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Skimble’s Backflipping Presentation Earns Top Score

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By Shana Lynch (Assistant Managing Editor, Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal) Heavy-hitting health venture capitalists and professionals were on hand for the DC to VC: Hit Startup Showcase event, organized by Morgenthaler Ventures. And one startup founder was doing backflips for their attention. Literally.

Maria Ly, co-founder of Skimble, which makes exercise applications for mobile, showed off her product with a backflip. Skimble, based in San Francisco, uses personal trainers to coach work-out exercises, with game-style add-ons to keep it fresh.

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Partner event: O’Reilly Android Open Conference

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Android Open (October 9-11 in San Francisco, CA) is the first conference to cover the entire Android ecosystem. We're gathering software engineers and programmers, product managers, marketers, and entrepreneurs to discuss, dissect, and explore all things Android. The comprehensive program will not only teach you new tips and tricks but will also present valuable business information geared to take your company to the next level of success. Women 2.0 members save 20% with discount code "ao11web" when you register here.

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Serial Entrepreneur Shares 10 Tips for Raising Venture Capital

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By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0) Founders and CEOs of early-stage startups are frequently faced with the daunting task of raising venture capital for their companies. Many face that challenge ill-equipped, just as serial entrepreneur Carol Realini had in 1997 when she co-founded her first company.

Since then, Carol has successfully raised over 175 million in financing for her companies.

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The Human Scale of Big Data (Strata NY 2011)

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By Mimi Rojanasakul (Student, Communications Design at Pratt Institute) The 2011 Strata Conference in New York City kicked off on Thursday with a brief introduction by O'Reilly's own Ed Dumbill. He ventures a bold assessment of the present social condition and how data science plays into it: the growth of our networks, government, and information feel as if they are slipping out of our control, evolving like a living organism. Dumbill is optimistic, placing the hope to navigate this new "synthetic world" on the emerging role of the data scientist.

The first keynote comes from Rachel Sterne, New York City's first Chief Digital Officer and a who's who in the

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Overcoming the Gender Gap: Women Entrepreneurs as Economic Drivers

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By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0) Today, the Kauffman Foundation released a paper on "Overcoming the Gender Gap: Women Entrepreneurs as Economic Drivers" by Lesa Mitchell. The paper showed hope for women entrepreneurs, reminding us the near future is ripe for an increase in high-growth women entrepreneurs:

There is no current shortage of highly qualified women in science and technology. ... Clearly, the United States has a sizable supply of women who possess both the subject-matter knowledge and the leadership skills to run

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Facebook’s First Female Engineer: “It Was Difficult to Break into the Boys’ Club”

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Ruchi Sanghvi was an engineer at Facebook for five years, and was the only woman who was an original member of the team. Now she runs her own company, Cove. She discusses the difficulties and, ultimately, the rewards of being a woman in the tech industry.  When Ruchi Sanghvi arrived for her first job interview at Facebook's headquarters, no one was there. She was undeterred. Impressed by the place, the people, and the product, which she had spent hours using as a student at Carnegie Mellon University, she became Facebook's first female engineer, one of the first

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Seed Funding: The Debt Versus Equity Debate Continues

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By Tina Baker (Contributing Writer, Forbes) Early stage funding for startups is getting complicated. In the past several years, many companies have raised initial seed funding through convertible loans instead of selling shares. In this type of funding, the loan, together with interest, automatically converts into the shares a company sells in its next funding round at a discount (ranges are between 10% and 30%) and there may be specific limitations on the size of that funding.

The primary reasons for their popularity are that using the note structure postpones a valuation discussion and

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How Sheryl Sandberg Helped Make An Entrepreneur’s Big Decision

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By Caroline O'Connor (Founder, Plum) A few months ago, I got two pieces of fantastic news at the same time: I had a unique opportunity to start a company, and I was expecting my first child.

As a fellow at Stanford's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (informally called the d.school) I'd managed to finagle a way into a class that I knew would help me follow the entrepreneurial path I'd always wanted to explore. Launchpad is a phenomenally successful class that challenges students to launch a company in ten weeks.

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Joanne Lang, About One, Woman Entrepreneur

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By Joanne Wilson (Blogger & Angel Investor, Gotham Gal) How can you not be blown away when you speak to a woman who has four boys under seven years old who has set out to create a company around cloud technology for families and moms? Having four kids under seven years old is an enormous task in itself but creating a start-up among the chaos is not only impressive it is inspiring. I literally did a little diligence to make sure that Joanne was the real deal but rest assured...she is. But lets go back to the start.

Joanne grew up in Manchester, north of London England. She studied at New Castle University and after graduating got a job

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Programs Increasing Number of Women Entrepreneurs

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By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0) You know the adage “two guys in a garage”? Well, not anymore -- there are a new crop of accelerators, incubators and programs aimed at creating diverse and remarkably innovative startups.

Thanks to this new trend in the startup industrial complex, “accelerators are offering the guidance to men and women, but the women are taking advantage of that and that's made a big difference -- particularly for women," said Francine Sommer with Village Ventures in a DigiDay panel discussion earlier this year.

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Mobile Startup Exec Shares 5 Tips for Early-Stage Mobile Startups

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By Lauren Bigelow (COO, WeeWorld) During my career, I’ve been around the mobile block a few times. Currently I am Chief Operating Officer of WeeWorld and our core offerings are online but recently we’ve successfully translated our iconic brand onto mobile as well.

Before I joined WeeWorld, I held executive positions at a range of emerging technology companies some that were involved in mobile including picture recognition and mobile advertising products. I’ve attended and spoken at many conferences and like most people

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