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When An Idea Has Legs: appSmitten Off to a Running Start!

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By Ellen Pack (Co-Founder, AppSmitten) The three of us sat around the table. We were pretty excited, but would we still love our latest startup idea in the morning? Well it turns out we did, this one had legs.

The idea had come to us naturally. We were hanging out with our smartphones, excitedly sharing new app discoveries with each other.

Anna was talking up GasBuddy, I was raving about Fooducate and Sarah was all over Pulse. As we chatted, we realized that none of us went seeking

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Earthly Pursuits Accomplished in Entrepreneurship (Barcelona)

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By Ariadna Mateu (Co-Founder, Innovalley.us) Editor's note: Ariadna Mateu is co-hosting Founder Friday Barcelona on November 4, 2011. FREE RSVP for Founder Friday here. "What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes? Here is the key to your earthly pursuits.” -- Carl Jung

The best path between two points is not always a straight line: in fact, we often have to take many turns before going back to the beginning convinced that there’s is no better starting point.

I don’t remember making an entrance to the world of

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“Stories of Leadership” Free Event on November 2 in Menlo Park

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By Tara Chklovski (Founder & CEO, Iridescent) The Technovation Challenge is a technology and entrepreneurship program for high school girls, founded by Dr. Anuranjita Tewary (Sr. Data Scientist, Linkedin) and implemented by Iridescent, a national, science-education nonprofit.

Over the course of ten weeks, girls work with professional women in technology to develop mobile phone apps. The girls learn to use a visual programming language called App Inventor. They present their phone apps and business plans to a panel of VCs at a high visibility “Pitch Night” event.

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Leah Busque, TaskRabbit Founder, Interview with Foundation

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By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief) Kevin Rose interviews Leah Busque (Founder, TaskRabbit) for his new series Foundation. She talks about a love for efficiency, math and computer science, and going to a small women's college to be one of six computer science majors.

After graduating, she worked at IBM as a software engineer where she had to decide between a career at IBM or starting her own startup. The real prototype came when she left IBM and spent her summer coding -- she calls it one of the funnest summer of her life.

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Moving Your Startup Forward, Even If By A Tweet

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By Brandy Alexander-Wimberly (Founder & CMO, Buyvite) I am currently in startup mode on Buyvite, a business that received funding and support from Rocket Ventures. Buyvite is expected to launch in the coming months and is a product based in the social commerce space. Joining forces with Rocket Ventures, a local seed fund and incubator has been invaluable in taking my concept to the next level.

This is one of the most important things an early stage founder can do -- Align yourself with a group dedicated to helping startups. This will not only help position your concept for funding, but most can also assist with team building.

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Cisco Tech Chief Outlines Women’s Advantages in Tech

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By Bianca Bosker (Technology Editor, The Huffington Post) Cisco Systems' chief technology officer Padmasree Warrior is one of the most powerful women in Silicon Valley.

She is responsible for around two-thirds of Cisco's revenues, which totaled $43 billion in the most recent fiscal year and, with her colleague Pankaj Patel, oversees more than 22,000 engineers.

But Warrior nearly bypassed a career in business altogether -- turned off from the tech industry by the dearth of women in the field, she instead aspired to be part of academia.

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Matchmaker-Turned Entrepreneur: How To Find A Co-Founder

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By Talia Goldstein (Co-Founder & CMO, Let's Do) Editor's note: Talia Goldstein is co-hosting Founder Friday Los Angeles on November 4, 2011. FREE RSVP for Founder Friday here. Picking the right co-founder is a lot like finding the perfect match. Prior to co-founding Let's Do, I co-founded a successful dating startup. I moonlighted as a matchmaker for the site (a founder needs multiple revenue streams) in between developing strategic partnerships and branding. I matched hundreds of people and got it down to a science.

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Is Technology the Best Sector For Female Advancement?

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By Samantha Kemp-Jackson (Founder & Principal, Triple M Communications) The announcement that two of the largest technology companies are now headed by women gives us pause. Ginni Rometty’s just-announced role as the next CEO of IBM, in addition to Meg Whitman, who became CEO of Hewlitt-Packard (HP) last month forever changes the landscape of America’s high-tech world. Furthermore, these recent appointments redefine what has thus far been a largely male-dominated field, at least at the senior ranks. Both women spoke at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women summit that was held in Laguna Niguel, California in early October.

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First Round Winners for Rapleaf Personalization Fund

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By Caitlin MacDonald (Head of Marketing, Rapleaf) We are officially announcing our first round winners for the Rapleaf Personalization Fund -– a fund dedicated to supporting developers interested in creating projects built around data and personalization.

We’re extremely excited to showcase the first round of winners. We’ve already received over 85 applicants in the first month, covering a wide breadth of personalization and data-related services, ranging from highly targeted daily deal sites to event recommendation services.

The following winners are now live with Rapleaf data in their platforms to get their startups up and running -- check em out:

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Why I’ll Quit Playing Your Mobile Game

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By Sophia Perl (Founder, PicPredict) The mobile gaming space is really exciting right now.

Anyone notice that AT&T is offering the iPhone 3GS for $0 now? The user base (e.g., TAM) is rapidly growing and there are no dominant players in the space. Major game companies from console and social platforms (e.g., EA, Zynga) are starting to take notice and want a piece of the mobile game action. It seems that almost every other small game company is joining in as well.

However, there are major challenges for developing games for mobile devices, like working with the limitations

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Women Entrepreneurs Need More Collaboration and Networking

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Editor's note: This is a Op-Ed titled "The Tenacity and Networking It Takes" by the Kauffman Foundation's CEO Carl Schramm as translated from Turkish, Radikal (October 20, 2011). The former Canadian foreign minister Pierre Pettigrew was possibly the first to state that the era of globalization would count women among its winners. And indeed, women have made great strides, virtually all over the world, as far as their labor force participation and their level of education are concerned.

According to the World Bank, women accounted for 40.1% of the global labor force in 2009. Women now account for the majority of university students in countries including Malaysia, Libya, Venezuela and Iran. And yet, for all these successes, there is one

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