany. Usually the problem is well recognized, but the solution may not be so clear.

Let’s say that now I have a unique solution, and I want to understand my competitive landscape and the competitive barriers (e.g. patents) that exist. After combing the Internet, should I proceed

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How To Make A Facebook Mobile App In Seven Minutes Flat

Facebook Mobile App in 20, no 7, Minutes By Anna Billstrom (iOS & Facebook App Developer, Self)

I’m speaking at the AT&T HTML5 Hackathon tonight, and here are my slides, and basically my entire presentation.

OMG UNICORNS AND PONIES

Facebook has a nifty Mobile Web SDK and tutorial, and that’s what I’m going to make. The application is Unicorns and Ponies - a simple “find fun posts on Facebook about unicorns and ponies”.

I had fun making it. I just timed myself and it was 5 minutes and 30 seconds, so hopefully... if I can control the digressions and asides, might be able to do it.

This is a reprise of two different talks - “Facebook in 20 minutes” - the app was called “Popularity”, and judged your popularity on the size of your friend list. Then, re-did that talk “Facebook in 20 MInutes” - that app was “I’m Pregnant!” determining if you were talking more about babies and congratulations on your feed.

Both are server-side PHP SDK tutorials, with open graph and authentication.

Mobile web is far easier to setup, so in a way halving this talk makes sense. Here is the overview:

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The Founder Institute Seeks Female Founders, Offers Fellowships

Founder Institute's Female Founder Fellowship program increased 30% female graduates globally. By Jonathan Greechan (Partner, The Founder Institute)

Last year, we unveiled a new program - Female Founder Fellowship (FFF) - in an effort to grow the number of female technology founders by providing free course fees for our best female applicants.

At the time, 16% of our graduates were female, and our stated goal was to double that number and ultimately graduate 175 female-led companies a year.

The FFF program helped spur a 30% increase in female graduates globally in just a few months time.

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5 Things Women Entrepreneurs Need To Know About Pitching

YEC Women share their answers for how to find fellow women entrepreneurs to meet. By Natalie MacNeil (Co-Founder, YEC Women)

The following answers are provided by YEC Women. Co-Founded by Natalie MacNeil and Scott Gerber, YEC Women is an initiative of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the country’s most promising young entrepreneurs. Women entrepreneurs from YEC answer the question:

What do female founders need to know before pitching their company to investors for the first time?

Her Campus co-founder and CEO Stephanie Kaplan

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How Lynda Hit $70M In Revenue Without A Penny From Investors

This article has been syndicated from TechCrunch. By Rip Empson (Writer, TechCrunch)

As Ned Flanders would say, education in the U.S. is in “a dilly of a pickle.” At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the cost of education has become unsustainable.

Student loan debt is over $1 trillion, unemployment remains high for the recently graduated, and non-traditional students — older people, single mothers, workers looking to re-train — are returning to academia and learning programs in droves, putting even more competitive pressure on already-scant on-site resources.

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LinkedIn To Acquire Rashmi Sinha’s SlideShare For $118M

SlideShare co-founder and CEO @rashmi tweets "Yes it's true" this afternoon. By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0)

In breaking news, LinkedIn has announced plans to acquire SlideShare for $118.75M, in a combination of approximately 45% cash and approximately 55% stock.

SlideShare was founded in 2006 by CEO Rashmi Sinha, who commented, "We built SlideShare to help professionals share presentations and connect people through content. What we can build with LinkedIn, the largest professional network on the Internet, is the most natural extension of this vision. I am excited about what we can build together." Congrats to Rashmi and the entire SlideShare team!

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A Successful Husband-Wife Team: Moonfruit Co-Founders Wendy Tan White And Joe White (Interview)

Wendy Tan White: "We seeded the company with our own money. I put in $50,000 to start with." By Sramana Mitra (Founder, One Million By One Million)

Wendy Tan White is the CEO of Moonfruit, a company she co-founded with Eirik Pettersen and Joe White.

Moonfruit is an on-demand website development platform that allows anyone to develop a website for any purpose in a matter of minutes.

Prior to Moonfruit, Wendy worked at Arthur Andersen as an IT consultant and helped establish Egg. Joe worked as a website developer while finishing college and completed projects for clients such as Disney and Egg.

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How We Hire: Interviewing, Contracting The First Startup Employees

A week-long contract with a potential employee is enough time to assess whether you want to hire. By Elizabeth Yin (Co-Founder, LaunchBit)

Making our first full-time hire was really nerve-wracking.

Finding someone really sharp AND would fit in super well was going to be a challenge. So for full-time candidates, we've adopted what companies like Pulse and Hubspot do. We work with potential candidates on a contract basis first before extending a full-time offer.

Having done this a few times now, I *love* their method.

Our process from start to finish is pretty simple. First, we screen resumes and interview people. If we find someone

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Eco-Friendly Flash Sales Site LovingEco Acquired By JP Selects

LovingEco acquired by JP Selects to further their mission of eco-friendly product discovery. By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0)

Congratulations to co-founders Justine Lassoff and Melinda Moore - their startup LovingEco was acquired by JP Selects, the largest digital platform for sustainable brands and products, for a reported $1M.

By joining forces, the team at LovingEco expands their mission of helping people discover the best eco-friendly products to protect and create a more sustainable planet. LovingEco had raised a seed round from angel investors in April 2012.

Women 2.0 talks to CEO Justine Lassoff about starting

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5 Ridiculous Myths About Women In Technology

YEC Women dispell myths about women in technology, entrepreneurship and business. By Natalie MacNeil (Co-Founder, YEC Women)

The following answers are provided by YEC Women. Co-Founded by Natalie MacNeil and Scott Gerber, YEC Women is an initiative of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the country’s most promising young entrepreneurs. Women entrepreneurs from YEC answer the question:

What are the most ridiculous myths you hear about women in technology?

#1 - We Have to Focus on Fashion

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Women Entrepreneurs Not Being All They Can Be

Women lag behind their male counterparts in using online marketing to generate ROI. By Geri Stengel (Founder, Ventureneer)

Women entrepreneurs, take note: As a group, you are dragging your feet when it comes to using and building your confidence in online marketing. It’s a good bet that your foot-dragging is a drag on your revenue as well.

The conclusion comes from Ditch Digital Dabbling: How Small Businesses + Nonprofits Can Master Online Marketing, a survey conducted by Ventureneer (my company) and Message Medium. Among the findings: the sad fact that women are lagging behind their male counterparts in using online marketing and generating a return on their investment.

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Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) To Work – Should We Go There?

The BYOD phenomenon has been slowly but surely gaining momentum since 2008. By Farida Bambot (Health IT & Electronic Health Records Consultant, Self)

Technology-savvy consumers are clamoring for the convenience of the “coolest” mobility devices in the workplace.

Employers, on the other hand, find themselves struggling to keep up with the pace of device innovation or change entrenched deployments. In addition, the logistics and costs associated with procuring the latest tablet or smart phone for the workforce often impact the adoption of new technologies into the workplace.

In the midst of this tension, allowing employees to bring their own devices to work may appear as a solution for both the budget-challenged employer and the frustrated employee.

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How To Get Hired Doing What You Actually Love

Sharing brilliance to be better young entrepreneurs. By Kelly Azevedo (Contributing Blogger, Young Entrepreneurs Council)

A recent Pew study reveals what many of us have already observed: re-employed workers — those who lose their jobs and are then hired elsewhere — are more likely to consider themselves overqualified for what becomes their current position and are less likely to get a sense of identify from their work. In other words, they end up at jobs they don’t really want.

Whether you’ve lost your job and are looking to be the exception to this rule, or you’d like to trade your current position for one that better matches your qualifications, here are three strategies to help you receive an offer for the job that you actually want:

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