Girls In Tech

Got a great idea? Ready to launch the next best thing?

Only a 2 tickets remain for the Founder Conference to be held on May 3rd, 2011 in Mountain View. The Founder Conference 2011 will take place at the Center for Performing Arts of Mountain View.  Topics range from finding co-founders, how to pitch to investors, the new trends with super-angels, create buzz when you launch, and more.

The speakers this year are:

• Guy Kawasaki
• Naval Ravikant, co-founder, Angel List
• Loic Le Meur, Seesmic
• Robert Scoble
• Phil Libin, Evernote
• Brian Wong, Kiip.me
• Steward Langille, Visual.ly
• Olivier Desmoulin, SuperMarmite
• Tim Young, About.me
• Tommy McClung, CarWoo
• Rebecca Lynn, Morgenthaler Ventures
• Jeff Clavier, SoftTechVC
• George Zachary, Charles River

Information about the specific topics the speakers will address can be found at www.thefounderconference.com as well as the remaining tickets.  Hurry before the last tickets are gone!

Tags: founder conference, investors, start-ups
Posted in All Chapters, San Francisco, Silicon Valley | No Comments »

Launching over the last few days in New York City, General Assembly (GA) is a new “urban campus” which will offer a place for entrepreneurs and technology leaders alike to congregate and thrive.  With partners such as NYC Economic Development Corporation, IDEO, Rackspace, Silicon Valley Bank, Skype, Wilson Sonsini, and NYHacker, they plan to provide educational opportunities and further this initiative in their downtown Manhattan location.  Located at Broadway & 20th, they will hold seminars, lectures and workshops, in addition to be a space for start-ups to set up shop, (and many already have!)  Those start-ups already taking advantage of the space include Art.sy, Fashim, Food52, JIBE, NewsCrd, Yipit, SeatGeek, and  Nodejitsu.

In their words, they are a  ” campus for entrepreneurs seeking to transform industry and culture through technology and design. We provide programming, space, and support services to foster collaborative practices and learning opportunities.”  An example of what their space can provide:  in a day, you might see classes on emerging APIs, HTML5, a storytelling workshop, and a social gathering of gaming industry leaders.  Think of a cross between co-working spaces like NextSpace, and a TEDx conference, all in one!  If you are a entrepreneur, speaker or otherwise would like to get involved, check out their link: here or email them.

As someone who is one to devour any and all new tech knowledge and a self-professed life-long learner, GA is a place I would definitely head when in the area!  Check them out, if you have a chance.

Tags: art.sy, Christine Oneto, entrepreneurship, Manhattan, Rackspace, Skype, social, start-ups, Wilson sonsini
Posted in All Chapters, New York | No Comments »

It’s both exhilarating and exhausting to be part of a start-up. Informal, creative work environments. Being more than just a cog in a wheel. Long nights. Wearing too many hats. The promise of becoming the next Google, Facebook or Twitter.

Running a start-up is also hazardous from an employment law perspective. Start-up companies often have informal work environments, young employees, no human resources professionals, and leaders with little experience running the administrative side of a business.

Misunderstanding the Law Can Cause Budgeting Problems and Lead to Lawsuits

Start-ups often involve few employees, so many start-up entrepreneurs don’t bother to worry much about employment laws or workplace policies. Pretty soon, business starts moving along fast and the company needs people ASAP. You hire an employee here, another one there, and suddenly you’ve got 10 people over night, including 8 computer programmers and an assistant.

Are You Properly Paying Your Computer Programmers?

With only one employee, you are subject to state and federal wage and hour laws. Now you have 10 and 8 of them are computer programmers. Computer programmers are commonly misclassified as exempt employees, so it’s important that you make sure yours are being paid correctly in order to budget properly and avoid lawsuits for back pay (which are likely to come after your start-up hits it big).

Can You Afford The Overtime?

Let’s say you were paying your computer programmers a fixed salary – $2,000 every two weeks – and thought that you didn’t need to pay them overtime. These these programmers have worked for you for 2 years (we’ll pretend they didn’t take any time off for vacation for the sake of simplification), each averaging a 65 hour a week. During your third year, you finally have some extra cash and have grown bigger, so you decide it’s time to get some employment law advice. Turns out your programmers are not exempt employees and you should have been paying them each an hourly rate and overtime pay, including 1 1/2 times their regular rate for hours worked over 8 in a day and 2 times their regular rate for hours worked over 12 in a day (you know there were at least a few). One of these programmers finds out and sues you for back pay (which he has 3 years to do). Now you owe him at least $55,380 in back pay, plus interest! (And I didn’t even include the legal fees you paid to help you deal with this situation.) But wait – that was 8 computer programmers you had and this is a small company. The first guy tells the other programmers and now you owe at total of at least $443,040 … YIKES!

Overtime Exemption Classifications are Tricky

Maybe you already knew all about this issue. But are you sure you properly understood the overtime exemptions? Overtime exemption analysis is tricky - for example, most administrative assistants do not qualify for the “administrative exemption.” The analysis is based on nuanced case law, as well as the actual day-to-day job duties of your employees, which often differ from the duties listed in job descriptions which formed the basis for your exemption analysis. In addition, California law is more strict that federal law and applies a slightly different test, so a job that is classified as exempt under federal law may not be exempt under California law Many well-intentioned employers have been caught off guard and you don’t want to be one of them. On the flip side, many ill-intentioned employers who think they can fudge this issue get caught – don’t be one of those either.

Meredith D. Williams is an employment law attorney in Los Angeles; she can be reached at mwilliams@millerwilliamslaw.com or @MerEsqLA.

Tags: California employment laws, computer programmers, entrepreneurs, Girls in Tech Los Angeles, Meredith D Williams, start-ups, wage laws
Posted in All Chapters, Los Angeles | No Comments »

If you know amazing women entrepreneurs involved in new startups, please encourage them to apply to TechCrunch Disrupt (official deadline is Sunday, August 8, though we accept late stragglers for 1-2 weeks after that date.)

Every year it seems that the women’s conferences do recap posts where they cite the low number of women founders at TechCrunch events. This year, we’d really like your help getting ahead of the curve… help us find amazing women to put on stage and let us write about how you helped us surface important new talent.  We can only put things on stage if we know about them.

Application details are here:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/04/apply-techcrunch-disrupt/#comments

Specific suggestions, please feel free to reach out to me directly.  Thank you and best,
Heather
310.871.4351 cell / heather@techcrunch.com

Tags: Adriana Gascoigne, Disrupt SF, Female Entrepreneurs, Heather Harde, start-ups, TechCrunch
Posted in All Chapters | 1 Comment »

Tuesday, Aug. 3rd @ 4 – 10pm
Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus, Mountain View CA

See Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motorsand SpaceX, and Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo.com, speak at The Founder Showcase. This quarterly start-up pitch and networking event gathers over 300 investors, founders, and members of the press in Silicon Valley to hear talks from leading CEOs, and pitches from 10 hot technology start-ups. Over $1mm has been raised by presenting companies at previous Founder Showcase events. Tickets start at just $50, but space is very limited.

To register or enter the free Pitch Competition, go to www.FounderShowcase.com. Our friends at Girls in Tech get 15% off by using discount code GIT.

The Founder Showcase is a quarterly, open start-up pitch and networking event that highlights seed- stage businesses, helping founders gain traction among the Silicon Valley elite. The event is hosted by TheFunded.com, a community of over 14,500 registered CEOs to rate sources of venture capital and discuss all things small business.

Tags: Founder Showcase, mahalo.com, start-ups, Tesla, The Funded
Posted in All Chapters, San Francisco, Silicon Valley | 2 Comments »

What do Nerds, Dorks, and Geeks have in common? They will be representin’ on the Geeks on a Plane Europe 2009 tour! As one of the main organizers of the excursion, I’m really excited that Girls in Tech is an official sponsor of the trip, which means that a few seats will be reserved for Girls in Tech members!  If you’re interested in attending, please email info@girlsintech.net

I participated in the inaugural Geeks on a Plane Asia in June. We visited Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai and hob-nobbed with some of the most influential innovators and tech start-ups in Asia. We learned about trends, gadgets, internet, VC, and what “ticks” on that side of the world, while bonding with our home-town friends and colleagues – 30 start-up entrepreneurs and influencers from Silicon Valley, New York and LA.

This is what you should expect:

GeeksOnaPlane Europe 2009 is hosted by Dave McClure, Founders Fund and Brady Forrest, O’Reilly Media. We are inviting Silicon Valley and US entrepreneurs, technologists, investors, and bloggers on a 14-day tour of Europe’s top technology cities, events, and people featuring stops in London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Paris, plus a kickoff event in Washington, DC.

Tour Objectives:

• Meet startups, geeks, VCs in London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Paris.
• Learn about trends in European web, mobile, gaming platforms.
• Gain insight into local markets, demographics, business models.
• Meet cool people, new ventures, have fun on planes, trains, buses.
• Cost: $500-$1250 + travel/lodging (est. $1000-4000, based on # cities)]

Tags: 2009, Adriana Gascoigne, Brady Forrest, Dave McClure, entrepreneurs, Europe, Geeks on a Plane, start-ups
Posted in All Chapters | 1 Comment »

After watching the stock market today, you can’t help but to feel a bit of panic. Although, it did recover quite a bit towards the end of the closing bell, regardless this year-to-date the market has dropped almost 40%. 

Silicon Valley has never been a place to throw in the towel. Although VC firms like Sequoia Capital are ‘sounding the alarm’ for what could be the worst economic downturn in years. However, when we think back to the 2000 dot com crash, not the same situation, but it certainly applies, what occurred was a reality check and it helped weed out the not-so-smart ideas and that was good. Years after 9/11, technology start-ups and innovations from existing companies like Apple helped pull the country back to life. 

So, when all the news across Silicon Valley is that VC investment is falling off, investment money drying up, is this really the case? Not necessarily. You see, the cost of starting up a tech company has dropped tremendously. Whereas a few years ago it might have taken $1 million to launch a company, now it may cost $100,000. It will be easier for wealthy individuals, angel investors to fund companies. 

Obviously, the country needs to make sure there is money to build new technologies and start companies. Yes, we do need $700 billion to make sure the economy is functioning. However, that’s about now, how about our future? A very small portion of that money could go a long way in creating breakthroughs and companies to renew the country. David Ewing Duncan, contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio, wrote a great article regarding this matter – Investing In Our Future – and that’s what we need to do.

Tags: breakthroughs, country, economy, hope, investment, money, renew, start-ups, tech, VC
Posted in Los Angeles, San Francisco | 17 Comments »

Girls in Tech presents Start It Up!

A practical, no-nonsense guide to starting a company, raising money, and building your first product. Everyone can and should be an entrepreneur, and it’s a little knowledge and a dash of courage that separates an employer from an employee. We’ll quickly cover market selection, co-founders, fundraising, common characteristics of successful companies, and realistic timelines, expectations, and outcomes. There will be Q&A afterwards as well for specific issues.

Presented by Naval Ravikant:

Naval Ravikant is an experienced entrepreneur and startup investor, and contributor to the Venture Hacks blog (which he co-founded). He is currently an active angel investor in over 25 early-stage ecommerce and social media startups, including Twitter, Social Media, and WeGame. He is also Executive Chairman of Vast.com, and a Director at Hive7 and Mercantila, Inc..

Previously, he founded Genoa Corp (acq. Finisar), Epinions (went public as part of Shopping.com), Chainn Inc. (a large Facebook app developer), Hive7, & Vast.com. He advised Bix.com (acq. Yahoo), iPivot (acq. Intel), Dulance (acq. Google), & XFire (acq. Viacom), among others. Naval graduated from Dartmouth College with a BA in Computer Science & Economics.

To RSVP, please click on the following link:

RSVP

Tags: angel investors, girls in tech, investors, naval ravikant, start-ups, technology, women
Posted in Los Angeles, San Francisco | No Comments »