Dude, you’re not a lady! Luluvise launches, but only for women

Luluvise, which launches today, aims for “girl time all the time” by recreating online the experience of private chats with your girlfriends. The all-female service has, however, attracted a lot of interest from a surprising source: men.

“We had a lot of guys submitting their emails to get access to the beta, and we must have sent out over 500 emails telling them Luluvise is for ladies only,” says founder Alexandra Chong. The company was … Continue Reading

Luluvise lands $1 million for “girl time, all the time” (Exclusive)

Pre-launch startup Luluvise aims to recreate online the experience of private chats with your girlfriends. The company just landed $1 million in funding from Passion Capital, ProFouders Capital and various angel investors.

Two years ago, founder Alexandra Chong had a great Valentine’s Day story to share with her girlfriends but didn’t feel comfortable about posting it on Facebook. Three telephone calls, seven text messages and two Skype calls later, she wondered, “Why can’t I tell … Continue Reading

Why grown women, not just girls, need more tech role models

This week, we had Meebo CTO and co-founder Sandy Jen come into the VentureBeat studio to talk about women and tech.

We’ve featured a few strong and opinionated women CEOs and CTOs in our videos lately, because we think it’s important to show the female faces and voices in the tech industry. And in this interview, Jen said that’s one of the most important things for encouraging more female entrepreneurship.

After we chatted about Jen’s … Continue Reading

The three biggest myths about women in tech

All technologists work in the same environment, but we experience the workplace in very different ways.

We like to think of the tech sector as a colorblind, gender-blind meritocracy; unfortunately, this simply isn’t an accurate picture.

Women in tech often have different experiences and encounter different challenges than do their male counterparts. The same goes for people in underrepresented ethnic groups.

Last week, VentureBeat published Why more women aren’t working in tech (hint: it’s not … Continue Reading

Why more women aren’t working in tech (hint: it’s not just education)

Even if women and men were graduating in equal numbers from technology and engineering degree programs, the technology industry would still favor men.

According to a new report from the Level Playing Field Institute, IT workplaces, including tech startups, can create hostile or unpleasant environments for women and people of color, leading to those employees seeking out other companies or even other industries for work.

The report states that biases inherent in the average tech … Continue Reading

Myopic entrepreneurs need to “think big,” Get Satisfaction CEO says (video)

Get Satisfaction CEO Wendy Lea has a few choice words for entrepreneurs, and the women and men in the business of creating and running startups would be well served to tune in.

“If you’re going to get into the entrepreneurship game… I think it’s our responsibility to think big,” Lea said in a recent interview with VentureBeat. She continued to admonish startup folks who are myopic in their aims while huge needs still abound in … Continue Reading

How to turn women philanthropists into tech investors (video)

We all know that tech investment needs more women, and Natalia Oberti Noguera thinks that female philanthropists are ripe for the training.

We recently had Noguera into the VentureBeat office to chat about overarching issues of women and technology. In this video, she discusses what her project, the Pipeline Fellowship, is doing to improve the gender split in the industry and visibility of women leaders and role models in technology.

The Pipeline Fellowship trains women … Continue Reading

Ask.com’s CTO sounds off on tech, gender and female engineers (video)

What makes a girl want to be an engineer? If you put that question to Lisa Kavanaugh, Ask.com‘s chief technical officer, she’ll tell you it has a lot to do with early mentoring.

Having a dad who worked with computers, Kavanaugh grew up knowing that it was ok to break things, that she shouldn’t be intimidated by technology and that jobs in tech were some of the best careers available. Clearly, that early experience with … Continue Reading

Only two women make 2011 Forbes Midas List

Forbes’ 2011 Midas List of the top 100 tech investors includes only two women, Deborah Farrington of StarVest and Theresia Gouw Ranzetta of Accel Partners.

The Midas List ranks the top venture capitalists as measured by, among other criteria, “his or her leadership within a firm or sector, his or her firm’s overall standing in the venture capital industry,” and an analysis of the firm’s disclosed M&A’s and IPO exits. Farrington holds the 77th spot … Continue Reading

Is AOL’s Huffington Post deal all about women?

Everyone is weighing in on AOL’s decision to acquire The Huffington Post for $315 million. Some argue that the deal makes sense, and plenty more predict that the online-media combination will be a disaster.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the debate is how AOL and Huffington Post executives are describing the thinking behind the deal. The HuffPo, as it’s known, has its roots as a popular, controversial, and left-leaning political blog. But in AOL … Continue Reading

Mobile trade organization GSMA aims to bring cellphones to 150M women in the developing world

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton just launched the GSMA‘s ambitious, new campaign to bring mobile access to 150 million women in low and middle-income countries within the next 3 years. The GSMA is the trade organization for the world’s mobile carriers and 20 carriers operating in 115 developing markets, including AT&T and Vodafone, have signed up for the campaign. Nokia has also committed to the program.

This isn’t just a charitable initiative for … Continue Reading

Glimpse launches yet another site for women's online shopping

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton just launched the GSMA‘s ambitious, new campaign to bring mobile access to 150 million women in low and middle-income countries within the next 3 years. The GSMA is the trade organization for the world’s mobile carriers and 20 carriers operating in 115 developing markets, including AT&T and Vodafone, have signed up for the campaign. Nokia has also committed to the program.

This isn’t just a charitable initiative for … Continue Reading