Girls In Tech

Earlier this year, the Federal Communications Commission and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation challenged American citizens to develop software applications (apps) that deliver personalized, actionable information to people that are least likely to be online. Using hyper-local government and other public data, people developed apps that will enable Americans to benefit from broadband communications — regardless of geography, race, economic status, disability, residence on Tribal land, or degree of digital or English literacy — by providing easy access to relevant content.

This week, we’re excited to unveil the winners at a ceremony at 10 AM PST Thursday December 15 in Silicon Valley and online at http://appsforcommunities.challenge.gov/

The Apps for Communities winner celebration details are:

Date: December 15, 2011 from 10 am to 11 am
Location: Andreessen Horowitz Offices in Silicon Valley
RSVP: appchallenge@fcc.gov

At the celebration, you’ll find out our Grand Prize winner ($30,000), Second and Third Prize winners ($20k and $10k respectively), the five Runners Up prizes ($1k each), and the bonus prize winners!

Checkout all the eligible apps: http://appsforcommunities.challenge.gov/submissions

Remember to follow @communityapps on Twitter, or the Apps for Communities Facebook page for updates and news.  Hope to see you there!

Re-post source: http://appsforcommunities.challenge.gov/updates/116

Tags: Adriana Gascoigne, Andreessen Horowitz, apps, Apps for Communities Challenge, girls in tech, women in tech
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Girls in Tech is a proud supporter of the “Boom Boom! Revolution,” which recently launched its Boom Boom! App, allowing iPhone and iPod touch users to easily share the acts of kindness experienced in everyday life. The “Everyday Boom Boom!” (EBB!) is any underground act of guerilla goodness performed by an individual. The Boom Boom! App allows users a platform to acknowledge and celebrate these acts of kindness   while on-the-go.

The Boom Boom! App expands on the online kindness community where “Agents of Altruism” post about their experiences with acts of kindness cards and their everyday encounters with guerilla goodness. After downloading the app, the next time you witness random acts of kindness or are the recipient of someone else’s guerilla goodness, just snap a picture, tell the story of what happened and upload it to the Everyday Boom Boom! stream. This “Good Stream” allows users to stay informed of what’s happening in the world, contribute the good they witness or instigate and be a part of the conversation that’s celebrating what’s right with the world.

To download the free Boom Boom! App and join the uprising of guerilla goodness™, visit: Free app.
To learn more about the physical kindness cards decks, Boom Boom! Cards, visit: Kindness cards decks.

Tags: Adriana Gascoigne, Boom Boom App, girls in tech, iphone, Kindness, Philanthropy, Social Entrepreneurship, women in tech
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Moredays, the web’s first time-management application based on images and graphics, recently announced its public beta launch.

Moredays provides users with an effortless way to manage tasks, events, notes and contacts, and create a visually appealing calendar, enriched with images and sketches. With the public beta launch, the company also announced new beta features including Google Calendar and Google Contacts synchronization, as well as new stamps, sketches and backgrounds.

Girls in Tech is extraordinarily excited to showcase this application since the majority of women in our memberbase juggle many different activities including a day job, hobbies, a family as well as entertaining new innovations and entrepreneurial endeavors, so we need intuitive organizational tools to help us manage our calendars more effectively.

Future beta upgrades will include iPhone and iPad apps by the end of the year; then Android and Windows Phone 7 apps early in 2012.

Tags: Adriana Gascoigne, Application, girls in tech, ipad, iphone, Moredays, Organizational tool, women in tech
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A few days ago, OnlineMBA blog published a feature piece on 15 Successful Startups Founded by Women so we wanted to share the list with our Girls in Tech readers, while noting that there are many more startups and successful companies led by women that were not included in this piece. This list underscores how important women are to the development and design of future technologies, touching upon a variety of different sectors such as healthcare, education, retail, non-profit . . . the list goes on. While there are more female entrepreneurs launching companies now more than ever before, our gender is still considered scarce in the tech industry. It is important to continue developing programs for girls in math, tech and science to break down societal stereotypes, the glass ceiling and pave the path for more female tech pioneers.

1. 23andMe

   The personal genomics and biotechnology company, 23andMe is set to print genetic testing to everyday people. Founded by Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey, the company has become increasingly easier to access, with an initial cost of $999, which has now dropped to an incredibly accessible $99 with a subscription. Using the service, subscribers can study their own genetic information, and get updates on discoveries made over time. 23andMe has attracted plenty of investors, most notably Google, with $3.9M and $2.6M. Co-founder Anne Wojcicki may have something to do with the group’s financial success: she is married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The company’s unique service has been featured on Oprah, The New York Times, and several other high profile media outlets. Additionally, Time magazine named 23andMe’s testing service “Invention of the Year” for 2008.

2. TaskRabbit

   Some people have more money than time, while others have more time than money. TaskRabbit brings the two together, allowing people who need help with small jobs to get connected with others who are happy to do them for a little cash. IKEA furniture assembly, grocery shopping, and even laundry tasks can be found among the offerings on this site. Featured in Forbes, the site has grown quickly, going beyond founder Leah Busque’s hometown of Boston to include New York City, Chicago, LA, and the San Francisco Bay Area with more coming soon. TaskRabbit has attracted $6.85M in funding since early 2009, and even boasts the famous 4-day work weeker Timothy Ferriss as a board member. Former Hotwire CEO Eric Grosse has also come on as CEO.

3. Affectiva

   Another Massachusetts-born startup founded by women, Affectiva does things most people only see in the movies. Using electrodermal testing and face expression recognition tools, Affectiva can actually recognize and measure emotions. Rana el Kaliouby and Rosalind Picard won a $650,000 National Science Foundation grant in early 2011, and have since taken their total funding to $7.7M. The company has gone on to do amazing things, and CEO Dave Berman tells GigaOm that the future may include a “social network that knew you liked something based on your face or physiological signals without you having to push a “like” button.”

4. Hunch

   What do people on the Internet like? Hunch knows, and they’re building a “taste graph” of the Internet. With this web application, co-founder Caterina Fake and her team are able to map the affinities of online users, creating taste profiles based on a series of questions, and then suggesting a “hunch” of what the user might like. Hunch has found more than $19 million in funding, and boasts Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales as a board member. Founder Caterina herself has been a star in the startup world, co-founding Flickr and serving as a board member of Etsy. Hunch is well-loved by the press, with mentions from Fast Company, The Huffington Post, Time, Forbes, and more.

5. BaubleBar

   Following the success of so many other flash-sale websites, Daniella Yacobovsky and Amy Jain created BaubleBar, which focuses its efforts exclusively on fashion jewelry with deep discounts. It’s certainly not a new idea, but the company has found its niche, selling items that typically sell between $50 to $80, capitalizing on impulse buys while at the same time benefiting from return customers. In their first round, BaubleBar has received just over $1 million in funding.

To read more, click on the following link: http://www.onlinemba.com/blog/15-successful-tech-startups-founded-by-women/

Tags: 15 successful startups, Adriana Gascoigne, Female CEOs, girls in tech, OnlineMBA, startups, women in tech
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The Intersection Event, a one-day conference that will provide a select group of participants intimate access to people who are using creativity in business innovation to profoundly change the world, today announced the speakers for its inaugural event, set for Saturday, January 14, 2012 at Pixar Studios in Emeryville, CA. During this unparalleled day-long experience, some of the most respected innovators in the world converge with leading social change agents to tackle some of the greatest issues of our time.

“The Intersection reflects a change in how philanthropy is being delivered to the world,” said Randy Haykin, founder of The Intersection Event. “Rather than following the old model of charitable giving, we will explore new social entrepreneur model where the best of business innovation meets and accelerates social change.

The Intersection Event will forge an “intersection” of ideas and commentary between leading innovators from academia, entrepreneurship, technology and entertainment with the goal of uncovering new ideas, tools, and “intersections” that can be applied to attendees’ personal or professional projects and inspiring the birth of new social impact projects. Speakers will spend the day prior to the event, January 13, 2012, together as a group, considering topics that will be shared with the audience at The Intersection Event.

Headlining this year’s gathering are: actress and UNICEF ambassador, Susan Sarandon, technology expert and CTO of Walt Disney, Greg Brandeau; the entrepreneurial founder of AOL, Steve Case; passionate leader and VP of Google, Marissa Mayer; global change agent and President of Ashoka, Diana Wells; social activist and SVP of Word Vision International, Dr. Chris Pitt; computer scientist and President of Pixar Animation Studios, Dr. Ed Catmull; Executive Director and Founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), Paul Rieckhoff; design connoisseur and CEO of IDEO, Tim Brown; business strategy authority and director of Deloitte Center for the Edge, John Hagel III; education expert and professor at Harvard Business School, Linda Hill; young entrepreneur and Chief Executive Partner of Ashoka Changemakers, Benjamin Wald; innovation facilitator and Chief Solver of KILN, Gregg Fraley; collaboration specialist and author of The Medici Effect, Frans Johansson; teacher, minister and third generation yogi, Guru Singh; and moderator Randy Haykin who is a professor at UC Berkley and UC Cambridge, as well as founder of Haykin Capital, The Intersection Event and The Gratitude Network.

The Intersection Event will be the first of its kind to utilize a format that includes a pre-event for speakers to strategize on the topics to be discussed at the conference, as well as a one-day conference with proceeds from the event being donated to The Gratitude Network, a new foundation that supports social entrepreneurship.

Future announcements about The Intersection Event will be made regarding other guests and event updates.  To learn more about The Intersection Event or The Gratitude Fund, visit www.intersectionevent.com.

Tags: Adriana Gascoigne, girls in tech, Intersection Event, Philanthropy, Social Entrepreneurship, women in tech
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Booz & Company has put out its annual report on Technology Industry trends that they see for the upcoming year.  We wanted to share these with you; and direct you to this very insightful article.

The letter begins:

“We offer you this look back at 2011, a glimpse into what we believe will be the major trends in the technology industry in 2012 and beyond, and an overview of the capabilities needed to succeed as those trends gather speed in the years ahead.

Past Is Prologue

The technology industry has long been characterized by change, but 2011 stands out as a year of shocks and surprises-and we expect more in 2012. Former industry leaders have been stumbling in the face of missed trends, while others have made enormous gains in creating new value. Asian players like Samsung, Huawei, and HTC are rising fast, even as service disasters humble several established providers. And many of the largest global companies have faced unprecedented leadership challenges.”

They go on to discuss, digitization, renewed large-scale M & A, and the urgency to build capabilities within corporations now — including deep customer insights and the effects of digitization on the ICT ecosystem, in general.   Further, they also touch on a topic which is very key today, as Congress, Secretary Clinton and others are mulling over and deciding on the future of our freedoms on the web.  Here is an excerpt:

“Effective governmental interaction: Finally, given how quickly digitization is taking place — not just in technology but in every industry — it is no surprise that governmental efforts to affect the process are gaining momentum. The Internet is a case in point: The possibility of stronger regulation of both privacy and copyright protection has the potential to affect how personal data is collected and content is created and distributed. And this in turn could have a serious impact on the Internet’s primary economic engine — paid advertising. Similarly, issues involving content, patents, and other forms of intellectual property are affecting not just how companies earn revenues but the M&A landscape as well; Google’s recent purchase of Motorola Mobility, as noted, is widely viewed as a move primarily to control the company’s many valuable mobile telephony patents. In light of such impacts, a final, crucial capability every technology company will need involves ensuring a clear understanding of the policy and legal environment in which it operates, and developing an effective voice for influencing the future course of that environment.”

The letter is a combined effort, posted by principal and partners: Alex Koster (Principal), Toshiya Imai, Dr. Pierre Peladeau, Matthew Le Merle, and Kenny Kurtzman.

To read the full letter by the partners, you may view it on their website, here.

(Quotes and photo courtesy of:  Booz & Company)

Tags: Booz & Company, Christine Oneto, digitization, innovation, technology, Trends
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I’ve always been a fan of HubSpot – people and products – and was pleased to see their new Marketing Grader tool come out.  A replacement for their longstanding Website Grader tool, it analyzes 30+ measures of marketing effectiveness and grades the business on a 1-100 scale.

The goal of the Marketing Grader is to help companies answer the following questions:

• Is my marketing more or less effective than my competition? (Competitive Benchmarking)
• Are my marketing efforts generating enough leads and sales? (Lead Generation)
• Is my web presence optimized for mobile devices? (Mobile Marketing)
• How effectively are we using Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in our marketing? (Social Media)
• Is my blog driving results that justify the time investment or are we wasting time doing the wrong things? (Blogging)
• What are the strong points and shortcomings in our marketing? (Overall Analysis)

I played around with it a little bit. After the tool crunches the numbers for you, it then gives you a list of “things to do” to improve that particular metric.  For instance, Girls in Tech scores a 52% at the top of the funnel, but one of the things HubSpot says we could be doing better is getting people to share our content on Twitter. It then offers quite a lot of data on your site, on inbound marketing (what HubSpot is known for) and various other points such as your social media activity etc.  At first glance, it seems like a great tool to make improvements – especially those small, unseen ones – to your website.  We’ll be taking some of these into account here!

To demo, HubSpot graded all 5 Republican Presidential candidates to create the below infographic:

Another great tool by HubSpot, well worth a look!

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Guest blog entry written by Tan Yinglan

A large part of my job involves meeting entrepreneurs, which I love. I meet with a staggering number of them each week. Some you can tell are lemons after five minutes, but a special few make my day (the best part of my day). I recently wondered whether there were any common traits amongst those entrepreneurs who were great.

The wonderful thing about venture investing is that it is a science where your experience is cumulative. Similar to Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule, if you’ve seen 10,000 business plans and met with 10,000 entrepreneurs, you develop pattern recognition – and it gets better the older you get, like a well-aged wine.

The great VCs – I’d name Michael Moritz and Don Valentine here; both of whom I have met personally, spoken with at length, and admire greatly (you can read more in The Way Of The VC) – all have this perceptible quality. It’s what industry veterans call ‘the smell.’

Some of the filters I have developed for assessing entrepreneurs:

1. Thoughtful listening. Does s/he watch customers and how they behave? What is the input-output ratio?
2.  Do they iterate rapidly?
3.  Are they good at mental arithmetic?
4.  Do they validate the user-base of the product? i.e. measure high-quality repeat users or the net promoter score?
5.  Do they measure figure metrics which reflect both the quality of the business and factors which they can influence?
6.  Is s/he able to convey a complex business in very simple terms? (The test is to explain it to your mom and see whether she understands. If she can’t understand it, it is too complicated.)
7.  Would they ‘throw a turd in the punch bowl’ and disrupt the industry?
8.  Can s/he imagine doing anything with his/her life other than the chosen service or product? (Correct answer is no)
9.  Do they refer to a ‘museum of mistakes’ and avoid them?

There is one last factor which I’m hesitant to put because there are numerous counterexamples – it’s that, by and large, great entrepreneurs are also great human beings. You leave a meeting with them feeling that they are nice individuals, and often like to help them. Some have this quality in them naturally.

To give one real-world example… We work with one brilliant entrepreneur who has great engineering and product skills. He’s extremely sociable, does business development naturally, and all his staff love him. Most importantly, he is very thoughtful and a great listener. (Most entrepreneurs talk too much and the signal-to-noise ratio is low). Not surprisingly, the company is preparing for a high profile exit. We wish we could clone more folks like him.

There are more key attributes, of course. Although these are the main traits which I think personally are more important. Feel free to add on in the comments.

Tags: entrepreneurs, girls in tech, Ron Conway, Singapore, Tan Yinglan, women in tech
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Guest blog entry written by Jessica Lachs, CEO and Founder, GiftSimple

About GiftSimple:

GiftSimple is a social gifting site for all of life’s events. GiftSimple lets you register for the gifts you want and tap into your social network to pool contributions from friends and family.  The money is accessible at any time and you are free to use it on whatever you like, whenever you like, and wherever you like!

Instead of putting a new SLR camera on a credit card, concerned about the ability to pay the bill in full, users can list the camera on GiftSimple and access their network to help them afford it. Whether the occasion is a birthday, holiday or no occasion at all, small gifts from many people add up.

We have a demo video that walks users through the entire process.  It can be found on our homepage or on YouTube.

The Idea:

While in business school, I started developing GiftSimple to address inefficiencies in the gifting space.  The idea originated several years prior from my own gifting experiences and those of my friends. It started at college graduation when my brother asked what he could buy for me. I wanted new luggage, but it was too expensive for him to buy alone. So he organized a group gift from my family and friends to buy the luggage. He complained that the process was a hassle, and I thought to myself, ‘there has to be a simpler way.’

Then I heard a friend’s story. She was a schoolteacher and had received a slew of unwanted gifts at the end of the school year from her students. While she appreciated the sentiment, the gifts just ended up in the back of her closet. What she really wanted in her closet was a new Burberry coat, but at $500 it was outside her price range. The following year, she told the class mothers that she would prefer everyone chip in to buy her one large gift—the Burberry coat! And they did! It worked out for my friend, but not everyone is comfortable being so forward.

Finally, when my birthday came around last year, I was elated to receive so many good-wishes and birthday-drink invitations on Facebook. It occurred to me that if I could collect the price of a NYC cocktail from a few friends, it would go a long way towards paying for my new laptop. And GiftSimple was born!

What makes GiftSimple different (and better!):

Group gifting is not a new concept; people have been doing it offline for years, and several websites have recently sprung up to facilitate the splitting of gifts. However, GiftSimple is different in a few important ways. First, it is the gift receiver who initiates the process. We provide a simple tool for users to set up and spread the word about their own gift registry. Next, our site is completely integrated with Facebook, giving users seamless access to their entire social network. Finally, we have very few restrictions on listing and giving gifts—we want our customers to have the flexibility to give as much as they like and as frequently as they like. Cash is widely viewed as the most practical gift but is often seen as impersonal.   GiftSimple offers the ease and practicality of cash giving while assuring givers that their gift is meaningful.

Some Lessons Learned on the Adventure:

1.     It’s OK to ask for help. I was very lucky to have met some experienced entrepreneurs (women and men) who were willing to answer my questions and give me advice from their years of experience.  I just had to ask!  They were happy to help me as I fumbled along the startup path, just as I am happy to help anyone who asks me.

2.     Just do it.  Nike really nailed it with that slogan! It’s easy to get bogged down with analysis—models, focus groups, etc. sometimes you just have to make a decision and move forward.  I am naturally a very risk-averse person, and as a former investment banker I love a good excel model, but until you get your product out there, you really will never know if it will work.

3.     Cheer up! What’s the worst that can happen?  I tell myself this all the time.  The conversation in my head usually goes like this: Sure, you are an adult who moved back in with your parents. Sure, you have put all of your savings into this new venture.  What if it doesn’t work? What if people hate it? Relax. First off, you did it. You built something from nothing just like you set out to do. Good job!  So what if it doesn’t work.  Look at all you’ve learned along the way.  You will go on and do great things.   Lather, Rinse, Repeat!

Tags: Adriana Gascoigne, Female entrepreneur, Gift registry, GiftSimple, girls in tech, Jessica Lachs, Lessons Learned, Registry, women in tech
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Guest blog entry written by Gini Graham Scott, PhD

I just read this article about how the anxiety everyone experiences from time to time can be good for you as well as destructive.  As Alice Park describes in “The Two Faces of Anxiety” in the December 5th issue of Time, not all anxiety should be battled.  Instead, sometimes you should embrace or even celebrate it, because “the hormones that drive anxiety can be powerful stimulants, arousing the senses to the fullest.”  She also points out that besides the ordinary feelings of anxiety we all experience, various types of anxiety disorders affect about 40 million adult Americans — about 18% of the population.

Well, that discussion of anxiety got me thinking.  If anxiety is so universal and can become severe enough to becomes a mental illness for nearly a fifth of the U.S. population, perhaps it could be mobilized in a positive way.  After all, since it has the ability to stimulate the senses, some anxiety can contribute to evoking a good performance in whatever one seeks to do.

For example, successful performers on stage use that anxious feeling before they go on to do a great job, whereas their performance might be just ordinary without that charge of adrenalin produced by anxiety.  This positive power of anxiety is the phenomenon psychologists call “challenge stress” which can fire up our competitive juices, so we give a peak performance, whereas if we feel overly anxious, that can undermine what we do.   As psychologists and biologists point out, this experience of anxiety is actually a survival instinct, so we are poised to act in response to experiencing danger by flight, fight, or otherwise acting to protect ourselves.

In short, the ideal is to embrace and celebrate the challenge stress that fires you up to respond positively, when you feel you can effectively deal with a difficult situation, because you know what to do and have the resources needed to take action.  By contrast, if you feel threat stress, when you don’t feel you can manage the situation, you can act in a destructive, non-productive way, such as if you feel panicky or feel frozen to act.

However, in either case, whatever you experience challenge or threat stress, you might be able to tame and transform it by directing it to creative ends.  Then, as you take action, that can help you to overcome or reduce any feelings of stress, much like happens when a nervous performer steps on stage and suddenly performs at his or her peak.  With too much anxiety, the actor can freeze, forget lines, or otherwise stumble.  But with practice performers learn to manage any feelings of anxiety, so they smooth over the rough spots.  So can you.

For example, say you are feeling anxious about something.  One way to deal with it is to do something else to distract your attention.  Such a response can be a form of escape, such as going for a walk in nature, going to a movie, calling friends on the phone, going to a party, or whatever brings you a sense of relief.

An alternative is to seek to do something creative, so you not only reduce or overcome feelings of anxiety, but you channel it into a creative project. For example, think of all the comedians who turn something they are anxious about into a subject of humor.  Many writers turn their anxieties into a poem or story about what bothers them.  Scriptwriters and filmmakers may use their anxiety to spark the beginning of a script or film.  Artists and craftspeople may turn their feelings of anxiety into a painting or sculpture.   You might even turn your anxieties into a making a great recipe for a dinner or a cake.

In turn, since everyone experiences some anxiety at some time, you will often find that others can relate to your story,  art work, or other creative project, because they can see a reflection of their own anxiety there.  Then, that awareness can help them experience a sense of release through sharing a common experience, with the result that they feel better too

In short, if you’re feeling anxious about something, you might productively channel those feelings into some kind of creative project.  The result is you will not only feel less anxious and less stressed, but feel even more contented and happy because of experiencing satisfaction with whatever you have produced.

Tags: Adriana Gascoigne, business, creativity, Gini Graham Scott, girls in tech, women in tech
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