article placeholder

My First (And Not Last) Time at iOSDevCamp 2011

By Sophia Perl (Producer, PicPredict) A fellow iOS developer buddy of mine told me about iOSDevCamp, so I decided to register and check it out. The hackathon follows a similar format of a Startup Weekend:

  • Friday night –- networking, idea pitches, some teams form.
  • Saturday -– teams done forming, hack hack hack.
  • Sunday -- hack, submit, present your hack.

The big difference between iOSDevCamp and Startup Weekend is that iOSDevCamp focuses on progressing the iOS

... Read More...
article placeholder

Huffington Post Lists Top 27 Women in Tech to Follow on Twitter

By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0) Yesterday on the Huffington Post, this time the readers picked "27 Women in Tech You Need to Follow on Twitter."

These names are a response to the previous list of best women in tech to follow on Twitter that was posted by the Huffington Post a few days ago.

Here is the list of top women, chosen by the readers:

#1 -- Padmasree Warrior is the chief technology

... Read More...
article placeholder

Social Enterprise Empowers Women in Distressed Nations

By Siiri Morley (Founding Partner, Prosperity Candle) Prosperity Candle has a vision so big and so ambitious that we’ve encountered many naysayers along the way. That's to be expected in our line of work. Our team speaks about a million points of light -– millions of candles lighting up the world and empowering thousands of women in some of the toughest parts of the world, like Iraq, Rwanda, Haiti, Afghanistan, Burma and Sudan.

Empowerment of women in these countries attracts people, but once they would hear that we planned to do this as a for-profit social venture, interest often began to wane.

... Read More...
article placeholder

How To Price Your Startup’s Product or Service

By Grace Sales (Founder, CardWIX) Perhaps one of the trickiest part of launching a business is pricing your product or service.

Before launching my business, I did painful weeks of research before settling with my current pricing. During my research, the range of pricing for my industry came as a surprise. I found several companies that offer cutthroat prices.

I then asked myself -- where do I draw the line on pricing my product in terms of sustainability?

... Read More...
article placeholder

Growing A Social Network For Gardeners At 60

Editor's note: Lisa Marini Finerty passed away this morning in Rome after a battle with cancer. She will be sorely missed by the entrepreneurial and girl geek community in the Bay Area, and our thoughts are with her family and friends. By Lisa Marini Finerty (Founder, YourGardenShow)

The team behind the Web 2.0 social network for gardeners at YourGardenShow are not 20-year olds who grew up with the Internet and mobile devices. We're actually a husband and wife team who grew up navigating the Dewey Decimal system, and have a century of life experience between us.

We may not look like the prototypes of the world’s new technocratic elite, but are definitely keeping with the pace.

There is a new audience coming to gardening

... Read More...
article placeholder

3 Startup Lessons Learned from Convore’s Leah Culver

By Leah Culver (Founder & CEO, Convore) For my second startup Convore, I applied to Y Combinator because I wanted to be part of their alumni network. It's a great way to test out a product -- with thousands of Y Combinator alumni. Convore was accepted and part of the Winter 2011 group.

My motivations now are very different than when I just started doing startups. I'm not in startups for the money -- there are a lot better things to make money on.

The reason I am doing startups personally is

... Read More...
article placeholder

Apps Are Just Little Websites in Cheap Fur Coats

By Ellen Beldner (Director of User Experience, Groupon) While on the London Underground I saw a poster advertising Potiche, a movie starring Catherine Deneuve, who I think is the bees' knees. I made a note to myself to research it when I got back to WiFi.

Back on my iPad, I opened Safari and Googled for [ Potiche movie ]. The first couple of results were for IMDB (installed on my iPad) and Rotten Tomatoes (I may or may not have Flixter). Both sites took me to splash screens that suggested I download their apps. I got to thinking about why I'd gone to Google instead of using the native apps.

... Read More...
article placeholder

Networking, Travel, Growth: A Year of Entrepreneurship

By Virgilia Singh (Co-Founder & Advisor, GenJuice) It’s amazing how our lives can change by one move, one trip, one introduction, one experience, one passion, one love, one event, one goal, one year. Here is my timeline of events:

January 2010 -- An overly-eager 22 year old, I just graduated from business school and aimlessly worked at my job at a consulting firm, constantly concocting ideas and sharing them with my friends while never actually working on them longer than the strategy phase.

... Read More...
article placeholder

Heather Hiles, Changing Education Through Rrripple

By Joanne Wilson (Blogger & Angel Investor, Gotham Gal) Heather and I did not start out on the best foot.

We were introduced by someone that I have the utmost respect for and would meet with anyone he introduced me to. Heather was coming to NYC and we had a date to meet. At the last minute, she wanted me to come meet her up at the Startl conference, which didn't work for me.

Her company was chosen as one of the top 10 companies at the event and I told her she would be a lot better off staying there and making contacts then she would meeting with me. Heather happened to see my husband speak at the event and asked me if I could help her get 15 minutes of his time. Perhaps a total knee jerk reaction on my part for a variety of reasons, but that

... Read More...
article placeholder

CloudFlare Co-Founder Michelle Zatlyn on Raising Series B for Her Infrastructure Startup

By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0) Women 2.0 talks to CloudFlare’s Michelle Zatlyn about co-founding an engineering company. CloudFlare announced raising $20M Series B last week. Michelle Zatlyn: Opportunities can happen at anytime, any place. I was at grad school getting my MBA, and my classmate was telling me about what he was doing before business school which involved tracking spammers online. He said one day they’d like to do more with it, and I said let’s solve that bigger problem now —- and we started to do it.

... Read More...
article placeholder

From Siberia to Silicon Valley: Wanelo’s Deena Varshavskaya Shares Five Startup Lessons Learned

By Deena Varshavskaya (Founder & CEO, Wanelo) I like to think that my entrepreneurial training started when I was born in the far east of Siberia, Russia -- one of the coldest places on Earth where humans live (see #5 on this list). My family had been adventurous enough to willingly move to Siberia for the extra opportunities the region offered.

I moved to the US when I was 16. Right after college, I started working on my first startup -- an online directory of actors on video. Like any other problem I've ever wanted to solve, this one was motivated by a personal pain. At the time, I produced

... Read More...