By Dr. Michal Tsur, a serial tech entrepreneur, and 

We live in a world where young, ambitious women will now contend with a new, and sadly pressured life question – are you “leaning in”?

While Sheryl Sandberg, the second in command at Facebook and author of recent bestseller Lean In, and her ambitious following of female professionals have a nuanced understanding of the concept, in common speak, the words “lean in” convey something too simple, intense, and aggressive.

“We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in,” writes Sandberg in the book.

Sandberg, who is trying to launch a social movement to empower women, is admirable and certainly has wisdom to offer. However, the intensity and pressure conjured by her phrase is not the right message we should be sending to female youth. In fact, remember old high school basketball coaches barking at us to lean in? Sandberg’s message is reminiscent. “Lean in ladies! Be aggressive. Run faster. The quarter is almost over. No taking a rest now!”

The words themselves were designed to motivate us to work harder and faster; to win.

Yet, unlike basketball games, careers are not broken into quarters. They are more of an evolving marathon filled with twists and turns. The opposite of a sprint. And while muscling forward may help one win a basketball game, it’s not clear that more energy, effort, and aggressiveness is what will get women into the boardroom.

What we’ve realized in debating the message of “lean in” while looking at the careers of people like Sandberg and Mayer, is that something big is lost in the colloquial phrase that Sandberg is championing. We must redefine the phrase to convey a vision that is as big in spirit and excitement as it is in raw ambition.

As Sandberg herself states, success depends on a fair bit of luck. Both Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Sandberg had the good fortune to jump on the Google train in the early days. And Sandberg’s COO role at Facebook has catapulted her into tech godliness that was largely unpredictable.

Yes, smart negotiation, ambition, and sponsors were important. But, what distinguishes Sandberg, and what we’ve learned from our own careers is that success is also about creating, recognizing, and seizing opportunities.  It’s about putting oneself in a position that maximizes luck.

Let’s look at Sandberg. She had the confidence to jump between jobs with the government, the World Bank, and tech companies, following a varied and non-linear path. Mayer grabbed the CEO opportunity at Yahoo despite being pregnant, and knowing that she’d be following a long series of executive failures.

In our own careers, it’s been the opportunities that came from new connections made in school or at a conference, or from invitations to write, speak, or create, that pushed us forward.

And at Kaltura, we look at examples like Becky, one of our key project managers, who, after being told that she didn’t have enough technical experience or background, decided to take a leap, jump into a technical job and learn engineering basics on the side in order to make a career transition.

Or Charly, who, with no degree or any technical background whatsoever, led customer support at one of our competitors and later joined Kaltura as a key account manager.  Yes, these women fought hard to get ahead, but what really sets them apart is that they identified a passion, took risks, and seized new opportunities.

What we see in these examples are ambitious women that “leaned in” to advance their careers and families simultaneously. The message of “lean in” should not be to push harder, as Sandberg argues, “put your foot on the gas pedal and keep it there.”

The key, rather, is to be mindful, intentional and clear-eyed about possibilities that emerge in life and work. It is about not being guided by fear, but rather knowing your passions, being bold, and taking risks. And for women who are nearer to the top, leaning in is about being conscious of setting precedent and shaping institutions in ways that will also create paths for younger women.

So, to women (or men) who feel compelled and inspired by Sandberg but also scared about the implied added pressure to constantly push higher and farther – take a breath.  There is a way to lean in and achieve success with levity and spirit. Lean in to life. Opportunities will emerge.

The key is to be confident and aware enough to see them.

Dr. Michal Tsur is a serial tech entrepreneur, having co-founded online security firm Cyota and open-source video platform Kaltura, where she is currently president. Leah Belsky is a fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, where she contributes on online collaboration and technology policy, and is currently SVP Operations at Kaltura.

photo credit: Victor1558 via photopin cc

Intuit published an infographic today presenting the top cities for female entrepreneurs as well as some interesting statistics about the state of women-owned businesses in the U.S. The report looked at median education levels, unemployment rates, income, population and percentage of business owned by women in each city to provide an overall score for female entrepreneurship.

San Francisco ranks number one, followed by Seattle, Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, and Portland. Washington, D.C., has the highest percentage of women-owned businesses at 34.5 percent, while Austin had the lowest unemployment rate. Chicago and New York did not even make the top 10. Of 552 female business owners surveyed, 66 percent said they are most optimistic about growth and revenue for 2013 than they were in 2012.

Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg set off ripples of discussion with her recent book, Lean In. In the book, she said women professionals often don’t command the respect they deserve and hold themselves back from climbing the career ladder. This issue extends beyond the tech community, where there is a major shortage of women engineers. Women all over the country cite a low confidence, negative workplace culture, and a lack of mentors as other reasons, which is why Sandberg promotes women coming together in groups for discussion and support.

Studies have shown that gender and ethnic diversity in a workplace strengthens decision-making and diverse teams tend to be more innovative and efficient. Intuit also made a few suggestions along these lines, including finding and being a mentor, asserting yourself, and building a network of female entrepreneurs. Even if the environment for female entrepreneurs is evolving, there is still a long way to go.

Photo Credit: Alaina Percival/Women Who Code

Facebook has partnered with the women-only hacker bootcamp Hackbright Academy to create a special scholarship for moms.

Just in time for Mother’s Day, the Moms In Tech program will help women who once worked in the tech industry then left to pursue parenthood.

Hackbright will take 10 weeks to train the moms accepted into the program. During this time, old skills will get a refresh, and students will learn new skills. The women who participate will be prepared to return to the tech industry not as front-line code monkeys but as “technically hands-on leads, managers, or directors,” the program application notes.

RELATED: Tackling tech’s gender problem the right way: Teaching women to code

For the scholarship, Facebook will cover the entire $12,000 Hackbright tuition. Applications are open until May 17. The program will begin exactly one month after the deadline.

Attrition of women who become parents is a big concern for a lot of the folks we talk to at large tech companies. Taking steps like this may help give tech-minded moms a path back to work at top-tier companies.

Hackbright was founded by Christian Fernandez and David Phillips and is based in San Francisco.

Image credit: Shutterstock

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That’s both surprising and almost certainly about to change, however, as soon as marketers see the latest data from Apsalar. The mobile analytics and advertising company studied its data pool of 500 million unique users across both Android and iOS, and it found some extremely interesting differences in the way men and women buy and use apps.

Women install 40 percent more apps than men, buy 17 percent more paid apps, and pay an astonishing 87 percent more for those apps. In other words, if you want to make money selling apps, you better appeal to women.

There is some hope for the knuckle-draggers among us, however. Men do lead in a couple of categories: mobile games and in-app spending. In other words, we’re suckers for that virtual gewgaw that will help us crush our virtual enemies in our virtual worlds. Oh, and one other thing — very stereotypically, we use business-related apps 85 percent more than women.

While we’re on the traditional sex-roles theme, women use social media apps a staggering 600 percent more than men, news apps 90 percent more, and productivity apps 89 percent more.

I’m guessing they’re not using the productivity apps to schedule their Clash of Clans battles, either.

One other interesting difference: In spite of our vaunted navigation skills and reputed disinterest in asking for help or directions, men use navigation apps a full 40 percent more than women.

Here’s the data in visual form:

photo credit: lisibo via photopin cc

Murphy joined Yahoo in November 2010 as the VP of engineering for cloud services. Murphy was poached by Blake Irving, Yahoo’s former chief product officer, who became CEO of Go Daddy on Jan. 7, according to a report in AllThingsD. In that short time period, Irving has already taken another Yahoo employee, SVP of consumer and global platform group James Carroll, who is now in charge of Go Daddy’s international efforts.

“From my perspective as a product guy, Go Daddy is not yet a world class platform, but we have the opportunity to build the largest scale platform for tiny micro-businesses in the world,” said Irving in an interview with VentureBeat. “What you saw today is Elissa Murphy saying she thinks this is an amazing story and different from other companies. You can be a cog in a company that has already changed the world in a significant way, or you can come to a company that is poised to do it and be the reason that happened.”

With two defections in two weeks, Irving has quite the track record. Go Daddy is the world’s largest provider of web hosting, domain name registrations, and SSL certificates. He joined Go Daddy to fuel growth at home and abroad, and change the way people view the brand. Irving said recruiting top people with expertise at building global technology companies is a priority, and he has also hired employees away from Google, eBay, and Microsoft.

“Go Daddy is a sort of unknown quantity within the technology community, few people know what we really do,” he said. “We are doing something huge and making that apparent through hiring right now. I am looking for people who have done big things and are taking on things that are important. Every person I have hired shares a passion for customers and wants to do something good. You will start seeing us make that apparent to marketplace over next months.”

Photo Credit: Life at Yahoo blog

In the week or so since she tweeted a picture of a joking developer that eventually resulted in his firing, her company SendGrid getting DDOS’d, her getting fired too, and a host of sometimes-scary attacks online, she hasn’t tweeted or blogged or spoken in public. I have been in email communication with her, but she has not wanted to go on the record via an interview.

Today, she released a statement, which All Things D published:

Those who know me well in the developer and tech community recognize that I have always tried to conduct myself in a way that builds bridges for everyone. My central aim is to do everything I can to help create new, inclusive inroads for all, no matter who they are, where they come from or what they believe. Development is about innovation, creativity, and in a grand sense, the betterment of human society through technology. So, it stands to reason that everyone should have a seat at the table, and everyone involved in this vital community should feel welcome, safe and respected. In essence, the worldwide community of developers can and should function as a reflection of what our wider society strives to be.

I cannot comment at this time on the specifics of what occurred at PyCon on March 17, and the subsequent events of the following days, but I can offer some general thoughts. I don’t think anyone who was part of what happened at PyCon that day could possibly have imagined how this issue would have exploded into the public consciousness the way it has. I certainly did not, and now that the severest of consequences have manifested, all I wish to do is find the good in what has been one of the most challenging weeks of my life.

And I do believe there is good to be found in this situation. Debate and recrimination can and must give way to dialog that explores the root causes of these issues in the tech industry. As developers and members of the startup community, we can welcome newcomers, women and people of color who, as of now, are under-represented in our ranks. And, all of us can learn a great deal from those who are well-established in the field. We can solidify the values of our workplaces (yes, conference spaces are workplaces!), and set new, positive and inclusive examples for other professional disciplines.

What happened at PyCon has cast a spotlight on a range of deep issues and problems in the developer world. As ugly as this situation has become, all of these issues have reasonable, and, I think, easily reached solutions that will help us cast conflict aside and construct a more cohesive and welcoming professional environment based on respect, trust and open communication. I do not, at this time, wish to concentrate on the fallout of the last several days. Instead, I want to be an integral part of a diverse, core group of individuals that comes together in a spirit of healing and openness to devise answers to the many questions that have arisen in the last week. Together, we can work to make the tech world a better place to work for everyone, and in doing so, we make the wider world a better place for all.

The conspicuous absences from her statement include any mention of the PlayHaven developer who got fired as a result of her initial tweet. Since Richards has already stated that she had no intention or wish that he lose his job, you might think she would have included some kind of olive branch to that developer. She also leaves out any mention of whether she now feels that what she did — publicly call out private individuals having a private conversation — was the right thing to do.

However, I think one thing we can all agree with her on here is that this has definitely cast a spotlight on gender issues in the developer world.

And hopefully some good can come out of that.

Yes, this is about the Adria Richards/SendGrid/PlayHaven/PyCon thing. And this is about the inevitable clash between a boy’s club locker room culture and women in technology. But much, much, much more than that, it’s about the reaction.

Update: Adria Richards’ statement

Or should I say the reactions. By everyone involved.

I have been in email communication with both the fired Adria Richards and the fired PlayHaven developer for the past two days. They are reasonable, normal, approachable people. And right now they’re both scared and bewildered at all that has happened.

But this morning Adria broke my heart, and the hearts of all those who give a damn about women in technology.

Last night, at about 2 a.m., after a series of emails with her, I said this:

Tell me at least that u will not be the next Kathy Sierra.

Kathy Sierra is a smart, passionate, funny woman in technology who essentially said her goodbyes to the online world after receiving multiple rape and death threats for, essentially, being a woman in technology. Hacker Andrew Auernheimer, who was just sentenced to 41 months in jail for an unrelated (and controversial) crime, was one of those who harassed her. Sierra’s last blog post, from her awesome “Creating Passionate Users” blog, was in 2007.

The worst thing that could happen here in this new situation — along with a developer losing his job and his ability to provide for his children — is that as a result of this incident, we’d lose another smart, passionate, funny, and awesome woman in technology. But that might happen.

Her answer, at 6:05 AM this morning?

I’m staying safe.

And that broke my heart. And that made me get up and write this on my day off. And I hope it breaks yours.

Look, whatever “side” of this you’re on, here’s what happened:

1. Some guys made some guy jokes about guy stuff
2. A woman got offended and did something that was probably an over-reaction
3. Some conference organizers over-reacted
4. A company (PlayHaven) over-reacted
5. The internet (all of us, but especially Anonymous) over-reacted
6. Another company (SendGrid) over-reacted

I’ve been cursed and pilloried and told to go kill myself by people on both sides of the issue just for writing about these events. People from both sides see what they want to see and, like trained attack dogs, go in for the kill with little consideration, no mercy, no nuance, no shades of grey. They are so blinded by their self-righteousness that they’re perfectly OK with perpetrating more metaphorical violence in the service of their almighty god-blessed cause.

It’s been unbelievably worse for Adria.

She’s been extensively hated on. Threatened with rape. Threatened with decapitation — I saw the tweet with a picture of a stripped dead woman, bloody on a bed, head unattached to the torso, myself. (It’s now deleted and the Twitter account has been suspended.)

And yeah, it’s been horrible for the PlayHaven developer who lost his job. Who had his character and reputation assaulted in public. Who now has to find a new job in tech to support his kids. What’s worse, is that he’s not in Silicon Valley, where coders are in crazy urgent over-demand and a job is a cheap commodity to be tossed aside and picked up again whenever you wish. It won’t be easy for him.

So now here we are.

A developer has lost his job for no really good reason (as Richards has also said). The Internet exploded, with a significant chunk of it spewing hate and vitriol, including rape and death threats. A developer evangelist has lost her job too, for no really good reason. And women and men in technology have even more baggage and mistrust to process .

All because a developer and a developer evangelist made a couple of mistakes.

Where’s the forgiveness? Where’s the acceptance? Where’s the ability to not fly off the handle and go apeshit at zero to sixty when we see something we don’t like or we have a problem? Why do we feel we can call people whores, or idiots, or scumbags, or worse, just because there’s a computer and some wires between us and them?

Do we now live in a culture where there are no second chances, where there’s no ability to call a Mulligan, get a do-over, or just have a bad day?

Who can live that like? Who’s the perfect one among us who doesn’t screw up?

I’ve been slandered by both sides for my perceived bias on this, and I agree that no person and no journalist is completely unbiased. I’ve tried to draw a balanced line here, but I figure that if I’m going to be damned, I might as well be damned for what I actually believe.

So here it is:

I think this would never have hit the fan if the PlayHaven developer had just told one or two jokes, then let other people actually listen to the presentation. I think this would never have hit the fan if Adria had just turned in her seat and said, “Hey guys, do you mind?” I think this would never have hit the fan if the conference organizers had just gone up to the developer and said, “Hey, can you tone it down, please?” I think this would never have hit the fan if PlayHaven had not taken this slim pretext to fire a developer for a couple of dongle jokes.

But everyone over-reacted.

Everyone escalated, instead of taking a half a moment to think, relax, chill, give the benefit of the doubt, be a little easy-going, and realize that everyone is bloody well human and we all make mistakes.

Once the PlayHaven developer was fired, that was the tipping point. Then the Internet erupted, as male developers saw one of their own attacked for something that just about every man can envision himself doing. Then hackers targeted SendGrid with a DDOS attack.

Then SendGrid took the next step in escalation. And cowardice. They cut and run, and left their employee hanging in the wind. And made a bad situation even worse.

But SendGrid had another option.

Its leaders could have taken a leadership role. Maybe create a forum to talk about this issue. Bring Richards and the PlayHaven developer together for a public conversation. Ask Richards to extend an olive branch, which she already basically has done, by saying she didn’t intend for him to lose his job and that she feels bad that he did. Offer the dude a job. Ask Richards and him to come to a public understanding. Wrap it up in a bow and turn poisonous lemons into lemonade: a chance for us to advance the conversation between women and men in technology without the yelling, without the threats, without the hate.

And I think they would have come out like heroes.

What does this mean for women in the future who try to take a stand (whether right or not)? What do you do now if you are a woman in technology and you feel harassed or abused and want to shine a light on it, but now see this prominent woman totally abandoned by her company?

I’ll tell you what you do, unless you’re a saint or a hero. You shut up. You put your head down. You grin and bear it, because it’s a man’s world. And you leave, eventually, for a better place.

And we’re all poorer as a result.

Adria Richards’ Twitter account has 32,383 tweets and 12,204 followers. Most days, she would post multiple times, adding her voice to the wider conversation that is technology.

Since March 20, she has not published a single tweet. There have been no new posts on her blog.

She’s been silenced.

Congratulations, Internet.

photo credit: Chuckumentary via photopin cc

International Women’s Day brought with it a big ol’ dose of lady-tokenism on the Internet. But it also gave us a handful of efforts to increase our long-term focus on moving toward gender equality in hugely imbalanced industries like technology.

In the latter camp, we have GitHub’s Passion Projects, a series of talks to be held at GitHub’s San Francisco headquarters. The talks will feature prominent, smart, and interesting women in the technology/startup/developer world.

Why GitHub, why women, why now? you ask. We asked, too, and GitHubber Julie Ann Horvath answered.

“I think Passion Projects was born mostly out of frustration,” she said. “I hear men talk about ‘getting more women into tech’ almost constantly. Even here at GitHub, my male coworkers genuinely want to work with more women, but they don’t know how to approach the problem. It’s sensitive. And attempts by men to address it can seem really insincere. I think I just got fed up with all the talk and wanted to start taking action.”

Horvath, pictured blurrily above, is one of GitHub’s designers. In an email to VentureBeat, she said that while she sees more women working at tech companies these days, not enough of them are in leadership positions or in board seats, where decisions are made.

“Fortunately, I think we’re going to see this change. A lot of women I know in tech are what people would refer to as ‘green’ or new to programming. … It’s hard to find women who 1) are the best at what they do and 2) Want to work at a company with so few women on its technical teams. We’re trying to work on the balance here. We know that we’re in a unique position. We know that other companies are watching us and what we do. We want to set a good example. And Passion Projects is a part of that.”

First up in the Passion Project series is Rachel Myers, resident Rubyist at ModCloth, who will speak later this week. Future talks will be led by such fierce figures as Sara Chipps (developer, Levo Lead/Girl Develop It), Jen Myers (developer/designer, Dev Bootcamp/Girl Develop It Columbus, Ohio chapter), and Timoni West (designer, Foursquare).

“The speakers for Passion Projects were handpicked by me and the other ladies of GitHub,” said Horvath. “They’re all women who have inspired us personally. I shared an early list with my coworkers, created a repo on GitHub, and asked for people to create issues in this repo for women they’d like to hear speak.”

Sexism exists in tech, but it’s usually more subtle than the overt “girls don’t know no math” bullcrap you might expect, especially at startups with an overall young, progressive staff. Instead, Horvath said, you’re more likely to encounter “a lack of understanding and a strong cultural bias created by the lack of female leadership in our industry.

“However, it is sad that we hear more about the negative experiences women in technology have than we do about the positive ones. This is also partly my motivation for starting Passion Projects. I think women should get to hear about the positive aspects of working in tech, too.”

All the talks will be live-streamed and recorded for posterity. Horvath said she’d love to see Passion Projects expand beyond San Francisco’s borders to a larger, even international audience — perhaps even as a standalone conference.

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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The plaintiffs — Dawn-Shemain Weeks, Margaret Hines, and Shannon Schlagenhauf — formerly worked as executive assistants for CMEA and are making 35 different allegations regarding inappropriate sexual behavior. Most of the complaints are direct at John Haag, who served as CMEA’s chief operating partner between 2006 and 2012.

“Throughout the duration of their employment at CMEA, Haag spoke and/or behaved in sexually and racially inappropriate ways. Comments and ‘jokes’ about women, sex, and race were a common and tolerated part of the work environment at CMEA. CMEA’s owner and partners also spoke and behaved in ways that inappropriately injected sex into the workplace,” the lawsuit outlines.

Allegations the three made against Haag include watching porn on his work computer, rude nicknames, explicit and vulgar gestures, and threats to fire the plaintiffs if they “did anything to displease him.”

On April 30, the plaintiffs decided to report Haag’s conduct to CMEA’s three managing directors, who were allegedly aware of it through the reports of other women. They reportedly conducted an investigation through the third-party human resources providers, which uncovered years of the alleged behavior, and negotiated a “buy-out” of Haag’s interest in CMEA’s funds. The firm then took measures to improve the workplace atmosphere, but it allegedly continued to act inappropriately and make comments implying the plaintiffs’ jobs were on the line. Weeks resigned at the end of January.

The plaintiffs are claiming to have suffered significant injuries, trauma, and distress that have adversely impacted their mental and emotional health as well as financial loss. They are asking for a jury trial for all causes of action, general and compensatory damages, attorney’s fees and costs, punitive and exemplary damages, and prejudgment interest on all amounts claimed.

Sexual harassment and gender discrimination are pervasive problems in the male-dominated tech world, and part of this is due to the lack of women in the industry. A study conducted by Stanford in conjunction with the Kauffman Foundation and Women 2.0 found that nearly 18 percent of women in tech had experienced discrimination, and the average tech workplace is not an inviting environment for women and minorities.

Last year, another major sexual harassment scandal hit tech when Ellen Pao brought a sexual harassment and gender discrimination suit against her employer, well-known venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Mistreatment of women in tech extends all the way from executive offices in Sand Hill road to offhand jokes in co-working spaces.

Women represent less than 10 percent of venture capitalists, 3 percent of startup founders, and 14 percent of executive officer positions.

Warning! Not for innocent eyes- read the full suit below:

Haag Case

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

Thinx is a startup reinventing women’s underwear. Undergarments are not a topic commonly discussed on VentureBeat or in the technology community at large, but as female readers out there know, there is plenty of room for improvement. The women behind Thinx are applying unique technology, entrepreneurial chops, and an innovative business model to build a better brief.

“Over the last 2,000 years, talking about periods has been a taboo subject, but accidents happen all the time,” said cofounder Miki Agrawal. “No matter who or where you are, this is a real problem. If you are a woman in the middle of doing a surgery, like my sister; or on the stock trading floor, like I used to be; or a girl in a developing country who can’t go to school while she has her period, this needs to be figured out. We are making a product that thinks about women around the world.”

Everyone wears underwear

The inspiration to start Thinx came during a trip Agrawal took to Africa and India with her twin sister Radha and their close friend Antonia Saint Dunbar. They learned that pads and tampons are often difficult to find and dispose of in developing countries and that tens of millions of women have to miss work or school during their ‘week of shame.’ It was a persistent problem around the world, and yet remarkably little innovation has happened in the space. 

The trio spent the next three years creating the ultimate pair of women’s underwear. Thinx garments are leak and stain-resistant, anti-microbial, moisture-wicking, made with durable, high-quality materials, and attractive to boot. The patent-pending “Quad-Dry BreatheTech” is a support matrix that consists of three layers dedicated to moisture-wicking, absorption, and leak-proofing.

For every pair of Thinx it sells, the company will fund seven pairs of washable, reusable pads for women in Africa.

Waste not, want not

In addition to helping girls stay in school and work at jobs, Thinx also seeks to reduce environmental waste. Agrawal said that women use an average of 17,000 tampons and pads in their lifetime, which is wasteful both in terms of production and disposal.

But Thinx says it’s not just doing good for the world. The company says it has significant value for women in the U.S.

“We want to be the best-in-class and make sure our product is beautiful, comfortable, and won’t have to be thrown away,” she said. “Our product protects you so you never have to worry about it again. We set the bar really high, and it took a lot of determination to get to this point.”

It also took some luck and serendipity. While on a plane ride to a yoga retreat, Saint Dunbar fortuitously met a textile manufacture who was excited about the project. Then during a Summit Series cruise, Agrawal met Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, who expressed interest in her other business, a healthy pizza restaurant in New York City, which he wanted to bring to Las Vegas. Miki took the opportunity to tell him about Thinx, and Hsieh said he would get his merchandising team on board.

The success of shapewear company Spanx proved that women’s underwear is a viable business opportunity. Spanx founder Sara Blakely was constantly turned down when she first pitched her idea and is now a billionaire. The idea might seem crazy, but in many ways, it is the most natural thing in the world. Women want underwear that works with their bodies and they are willing to pay for it. However, Agrawal wonders whether people are ready to talk about periods so openly. Will stores want to carry this product on their shelves? Are women willing to give up the traditional underwear-pad-tampon trifecta? How do you market a product addressing an “icky” problem? Building a business off such a sensitive subject is risky on all fronts.

Thinx is in the midst of a Kickstarter campaign, with a goal of $50,000 to get the manufacturing and distribution up and running. The first line comes in four styles: “hip hugger,” “cheeky,” “shape wear,” and a limited-edition pair designed by NAVEN. They come in black and nude and will retail for $26, $34, $68, and $89, respectively. 

Sheryl Sandberg’s new book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead has a lot of advice for working women, which we’ve previously covered. But according to an excerpt given to the Wall Street Journal, it also reveals some juicy tidbits about her life and career, including that LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman asked her to become LinkedIn’s CEO in 2006.

She passed on the offer:

“In the summer of 2006, a tiny startup called LinkedIn was looking for a new CEO, and Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn’s founder, reached out to me. I thought it was a great opportunity, and after five years in the same position at Google, I was ready for a new challenge. But the timing was tricky. I was 37 years old and wanted to have a second child. I told Reid the truth: Regrettably, I had to pass. …”

I think we can all agree, however, that given Sandberg’s career at Google and now Facebook, she made the right call. And while LinkedIn is clearly super-successful, very few companies on the planet — IPO or no IPO — are more important, more relevant, and more central to the emerging digital economy than Facebook.

Sandberg is only one of many super-successful women who have started or grown careers at Google only to jump to other Silicon Valley companies. An obvious example is Yahoo CEO and president Marissa Mayer, but a more recent example is Jennifer Dulski, who recently left Google to become president of Change.org.

Sandberg’s book is about women leaning into their careers to be successful, and features advice similar to what she talked about in a TED talk, including:

1. Sit at the table (Be present and don’t accept subordinate roles.)
2. Make your partner a real partner (Have or get a husband who helps out a home equally)
3. Don’t leave until you leave (Don’t emotionally prepare for maternity or other job interruptions by mentally leaving before leaving.)

Image credit: Hubert Burda Media/Flickr

Today, Astia announced the formation of Astia Angels, an angel investor network that invests in women-led high-growth businesses.

Astia is a global nonprofit organization dedicated to getting female entrepreneurs to the metaphorical ball. Its network is comprised of 4,000 members around the world, including investors, entrepreneurs, and executives. It also has programs that encourage women’s full participation in the startup ecosystem by providing access to capital, ensuring sustainable high-growth, and developing their leadership skills. This latest initiative seeks to promote angel investment in women-led ventures to support their ideas, development, and possibilities for growth.

“High-growth entrepreneurship is a part of the economy where women don’t really participate,” said CEO Sharon Vosmek in an interview with VentureBeat. “Entrepreneurship is a deeply male place. Men and women exist in separate business networks and we look at this as an opportunity to build trusted business networks between men and women so it results not only in venture investment, but all subsequent business relationships that lead to big success.”

As a journalist who writes extensively about startups and venture capital, I notice that absence of female subjects every day. The technology industry is dominated by men, and yet research shows that companies with female executives out perform companies with male executives.

The Dow Jones report “Women at the Wheel: Do female executives drive start-up success?” examined the current state of women in U.S. venture-backed companies and how women in leadership roles affect the success of a startup. The study looked at 15 years of company data in the VentureSource database and found that the proportion of female executives is higher at successful companies than at unsuccessful companies and a company’s odds for success increase with more females holding high-level positions.

Many things could be behind these correlations. Diverse teams generally perform better, and in a country where women are primarily responsible the allocation of “home capital,” an intimate understanding of their needs and user behavior is an advantage for any business.

“At Astia, we know that women-led companies are a great opportunity for investors, but the venture capital that goes into women-led companies directly mirrors the percentage of women in venture capital- between 3 percent to 5 percent,” Vosmek said. “Our model is building deep, trusted business relationships between entrepreneurs, the investment community, and the business ecosystems. We are at a tipping point where I think we will see change.”

Angel investors are often entrepreneurs who met with success and choose to put their dollars and expertise back into the ecosystem. It is a cycle where you need successful entrepreneurs to create angel investors and angel investors to create successful entrepreneurs. Astia is waving its wand in both directions, but like in Cinderella, the fairy godmother can’t do everything. It is still up to Cinderella to start companies.

Andrée Brazeau was a project manager with a degree in mechanical engineering. Eighteen months ago, she moved to San Francisco and started looking for work. A year into her job search, she had heard the same response time and time again: “We’re looking for someone with programming experience.”

So Brazeau learned how to code.

As the old women-in-tech debate fades out of the current hype cycle, a related trend is starting to gain momentum. In the the learn-to-code craze, online schools like Codecademy and in-person courses like Dev Bootcamp are springing up to meet a huge need for more developers across a wide range of industries.

Speaking volumes about both trends, Hackbright Academy is a women-only school in San Francisco that teaches its students everything they need to know to become entry-level programmers and get job offers right away — and does so in 10 weeks.

By putting her life and career on hold and signing up for a $7,500, full-time crash course, each student hopes to change her life, to jump from a salary of $30,000 or $40,000 to something that can sustain one person or even a family in an expensive city like San Francisco. But while this option is a quick fix for tech’s gender imbalance, some worry it’s not enough to fix the industry’s brogramming culture.

Girlschool

“For any person who wants to learn programming by themselves, San Francisco is the best place,” Brazeau said in an email to VentureBeat. “There are so many people in software here that it was easy for me to find group to help me learn.”

She started out with the usual suspects of online tutelage: W3Schools and Learn Python the Hard Way. Between these tools and a couple in-person groups, she was able to put together her first website.

“But you know, there is a big difference between building a static website and a web application,” she said. When she heard about the Hackbright program, she said, “I knew right away this was exactly what I needed.”

Ashley Lorden also had experimented with various online tools to learn to code. A nonprofit employee with an econ degree from Brown, Lorden was technically inclined and ended up doing web-related work wherever she went.

But to make the jump into a career as a software developer, Lorden said she only saw two options: returning to university for a computer science degree or doing nonprofit work at a tech company where she could eventually transition into a technical role. Neither route seemed particularly expeditious.

“I didn’t think it was possible to become a developer in a reasonable timeline until I found out about Hackbright,” said Lorden.

The most interesting part of Hackbright’s program is its gender split: 100 percent women students.

“I have always been surrounded by men,” Brazeau said, “at university in mechanical engineering and in my past jobs.” In spite of the radical change, Brazeau said she easily made friends and overcame her fears. In the end, she said, “I was not uncomfortable. I guess Christian and David were lot more uncomfortable than we were.”

By men, for women

“Christian and David” are Christian Fernandez and David Phillips, Hackbright’s cofounders. Fernandez is the veteran coder of the two; he’s worked at places like Fuzebox and Ask.com and has done a bit of developer instruction as well. In fact, Fernandez taught at the first-ever Dev Bootcamp.

Philips had been making apps with Fernandez for about a year, with Fernandez teaching him how to code, when the pair got the idea to offer a coding class. Eighteen guys and just three women showed up. As much as they wanted a 50/50 split between the genders, they realized it was unrealistic.

So why not offer a class only for women?

While that idea has been posited by many women’s groups in recent times, it seemed more audacious coming from a couple dudes. ”That was the biggest risk,” said Phillips in an interview with VentureBeat. “We’re two guys. We expected to be judged; it was kinda scary.”

Fernandez and Phillips started meeting with developer women’s organizations, “getting to know everybody and letting them know what our intentions were.” The duo was pleasantly surprised. “We really got a positive response from everybody,” Phillips said.

And with that, Hackbright was a go.

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AMC’s Mad Men paints a picture of a male-dominated world, in which women either stayed home with the kids or enlisted as secretaries while their husbands took on huge clients on Madison Avenue.

While this stereotype has largely changed and women now account for 46.9 percent of the U.S. workforce, women in senior management positions in the growing ad-tech industry are still severely under-represented, seeming to better reflect Don Draper’s era than the twenty first century.

Although a very male-dominated industry, it’s hugely dynamic, constantly evolving, employing many smart individuals, and none of us could imagine working in any other sector. However, it can be challenging, especially for females. So, based on my years of experience in the ad tech world, I’ve compiled our top tips for women who want to break through the allegorical glass ceiling and succeed as an executive without sacrificing family or sanity. Good luck!

Embrace what sets you apart from your male co-workers.

Women tend to diminish their abilities or doubt their qualifications far more than men do. It’s fair to say that all of us have worried about being ‘one of the guys’ in order to fit in with our colleagues and customers and felt we had to mirror our male colleagues. However we’ve realized this is not necessary and no one had asked us to be one of them. Women are different than men. We speak differently, we act differently, we are innately compassionate, great listeners and excel at problem solving. Be yourself and play to both your personal and gender-specific strengths.

Be vocal and make sure your boss knows your aspirations.

Be sure to establish open communication with your boss – and maybe even your boss’ boss – especially in regards to your career trajectory. Men are more aggressive about letting everyone know what they’ve achieved and where they want to go, whereas women tend to be more passive or equate their success to good luck rather than their own skills. Put yourself on the radar of the people who not only need to know you have goals for yourself, but can help you achieve them.

Invest in building your own brand

Identify the personal qualities you bring to your business that are distinct from your colleagues and make sure this is recognized. Visibility is important – don’t be shy in highlighting your successes to ensure you receive the credit for them. Use all opportunities to share your thoughts about your company and the industry, be that via networking, writing articles or publishing blog posts, to bring you greater exposure and position yourself as a source of expertise. Also take advantage of any speaking opportunity that might arise: although conference agendas are dominated by men, organizers are crying out for good female speakers to address this imbalance.

Talking is good: find a mentor you relate to.

Your mentor should be someone who you feel can offer both the emotional and technical perspectives you need to grow your career. They need to have experienced the work and family challenges you’re facing and make you realize that you actually aren’t crazy when attending a ballet recital or ducking out of the office early to go to a pediatrician appointment the week before a big pitch. Talking is positive, so never see mentoring as a form of weakness: men do it all the time but just in a different environment.

Working long hours does not mean working effectively.

Who says that the person in the office for 12 hours a day is more effective than someone who works seven hours? It’s simply not true. Rather than leaving your calendar entirely open, book time for key activities such as research, brainstorming, keeping up to date with the industry, etc. See if you can even book days to leave early to spend time with your family. As a result, you will probably find that you are more efficient without spending more time in the office because you’re shifting focus from everything to just the most important things.

Base hiring on improving your team’s bench strengths, not who may be next on maternity leave.

When in a position to hire, women will often focus on the person and their qualifications rather than predict what their family might look like in a few years. All of us have been in a position multiple times to hire female candidates despite our male counterparts questioning whether the prospective employee may go on maternity leave in the future. This should not be a determining factor and women themselves should not stop forwarding their careers because they are planning a family. If someone is right for the job, that’s all that matters.

Don’t pay attention to what everyone else is doing.

Success in ad tech doesn’t mandate that women prioritize work over family – but that impression is often what drives many women away. While women like Yahoo!’s CEO, Marissa Mayer, may have cut back their maternity leave, this is their personal choice and others may choose a different career and parenting approach that works for them. No one should have to put their life on hold. Find a way to make it work for YOU.

Make a plan to balance your personal and work lives.

If you find that you love your career in ad tech and also have a family – or plan to start one – don’t immediately assume you can’t do both. Make a plan with your spouse to balance work and family, rather than simply reacting to demands on your time. That way, you both will know what’s happening, there won’t be any surprises and you can support each other in both career and personal aspirations.

Learn as much as you can from as many people as you can.

To succeed and lead within an ad tech company, you are expected to know the product and its underlying infrastructure. For many women, this is the hardest part of their job. Don’t be afraid to sit in a room with an expert (either an engineer or a product person who knows their stuff or a veteran who has been in the industry for decades) and get answers to your questions. The deeper your knowledge of the industry and your product, the more success you will have in your career, and the more valuable you will become to your company – be you male or female.

Remember to take care of yourself.

While you need to take care of your work responsibilities, you also have to take care of your family and yourself! Find time to exercise, even if it is at 5 a.m., and, as hard as it sounds, try to eat healthy – even on the road. If you are not happy and healthy, the rest will never work.

With reporting by Nicolle Pangis and Maureen Little

Denise Colella is the chief revenue officer at Maxifier, a company that provides inventory optimization services to online publishers, ad networks and leading media companies throughout North America and Europe. 

Prior to joining Maxifier, Colella was the CRO at AudienceScience, and a vice president at Yahoo!. 

Follow her on Twitter @decolella

Saudi Arabia has implemented an electronic tracking system to monitor women and inform their husbands if they leave the country.

According to an Agence France-Press story, a new system implemented last week sends Saudi husbands text messages from the Saudi immigration agency when their wives are flying out of King Khaled International Airport, near Riyahd. Women are not allowed to leave the country without signed permission from their husbands.

Saudi Arabia, which ranked second worst in a Thomson Reuters global survey on women’s rights in mid 2012,  is a notoriously repressive country. Women are banned from driving, required to have a male guardian, just received the right to vote in municipal elections last year, and must cover most of their bodies, traditionally with a burqa or niqab.

“Women and girls in Saudi Arabia are treated as perpetual minors living under male guardianship all their lives – with restrictions on employment, political participation, travel, education, and healthcare,” Yasmeen Hassan, global director of Equality Now, told Trust.org in response to that survey.

Source: Wikipedia

Saudi woman in niqab

Women being denied the right to leave the country without the permission of their husbands is nothing new, though this tracking technology is. But there are no details in the AFP story or any of the other breaking stories on how exactly the Saudi authorities are doing it.

Based on the limited information available, it may not be a tracking system that uses physical devices such as — and I know this is an awful comparison — a LoJack car-tracking system, which would require a significant infrastructure and ramp-up time for distribution of hardware. It sounds like a simpler system at borders and airports whereby immigration authorities ascertain a woman’s identity, look up her husband in a database, and text him manually or via an automated system.

UPDATE: based on the new local report, this is exactly how the system works.

Which is still, of course, appalling to Western mores and requires a government database that matches up women with male guardians — usually husbands or fathers.

Commentators on Twitter are reacting to the news, some, including Ruwayda Mustafah, a female Kurdish activist/commentator, with despair:

Why can't Saudi Arabia do something for women for once where we can actually be proud of it? Instead of the constant humiliation.

—
Ruwayda Mustafah (@RuwaydaMustafah) November 22, 2012

photo credit: zilverbat. via photopin cc

In honor of Veteran’s Day, I wanted to dedicate Startup Spotlight to entrepreneurs with military experience, or who were working on projects to benefit the veteran community. I found a company that embodies both.

Women Veterans Connect is an online community for women who have served in the military. At its core, it is a network where women veterans can connect, exchange stories, engage with peer mentors, and find relevant information. Jo Ann Martinez founded the organization after serving in the Air Force and receiving strong support from an informal group of women veterans. She realized not everyone had the same access to this network and set out to create WVC.

“I have been immersed in the women’s veterans community since day 1,” Martinez said. “These are all women whose stories I know personally, and I realized that we typically don’t ask for help until we are in crisis. I took on project after project trying to figure out what to do, and it finally came down to stopping, looking back at all the reasons why things failed, and doing the opposite. My expertise was with women’s veterans. I wanted to serve that community for all the mentoring they provided me and I wanted to contribute by helping them successfully reintegrate into the community.”  

After multiple unsuccessful attempts to get something off the ground, Martinez met the Katherine Webster, the woman behind TechCentral SF and VetsInTech. That encounter led her to attend the first ever VetsInTech hackathon in March. Up until this point, Martinez taught herself basic elements of front end development and design, but knew that to launch a fully-featured web-based platform, she would need more education and help. Much to her surprise, her team placed third and she found the bridge she needed from the military world into the technology world.

“I think veterans make great entrepreneurs,” she said. “Military personal go through so many leadership programs, it makes sense. Plus, we have all the work ethic and commitment that is involved. The Air Force core values are integrity, service before self, and excellence in all we do. I still apply this win my everyday life.”

Many members of the military also receive extensive training in math, science, engineering, and logistics, which can provide a solid foundation to learn programming. Furthermore, startup life can be a desirable route for veterans who struggle to find more traditional forms of unemployment.

“People getting out of the military can have a stigma,” she said. “We’ve got employers out there that are not going to say this directly, but they might look at you as a liability. Veterans come back after multiple deployments, some with PTSD, to a weakened economy and it can be really really difficult to get a job. This is why entrepreneurship becomes attractive for us.”

Women Veterans Connect is not only about supporting returned military personnel, but also about supporting women. Technology and the military are both male-dominated industries and part of Martinez’s mission is to encourage women to throw themselves headfirst into these worlds, even when it can be intimidating.

“I had my daughter in the same year that this idea was born,” she said. “It is my mission to not just tell her, but actually show her all of the possibilities that we are capable of as women. In my experience, women are always willing to make more out of less, whereas men are asking for more and getting more. What I hope happens down the road is women veterans show up more and there are more women overall in tech community.”

The WVC officially incorporated as a non-profit in April 2012. It currently focuses its efforts on the 167,000 women veterans in California, but the vision is to expand the platform nationwide and hopefully gain some influence at the government level.

While women veterans comprise a relatively small segment of the population, Martinez strives to make the services and her vision relatable to the rest of the country. She wants to honor the accomplishments of women veterans, beyond their military service, and tell stories that not only provide recognition, but inspiration.

For more information about this weekend’s VetsInTech hackathon, click here. 

Startup Spotlight is a new weekly series that features a company with a unique idea or story to tell. If your company would like to be considered, please submit an application at http://venturebeat.com/news-tips/.

Next week, Google is presenting a web video series featuring brilliant, successful women in tech — specifically, women who develop and design technology and applications, and who advocate for more gender balance in our industries.

The series is part of Google Developers Live, an ongoing program of Google+ Hangouts for web and mobile developers. Sometimes the episodes are Office Hours with product leads from Google; sometimes, they’re moderated conversations with industry leaders.

The new series, called Women Techmakers, is the latter. A five-part series, Women Techmakers will bring viewers face-to-face with a bevy of Google’s own leading ladies as well as luminaries from other companies.

Notable participants include:

• Hilary Mason – Chief Scientist, Bitly
• Bettina Hein – Founder and CEO, Pixability
• Diane Greene – former VMWare CEO; Board of Directors, Google
• Stephanie Palmeri – Principal, SoftTech VC
• Leslie Bradshaw – President, COO and Co-founder, JESS3
• Megan Smith – Vice President, Google (pictured)

The series will begin November 5 and run through November 9. Episodes will air daily at 2:30 pm Pacific on the Google Developers Live page.

Interested parties can also ask questions and submit comments through the Google Developers page on Google+.

The series was inspired by an event held the night before Google I/O, the company’s developer conference held in San Francisco each year. The evening featured a panel discussion with five high-ranking Googlers: Smith, ads SVP Susan Wojcicki, engineering director Anna Patterson, payments VP Angela Lai, and product management director Gayathri Rajan.

Here’s the panel:

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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If you’re one of the young women entrepreneurs behind Black Girls Hack in Atlanta, Georgia, you organize a hackathon. But not your run-of-the-mill standard white male sausage-fest hackathon — this is going to be a “blackhack.”

And it’s a blackhack for women.

Inspired by Black Girls Code in San Francisco, four women founded Black Girls Hack to inspire African American women (and girls) to be software developers and startup founders, as well as to gather, communicate with, and connect all those who already are.

I talked to one of the founders, Amanda Spann, who also serves as the PR coordinator of Black Girls Hack.

“We’re all African American, and we all have tech startups,” she said. “One thing we all struggle with is feeling like we’re the only ones … there are so few blacks in technology.”

Spann is starting up Glamobile, a review and recommendation community in the fashion and shopping space that is currently in stealth mode. Another founder, Kat Calvin, is starting Character’s Closet, a startup that will allow fans to find and eventually purchase their favorite TV and movie stars outfits.

Instead of bemoaning the fact that it can be tough to find black developers — especially female ones — and accepting it as the status quo, the women decided to do something about it.

The first thing they’re doing is #blackhack, and it’s happening November 16-17 in Atlanta. Spann expects about 100 African American women coders to show up, and she’s already excited with the early enthusiasm.

“We’re really amped to have people on board,” she said. “And MailChimp came on only two days after we announced as a title sponsor.”

The event is being run as a charity, and all proceeds from ticket sales will go to Black Girls Code.

photo credit: kk+ via photopin cc

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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It may be shocking to some men — or at least advertising art directors — but not all women have the stereotypical Barbie dimensions. Or the Twiggy lack thereof.

That’s what BeauCoo, a play on the French word beaucoup, meaning lots — was created to solve. Co-founder Victoria MacLean puts it this way: ”Why should a woman take style advice from someone who looks nothing like her?”

A quick google for images that match “fashion stylist” suffices to make her point:

Source: Google

Fashion stylists, according to Google image search, are not average women

So Beaucoo aims to connect women who look alike, allow them to share fashion tips, ideas, and finds with each other, and discover cool new looks. Along the way, they can earn rewards from fashion retailers: targeted promos and discounts based on what they’re sharing and viewing.

The social network lives mainly in Beaucoo’s mobile apps. iOS is available at launch, Android and web apps are coming in November.

The Beaucoo team of four founders are all successful entrepreneurs, having sold their previous company Decoder. They’ve raised $1.1 million in funding from Zinc Ventures.

Joanne Wilson puts a distinctly feminine spin on angel investing. A majority of her investments are in female-founded companies, and she picks businesses that appeal to a female market.

Joanne and her husband, Fred, a partner at Union Square Ventures, are known forces in the technology world, particularly the New York startup scene. Wilson’s portfolio is currently 24 companies strong, and she has made a name for herself as an advocate for female entrepreneurs, a woman about town, and a savvy investor.

Early in her career, Wilson faced obstacles and discrimination as young, female professional. She got out of the technology industry to raise her children and published a popular blog called Gotham Gal that resonated strongly with women around the country. She realized that many women she worked with in the 1990s were not participating in the next generation of the web, and she jumped back in the game to promote female entrepreneurship.

“I want to help people execute on their dreams,” she said. “It is important to support women because they are not getting funded as often. There are great ideas and great companies, and I want to support them to the point where people in the investment world see the opportunity that these women have created and the strength of their businesses.”

Wilson’s investment strategy is to focus on the entrepreneurs. She said her number one priority is to believe in the founders and their ability to grow a business. Once she has added a company to her portfolio, she gets deeply involved and offers more than just financial support.

“At the end of the day, I have to like the person I am investing in. I have to want to spend time with them,” she said. “I want someone who can execute on their vision and move an idea forward, someone who is willing to evolve and pivot their idea and be flexible. I have to believe in the idea  they have, but the number one thing is the person.”

One of Wilson’s goals is to nurture startups to the point where institutional investors can have the “aha moment.” Many female entrepreneurs struggle to make the male-dominated world of venture capitalism understand their ideas, and so helping them prove their model is key.

“Social and commerce is something women understand more than anyone,” said said. “Women tend to build businesses that fill voids in their lives. If you are another women, you get it. Sometimes it is harder for investors to understand what their businesses are.”

Her portfolio is diverse, although food and fashion are common themes (in addition to females). It includes investments in Blue Bottle coffee, fashion data analytics, hydroponic window gardens, a platform that matches professionals with nonprofits, a scooter rental service, multiple online publications, wedding planning tools, and even an all-natural, sustainably sourced pickle company.

Her most recent investment is in a social e-commerce startup called Have to Have, billed as a “registry for your lifestyle.” Users create shareable wish lists with products they desire from around the web. The technology works like a virtual shopping assistant, tracking items, offering organizational tools, and notifying you when something goes on sale.

Publishers and advertisers can implement Have to Have’s tools and widgets to engage their consumers and gather data. Well-respected publishers like Conde Nast, Marie Claire, and the Huffington Post are clients, and the platform can help companies drive sales.

Founders Carla Holtze and Kimberly Skelton have impressive backgrounds. Both women earned MBAs from Columbia Business School and have years of experience in finance, technology, and fashion. When they first approached Wilson with their idea, she turned them down. They considered her feedback and made significant changes to their model, which impressed Wilson to the point of investing.

“These women spent six months literally re-doing the entire business, came back and pitched me again,” Wilson said. “I had to give them a huge amount of credit for making the shift and loved the angle they are going at it. It has both a consumer engagement and an business-to-business enterprise solution.”

Wilson encourages female entrepreneurship across the spectrum, emphasizing the importance of women serving as mentors, investors, and executives, as well as founders. She is trying to build an ecosystem where women support each other and succeed.

“To be a mentor and to help someone through their learning and career is really important,” she said. “I’d like to see women set up to the plate, and I hope that more women who have deep pockets could invest and provide their own knowledge and experience.”

To this effect, Wilson is one of the driving forces behind the Women Entrepreneurs Festival, put on by NYU. She not only provides advice to female founders in her portfolio, but to women everywhere balancing work life and home life, operating in a male-dominated environment, or simply looking for food recommendations in Brooklyn.

For those of us who like to eat dessert every single day, Daily Candy offers a delectable calorie free alternative. Today, the trendy online publication for women has dished out a new lifestyle app called DailyCandy Scout, where any gal can post items that tickle her fancy.

DailyCandy publishes tasty little nuggets of content relating to fashion, beauty, entertainment, food & drink, home, and kids, and anything that might intrigue a modern, young gal. The content is also localized, with daily digests for 11 cities. Up until now, the material was created and curated by editors and consumed by more than 6 million readers around the country. This new app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch will put the users in the editor’s chair, letting them share stuff that inspires them in the moment.

The team at DailyCandy is notably adept at trend spotting, and they are embracing the growing influence of mobile and power of crowd sourcing to engage their fans. The app will feature user-generated content that can be shared, liked, and commented on. Posts that catch the DailyCandy editors’ eyes may get featured on the site as well.  There will also be specific Scout Challenges, such as “scout that street style” or “flaunt those Fall kicks,” and the winners of these challenges will have the chance to earn prizes and publicity.

“DailyCandy is the trusted authority on the latest and greatest in style, fashion, food, and culture” said Alison Moore, DailyCandy’s executive vice president. “With new style trends popping up faster than ever, DailyCandy Scout enables a two-way dialog with our vast community of passionate users.  Our loyal readers can now become our collaborative editors and brand ambassadors — spotting and sharing new trends and insider discoveries — all through the DailyCandy Scout app.”

An elite group of tastemakers, consisting of designers, boutique owners, chefs, TV personalities, entrepreneurs, and bloggers, will form the DailyCandy Scout Society and will also contribute their personal discoveries to the app. These influencers include fashion designers Lauren Moffat and Wren’s Melissa Coker; style entrepreneurs Alison Pincus from One Kings Lane and Birchbox founders Katia Beauchamp and Hayley Barna; chef Bryan Voltaggio from Top Chef fame; TV star Kimora Lee Simmons, and others.

The app provides valuable marketing opportunities for brands who can use the platform to reach, acquire, and engage loyal (and consumptive) fans. Marketing partners can sponsor the Scout Challenges to showcase new products and brand experiences.

DailyCandy Scout makes the content accessible anytime, anywhere, and makes the site more interactive. Now, instead of a brownie or piece of pie eaten in one sitting, DailyCandy can be consumed like a bag of M&Ms, carried around and enjoyed all day.

We’ve all heard it many times now: Women are gaming more than ever before, making up more than 50 percent of the gaming audience. And while developers have started catching on, developers still have a lot to learn about the intersection of women and gaming; namely, how do different demographics view gaming, and what are the ripple effects that stem from these perspectives?

Grannies and gaming

What a difference a couple of generations makes. When many of today’s grandmothers were kids, console games hadn’t hit stores yet, let alone the homes of virtually every middle class family. And the grandmothers of a couple of generations ago were entertaining themselves with card games and civic clubs and introducing their granddaughters to Barbie dolls, which first hit shelves in 1959.

Today, it’s an entirely new world with markedly different forms of entertainment, and this has affected grandmas in many ways. For starters, it’s a lot harder to steer grandkids’ attention away from the gadgets they’re playing with. This has pushed many senior women to learn how to use these devices themselves, so they don’t feel so disconnected from their little loved ones. And as more grandmothers have learned to play games, and the majority do so via consoles or desktop computers, they have discovered many benefits. Research indicates that gaming for seniors counters depression, improves balance, provides exercise, and improves mental health. Knowing this, some senior centers and nursing homes now house Nintendo Wii’s and have online gaming competitions rather than the traditional Bingo night.

For grandmothers, gaming has also helped to bridge the technology gap in their lives. Games with simple navigation, like solitaire, can be a senior’s first foray into the “online” world and show them to learn how to use a mouse, a touchpad or a touchscreen. Slightly more advanced senior women have delved into the world of casual games via Facebook and enjoy playing puzzle games like Words With Friends for the challenge and mental stimulation and its social elements. These experiences with technology spill over to other devices and help older women feel better about purchasing e-readers, tablets, and other devices.

Mommas and gaming

Even more than their older counterparts, moms are reaping the benefits from gaming. Like grandmothers, moms use gaming as an important tactic to bond with their kids, especially children between the ages of 8-12. They play online cooking or dress-up games with their daughters and play console or online adventure games with their boys as a way of spending quality time with them (and to monitor what they’re doing online). The on-the-go mom also uses gaming as a way to entertain their young child when they need a moment of distraction.

In addition to connecting with their kids, moms are playing games for then own entertainment as well. For this strapped-for-time audience, gaming has become a way to break away from the daily hassles of life. Moms largely enjoys games that require a only short burst of time and with a defined beginning and end. Online puzzle games such as crosswords and word scrambles or strategy games resonate best with this audience. Moms are not as social as their mothers or daughters when it comes to online games, though, because they largely view the entertainment as “me time.”

Even though there are many benefits to gaming, including stress relief and mental stimulation, many moms don’t like to discuss their gaming habits because they feel embarrassed by this “guilty pleasure.” As such, gaming companies need to stress marketing messages that convey how gaming is good for this audience, in the hopes that they will grow more comfortable with sharing more about their gaming habits.

Girls and gaming

The line “girls just wanna have fun” rings especially true when it comes to tween gaming, and developers have caught on to this notion. Unlike their male counterparts, girls opt for intensely social games that feature characters. For girls, gaming is about connecting with like-minded spirits, acting out future lives, and experimenting with different styles and looks, rather than head-to-head competition. If competitive elements are involved with the game, such as posting high scores, it should be done within the framework of these social games and negative points shouldn’t be awarded (scores that can only go up).

As a result of gaming, girls can experience new worlds that they can then apply to their own lives. For example, many girls are using fashion games to experiment with their own sense of style, and this helps them pick out their new back-to-school outfits when shopping with mom. Girls are also role playing as chefs, entrepreneurs and veterinarians, which help them better understand and identify their own talents and interests.

Smart money: Marketing to women

The net of all of this for the gaming industry is that as more women and girls venture into online gaming and spend more time doing so, developers and marketers need to understand that a certain psychology exists not just for women as a whole but that different age groups approach gaming in different ways. Many positive ripple effects stem from women and girls gaming, and the more the gaming industry can identify and promote these benefits, the more likely they are to grow these very coveted audiences.

Oscar Diele is the chief marketing officer of Spil Games, a global leader in online gaming. Spil Games owns the No. 1 tween girls gaming platform, GirlsgoGames. He has previously held senior management roles at other online media, ecommerce, and entertainment industry organizations, including TomTom and eBay. Diele is currently based in Amsterdam.

Image Credit: Floral City Public Library, Floral City, Fla.

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I feel extremely lucky to be working at a job that combines my passion for technology, entrepreneurship, and meeting interesting people who dare to challenge the status quo. Don’t get me wrong, after living in the outwardly glitzy New York for four years where Gucci loafers and bottle service were practically synonymous with success, Silicon Valley is a breath of fresh air.

However, there is one thing that unsettles me as much here as it did in the New York finance world, and that is the lack of women.

There are many theories why we are under-represented in the tech industry, but one that resonates most with me is women’s skewed perception of technology and venture capital.

During my time at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (“the GSB”), one of my favorite professors, Joel Peterson introduced me to the book Mindset by Carol Dweck, which changed my thinking style in a very fundamental way. In the book, Dweck draws a distinction between two personality types:

• The “fixed” aka “Enron” mindset: People who believe they are born with a set of traits that cannot be changed and therefore have a tremendously difficult time bouncing back emotionally from failures.
• The “growth” mindset: People who think of failures as learning opportunities and therefore consistently seek out challenging situations to improve their skills. (This mindset applies to anything from business to dating, but more on that later…)

People in the fixed mindset are defined by stereotypes and expectations. For instance, a recent study shows standardized test-takers who are forced to identify themselves as female or African American end up with statistically significant lower scores as compared to a control group who does not have to disclose such information. Of course, an individual’s mindset often lies on a spectrum between fixed and growth and can always change over a lifetime, but it is hard to deny that stereotypes still play a powerful role in people’s career aspirations.

And herein lies the problem in my opinion: the Silicon Valley tech stereotype is fixed, and not one that plays favorably to women.

When most people think of the average tech entrepreneur, the pale guy who codes while playing World of Warcraft in his gadget-filled basement pops up. This image goes against society’s definition of femininity, and as a result, little girls who aspire to become extroverted women who have interests ranging from fashion to business do not consider computer science or engineering as a viable career path.

I have been told repeatedly by my colleagues in tech that I do not fit into the Silicon Valley mold….that I seem too “New York” or too feminine to be a VC. Truth is…I love fashion, I love art (I was this close to enrolling in Parson’s School of Design), and I read InStyle just as regularly as I read VentureBeat. But I am also a former gaming addict — I programmed my own RPG game in middle school, and I was an engineering major who spent half of my weekends in college writing code in Matlab.

These things are not mutually exclusive, and being an engineer, a computer programmer or a venture capitalist does not mean a woman has to give up what makes her feminine. But I recognize that I was very lucky. My mother is an engineer and fashion designer in her spare time, and I never believed that a woman had to be one or the other.

So how do we solve this problem? By having more female tech entrepreneurs and VCs in the public eye who are unafraid to break down stereotypes (for instance, stylish, highly competent leaders like Yahoo’s new CEO, Marissa Mayer). Ultimately, more young women need to see that programmers and VCs don’t always have to be a “he”. In 2011, only 17 percent of computer science grads were women, and only 5 women appeared in the Midas List, Forbes’ annual list of the top 100 venture capitalists.

When I look at Blumberg Capital’s portfolio companies, I feel very lucky to be able to look up to some amazing female entrepreneurs, including Philippa Pauen at Wummelkiste, and Joanna Riley at One Page Company. But, we need more women in technology who are willing to break the mold. Silicon Valley has got to produce a female Mark Zuckerberg or Vinod Khosla, so girls will aspire to be in tech from a very young age.

Jenn Wei is a venture capitalist at Blumberg Capital, an early stage venture capital firm based in San Francisco. Prior to Blumberg Capital, Jenn worked in technology investment banking and consumer/fashion private equity in New York. Jenn received her MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and B.S. in Engineering from Duke University. Follow her on Twitter: @jennjwei

Culture Kitchen co-founders Abby Sturges and Jennifer Lopez want to share treasured recipes that have been passed down through generations of families. The San Francisco-based startup has turned home-cooking expertise into a viable small business.

Full disclosure: I was enrolled in a design and business class with the founders at Stanford.

Culture Kitchen connects foodies with local cooks willing to share tantalizing, home-cooked, ethnic food. ”These are men and women who have immigrated to the US and brought with them their incredible generations old recipes,” the team explains on its Kickstarter page. “No fancy chefs here, just really passionate people who love cooking and love sharing their culture through food.”

The founders hope to raise $150,000 on the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform. In the first 24 hours since launching the funding page, they have already received over $8,000 in financing. If successful, they plan to develop six new cooking kits, which will include live videos filled with advice from the chefs. In the current form, the pre-packaged kits contain all the ingredients, 3 recipes with step-by-step directions and photos, and personal mementos from the cooks.

Culture Kitchen’s co-founders, mother’s with no formal training, spend months compiling recipes and rooting out hard-to-find ingredients for the kits. Place an order through the company’s website, and learn to cook Paloma’s Poblano Mole or Suchrita’s Chicken Tikka — personalization is core to the user experience. Included are tips and tricks from the chefs, so you’ll feel like you’ve inherited a family recipe.

Culture Kitchen’s co-founders, Jennifer Lopez and Abby Sturges

When I knew the two at Stanford, they were focused on organizing cooking classes to bring a second income to women who loved to cook, mainly drawn from nearby neighborhoods like East Palo Alto. Meanwhile, wealthy students from the university with limited skills in the kitchen were eagerly participating in the cooking classes, often held in local community centers. Suddenly, the smell of pumpkin curry was wafting through dorm rooms, replacing the usual ramen and Mac ‘n’ Cheese.

“Students often left classes inspired to go recreate dishes at home,” said Sturges in an interview with VentureBeat. “Sadly, they would report that they weren’t able to navigate the ethnic markets we sent them to and couldn’t get the ingredients they needed.”

This feedback inspired the team to eke out a new model to scale the business. Now they work with 15 master chefs and send kits to hundreds of subscribers on a monthly basis. It’s great for a dinner party of 4 to 6 people, or you could make like Jolie O’Dell (our resident domestic goddess) and singlehandedly prepare a week’s worth of recipes.

In a foodie city like San Francisco, we are inundated with options. Why choose to order a kit through Culture Kitchen? The founders feel they are onto something unique with the subscription model and the mingling of cooking and culture. “You know we all eat every day, and some of us cook every day.  That felt like such an untapped opportunity, taking the mundane activity and super charging it with meaning,” said Lopez.

Image courtesy of The Peninsula Press

Leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers got hit with a sexual harassment and gender discrimination suit earlier this month, rocking a firm that has been known for bringing women into the venture capital industry.

The complaint (below), filed May 10 in superior court in San Francisco, reads like a melodrama. Ellen Pao, who is currently an investment partner with the firm, alleges that in 2006, fellow partner Ajit Nazre pressed Pao to have sex with him on a trip to Germany. Nazre, who had been at the company for two years longer than Pao was managing her trip to Germany. After refusing and returning home, Pao alleges that Nazre continued his advances until she acquiesced and began a personal relationship with him later in 2006.

After ending the relationship after three intimate encounters, Pao says Nazre (pictured right) launched a five-year campaign of retaliation against her, the complaint claims. This included convincing a chief executive she was courting for a seat on one of her company’s boards to join one of Nazre’s boards instead. VentureBeat has identified that company as RPX Corporation, a patent litigation management company.

Pao’s complaint also alleges that KPCB partner Randy Komisar gave her a book by Leonard Cohen, “The Book of Longing,” that contained graphic sexual imagery, and invited her to dinner on Saturday night when his wife was away, a combination that Pao felt was “inappropriate in the workplace.”

Her complaint also alleges that the firm as a whole did not respond adequately when she brought the harassment to the attention of senior partners, including John Doerr, Ted Schlein, and Ray Lane.

TechCrunch broke the news earlier today.

Pao’s lawyers declined to comment when contacted by VentureBeat. KPCB provided a statement, which we’re including below.

Needless to say, KPCB is feeling some heat from the issue. Some are saying that the company should have informed the limited partners associated with the venture firm. Melinda S. Riechert, an employment lawyer with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP (which is not involved in the case), thinks this would have been a mistake on Kleiner’s part.

“It’s exceedingly difficult to deal with a case by a current employee, because people have privacy rights. You try to keep these things on a need-to-know basis,” Riechert told VentureBeat. “The more people who know about small suits and claims… the more people who can be accused of retaliating.”

Kleiner is likely to argue that Pao turned to a harassment case after she began to receive poor performance reviews, as a way of deflecting responsibility. Pao’s lawyers, of course, will argue that this gets things backwards, and that the poor reviews were part of the harassment.

Why would Pao stay at a firm for years, given the negative climate? Riechert puts it into perspective:

“She obviously has the right to [keep her job at Kleiner], and I have many cases that I handle that are brought by current employees… It’s difficult, it’s not easy for everybody, but they have the right to stay employed and we make sure that rules and law are followed.”

Kleiner has been otherwise well-known in the venture industry for bringing on female partners. The venture firm has 12 female partners at the firm, of which nine are active investors. A number of these female partners have names well known in Silicon Valley, including Mary Meeker, who has invested in Twitter and Groupon, and Aileen Lee, who recently decided to create her own seed fund. However, its newest fund, KP15, only includes one woman among its 10 managing partners.

Here’s the full text of Pao’s complaint.

Here’s the statement from Kleiner:

In response to a discrimination complaint filed in the Superior Court of San Francisco by Ellen Pao, Christina Lee, a Kleiner Perkins spokesperson, stated the Firm regrets that the situation is being litigated publicly and had hoped the two parties could have reached resolution, particularly given Pao’s 7-year history with the firm. Following a thorough independent investigation of the facts, the firm believes the lawsuit is without merit and intends to vigorously defend the matter. The Firm has been a diversity pioneer in its industry and was one of the first venture capital firms to hire women as partners. The number of women partners at the firm is one of the highest within the venture capital arena and the firm has actively supported women in all respects.

Photo of Ellen Pao via KPCB; photo of Ajit Nazre via djevents/Flickr

Forbes today published its Midas List, an annual recounting of who’s who among the top investors around the globe.

We took a look at the tech sector, and of the top 100 investors chosen to be listed, only five were women.

Giving wide berth to the complicated sociological discussion of why only five women appear on the Midas List for tech investment, let’s take a look at these remarkable ladies and their careers.

Mary Meeker

VITAL STATS:

• Firm: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
• Education: MBA, Cornell University; B.A., DePauw University.
• Position on the Forbes Tech Midas List: 42

Mary Meeker was a Morgan Stanley analyst — and quite a good one — until January 2011, when she came to Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. But her Internet street cred stretches back deep into the dotcom era.

Meeker’s claims to fame start with “The Internet Report,” a Morgan Stanley publication from 1995 that became a sort of bible for dotcom investors. Dubbed “Queen of the Net” in 1998 by Barron’s, Meeker was part of the Morgan Stanley team that oversaw Google’s 2004 IPO. In 2006, a writer for Fortune said Meeker was “absolutely first rate when it comes to spotting big-picture trends before they come into focus,” and in 2010, the magazine called her one of the ten smartest people in the technology industry.

Meeker is doubtless one of the strongest and smartest people in tech, but her biggest strength in her career might be her unrelenting focus on data. Her background as an analyst gives her work a no-nonsense focus on numbers. Since, as her research has shown over the decades, around 5 percent of tech companies create around 90 percent of the industry’s wealth, she looks at the balance sheet first, market opportunities second, and management teams third.

Recommended: Text and audio from Meeker’s 2001 speech at her alma mater; The Internet Report that started it all.

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Etsy’s community is famously female-driven, so it makes sense that the company would look to women in hosting a developer initiative, as well.

The company is an online marketplace for handmade and vintage goods, and it boasts a huge audience of women — lady crafters, lady artists, lady online retailers, lady shoppers. Bringing lady developers into the conversation isn’t just an affirmative action move to get more women involved in tech; it’s an acknowledgement that Etsy is, to a huge extent, a marketplace populated by women, and Etsy wants to give more women “behind the curtain” access on the tech side, as well.

Etsy’s newly announced Hacker Grant will bring a class of developers to the startup’s Brooklyn headquarters for the summer, where they will hone and perfect their coding skills. For women who need financial support to participate in the summerlong program, ten grants of $5,000 each will be awarded to ten lucky hackers.

The program is being conducted in partnership with Hacker School a full-time summer school in New York. Hacker School is open to any participants, male or female. The organizers are hoping to bring in 40 participants this year, and they’re aiming for a 50/50 gender split. The Etsy grants are simply an extra incentive for women to join the summer school.

The idea for the grants was spearheaded by Etsy engineering VP Marc Hedlund. The Hacker School team said female and male applicants will be held to the same programming standards (a.k.a., no “girls’ handicap”).

“I’ve spent the last several years in heavily male-dominated environments,” writes Hacker School co-founder Nick Bergson-Shilcock on the program’s blog. “I think about them whenever I’m in a room of programmers and there’s only one woman. No matter how welcoming and friendly the environment, you burn at least a few cycles being cognizant of the fact you’re different from most of the people around you.”

The Etsy/Hacker School program is free for anyone who wants to attend, and it begins on June 4, 2012. Applications are open now for the summer batch, and interested women programmers can apply now for an Etsy Hacker Grant.

Top image courtesy of StockLite, Shutterstock

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“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 forced to develop a standard email specifically for this purpose (see the screenshot below). “They loved this email,” Chong told me. “A lot of guys were posting it on Facebook.”

Luluvise’s target users are young women aged 18-35. Women from 69 different countries signed up for the beta, the majority being split across the US, UK and Canada. A Luluvise user first creates an “inner circle,” a private, secure space accessible only to the friends she trusts the most and with whom she is comfortable sharing private details. During the beta phase, the average user had 4-8 friends in her Inner Circle.

“Luluvise uses Facebook to make registration easier. We do not post to walls or make Luluvise information public anywhere or to other Facebook users,” Chong explained.

The scoops feature lets users share news, dilemmas and gossip in 4 formats: text scoop, photo scoop, poll scoop and the Wikidate scoop. Once a user has at least 3 friends in her Inner Circle, the number of scoops posted and spent time chatting on the site increased by about 70 percent.

The Wikidate scoop is a pre-set quiz which lets a user review any guy with a public Facebook profile and tell the inner circle what she really thinks of him.

“We take the score from your review and average it with the scores from other Luluvisers who have already reviewed the gentleman in question,” explains Chong. “Your score contributes to Luluvise’s ever-growing database of dudes.” The final score is made public but the details (specific comments of users) of the review are only available to those with access to the scoop.

Of the four types of scoops that can be created in Luluvise, Wikidate Scoops and Text Scoops proved to be the most popular with beta users. The most loved feature was the urgency buttons. Users can add an “OMG!” or an “SOS” to their scoops and almost every scoop created in the beta had one of these tags attached.

Luluvise’s business model is not yet clear. The company will initially concentrate on building up the user base. E-commerce in the form of group buying, offers, and even virtual goods as well as sponsorship are among the options being considered for generating revenue. The company will launch an iPhone application before the end of the year.

Luluvise was founded in 2010, is based in London, has 10 employees, and has received $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 this story to all of my friends at once?”  and Luluvise was born. Chong, a former member of Jamaica’s Olympic tennis team, developed the idea with co-founder Alison Schwartz, before quitting her day job to work on it full-time in 2010. Luluvise will launch in private beta on November 14th.

The target users are young women aged 18-35. A Luluvise user first creates an “inner circle”, a private, secure space accessible only to the friends she trusts the most and with whom she is comfortable sharing private details. The scoops feature let’s her share news, dilemmas and gossip in 4 formats: text scoop, photo scoop, poll scoop and the Wikidate scoop.

The Wikidate scoop, likely to strike fear into the heart of many a male Facebook user, is a pre-set quiz that lets a user review any guy with a public Facebook profile and tell the inner circle what she really thinks of him. “We take the score from your review and average it with the scores from other Luluvisers who have already reviewed the gentleman in question,” explains Chong. “Your score contributes to Luluvise’s ever-growing database of dudes.” The final score is made public but the details (specific comments of users) of the review are only available to those with access to the scoop.

The majority of Facebook activity is generated by women. Most of my own time on Facebook is spent communicating with close female friends but sharing more private thoughts on social networks without your ex-colleagues and relatives hearing about it too, is a consistent problem. You can use messaging, lists, circles and other tools but they are frankly a hassle and quite clunky.

“Best friends are essential to health and happiness for young women and Luluvise facilitates friendship-on-the-go,” says Chong. “Even when life (work, school, family and other obligations) gets in the way, your girlfriends are always at your fingertips… and you’re always available for them when they need you.” Chong told me that while other online spaces try to satisfy women’s communication needs, none of them have the express goal of facilitating “girl time” with a user’s closest friends.

Luluvise’s business model is not yet clear. The company will initially concentrate on building up the user base. E-commerce in the form of group buying, offers, lead generation and even virtual goods as well as sponsorship are among the options being considered for generating revenue.

I asked Chong about the potential conflict between Facebook’s drive towards ever more public sharing  and Luluvise’s emphasis on privacy. She told me that “Luluvise only uses Facebook to make registration easier. We do not post to walls or make Luluvise information public anywhere or to other Facebook users.”

Luluvise was founded in 2010, is based in London and has 10 employees.

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 background (not one but both parents were engineers) and the importance of diversity in startup teams, she went on to say that she and many women like her are hesitant to leave companies and step into co-founder roles simply because they don’t see many precedents for that kind of behavior. The young, male entrepreneur/hacker is pretty well glorified by our society, but what Jen wants to see is more visibility for the women who do so.

While we talk a lot about the need for role models and tech education for young girls, not enough is said about the need to encourage grown women to pursue new goals in technology. This includes learning a programming language, starting a company and taking on leadership roles within the community. But as Jen noted in our talk, the biggest encouragement can simply be seeing someone like you doing something you’ve always wanted to do but never tried.

We’re glad to be engineering a small part of that visibility here at VentureBeat, and we hope you find Jen’s words interesting and inspiring.