Girls In Tech

The Founder Institute (www.founderinstitute.com), a pre-seed incubator, recently unveiled a program designed to increase the number of females founders in technology. Their goal? To launch 175 female-led tech companies in 2011.

The Female Founder Fellowship program will provide extraordinary female applicants the opportunity to launch their dream company with the Founder Institute – free of charge. The Institute will subsidize the course fee for the most extraordinary female applicant in each of it’s ten Spring Semesters; including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C., San Diego, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, New York City, Boston, and Singapore.

Best part of all:  Any female who applies to any of these Spring Semesters is automatically eligible. Many of the deadlines are approaching, so apply today at http://founderinstitute.com/join.

To date, 16% of the Founder Institute’s 250+ graduated technology companies have been founded by females – which sadly is quite higher than the industry average. More importantly – the Institute’s acceptance rate amongst female applicants is essentially equal to that of the men, while the graduation rate amongst women is almost 20% greater than that of the men. With this in mind, the Institute hopes to double the number of female applicants with this program – which will in turn push the number of female graduates over 30%, equating to over 175 new female tech founders in 2011.

Some notable female graduates of the Founder Institute include:

1.     2RedBeans (www.2redbeans.com) – Q Zhao (Bay Area)

2.     Ergolution (www.ergolution.net) – Charissa Shaw (Los Angeles)

3.     EximFlow (www.eximflow.com) – Stacey Arbetter  (Boston)

4.     Fashioning Change (www.fashioningchange.com) – Adriana Herrera (San Diego)

5.     Memetales (www.memetales.com) – Maya Bisineer (Seattle)

6.     Micromobs (www.micromobs.com) – Himani Amoli (Bay Area)

7.     MySweetsBox.com (www.mysweetsbox.com) – Regine Harr (Berlin)

8.     Skimble (www.skimble.com ) – Maria Ly (Bay Area)

9.     WhatsFun.com (www.whatsfun.com ) – Katherine Chalmers (Washington DC)

10.  Zebraminds (www.zebraminds.com) – Oza Klanjsek (Denver)

Apply today!  *(You know who you are!)

Tags: entrepreneurship, female founders, Founder Institute, The Funded
Posted in Berlin, Boston, DC, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, San Diego, San Francisco | 2 Comments »

Originally posted on the Geeks on a Plane blog

After a brief stint in Berlin, the GeeksOnaPlane crew flew in for a day and a half to feast on a typical German dinner with the Atoms & Bits conference crew and Felix Fidelsberger, entrepreneur and former Seedcamp UK winner for his start-up, Toksta. Severalthought-provoking discussions led me to believe that Berlin is the hub for innovation in Germany – the fact that East Berlin is relatively cheap in terms of real estate, creative resources and developers – makes it the perfect place to cultivate a tech start-up. One theme that came up over and over again was the fact that Germany is about 18 months behind the US in development and adoption of social media and internet innovation; not 1 year or 2 years, just 18 months. I heard that from a few engineers and entrepreneurs, which made me curious to learn more about this unusual 18-month cycle.

According to several independent observers, there are some “copy cat” innovators in Europe. Basically, these guys wait until technologies are innovated and new products are launched in Silicon Valley, tested out, and begin gaining buzz and user traction. After a few months in beta-mode, these folks start investigating whether or not it would be a good technology to essentially “copy” and bring to Germany and eventually, greater Europe. While this may seem like cheating, a few entrepreneurs have made quite a bit  of money using this technique and have been acknowledged as very successful as what they do.

Enter “18 months” – It takes about half a year to see if a company is generating buzz and attention through social media and word of mouth, another half a year for that company to ‘really’ figure out its monetization strategy, business model and at least be heading in the right direction to profitability, and another six months to analyze the data and begin to build and brand the “copy cat” product in Europe, to eventually launch in alpha within that six-month period. One of the these products is called “Jamba.”

Jamba! is a mobile phone content provider, based in Berlin, Germany. In China and the company’s English-speaking markets, currently Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, the company trades under the name Jamster. Jamba!’s main line of business is the creation and marketing of ringtones for mobile phones. It is perhaps best known for the Sweety the Chick and Crazy Frogcharacters. The company also sells insurance for mobile phones and home electronics and runs online gaming and online datingservices. In 2005 it started doing business in the United States and China.

(oh, and the “guy who hates Twitter” is a fellow that is creating a Web MD type product in Berlin who is 100%, absolutely convinced that Twitter will go away in 4 years. I really tried to convince him that he is wrong, Twitter is the best thing since sliced bread, however, he was very stubborn and held his ground. I told him that I was going to DM him on Twitter and RT his updates and include him in my Twitter feeds until he decides that it’s a worthwhile product. After all, you won’t be sold on a product if you don’t use it, right?)

Tags: Adriana Gascoigne, Berlin, Felix Fidelsberger, Geeks on a Plane, Jamba
Posted in Berlin | 1 Comment »