Moonfruit Finally Exits For $29 Million In Cash To Re-energize Yell. In the white heat of the current tech market it’s sometimes easy to forget that some companies, although taking their time, simply become viable businesses – instead of waiting for a call from Facebook or Twitter that may never come.
I’ve been covering web site and shop builder Moonfruit for longer than I care to remember (they launched in 2000), but along the way husband and wife team Joe and Wendy White kept on pushing the company until it was one of the most innovative of its kind out there. FEMANOMICS: The Top Women in Venture Capital and Angel Investing. Grace Nasri: Women Make Groups Smarter, But the Gender Disparity Remains. VC Giants, Thinking Smaller: Why Kleiner Perkins’ Aileen Lee Is Getting Into Seed Funding. As a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Aileen Lee has been a part of one of the most well-respected and established venture capital firms in Silicon Valley.
KPCB, of course, is known for making big bets companies that often turn out to be the tech industry’s brightest stars: Facebook, Google, Amazon, Zynga, and Groupon are just a tiny sample of the companies that Kleiner Perkins has backed. But after 13 years with the firm, Aileen Lee is shifting her focus in a very interesting way — she’s starting a new venture fund focused on smaller, “seed-stage” investments. In an interview with TechCrunch today, Lee said that many of the details of the fund are still being hashed out — so things like the fund’s name, how much total investment will be involved in it, who else may be involved, and so on are yet to be disclosed.
Aileen Lee Launches Kleiner-Backed Seed Fund - Kara Swisher. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Aileen Lee is founding a new seed fund — still unnamed — that is focused on backing and helping develop early-stage start-ups.
Lee, who has been at the famed Silicon Valley venture firm for a dozen years, will remain a partner at Kleiner Perkins, although her full focus will be on the fund. While she declined in an interview this morning to say what the size of the new fund will be, most such efforts range from $10 million to $70 million. Along with Kleiner, there will be several other unnamed investors and strategic partners, said Lee, who is in a quiet period of fundraising and could not give more details. Jack Hidary: Women Entrepreneurs on the Rise. What do Gilt, Foodspotting and TaskRabbit all have in common?
They were all co-founded by women. This is an encouraging sign in a field that has too few female entrepreneurs. A recent article in San Francisco Magazine highlights a new crop of women-led startups in the Bay Area. The plain numbers about women in tech – The VCs. I’m not much for the “women in tech” stuff — preferring to prove equality rather than beg for it — but sometimes the gender imbalance in this industry is so damaging that it would be unethical for me to not call it out.
About a year ago, I wrote a blog post titled The Plain Numbers About Women in Tech, presenting the raw data to prove that the highest profile startups employ very few women, and moreover that the vast majority of women who do work for startups are in roles that involve selling the product, not making it. Some people shared in my dismay. Some people offered up the names of startups that have a more gender-balanced staff. Some people simply defended the places they work saying, “We’ve tried!” Why Don't More Women Serve on Corporate Boards? : Managing. January 23, 2012 I am not one to usually rant, but a study just released by Watermark, a non-profit community of executive women, and the University of California at Davis Graduate School of Management enraged me.
It revealed that in California, among the 400 largest public companies, only 10 percent of board seats were held by women—and more than 33 percent had no women on their boards at all. This isn’t just a California problem, says Watermark CEO Marilyn Nagel. Marylene Delbourg-Delphis. Golden ladies of NYC: Female entreprenuers find funding, community in New York Savulich, Andrew/New York Daily News Hayley Barna, left, and Katia Beauchamp, founders of "Birchbox" pose in their Park Avenue office.
When Ellie Cachette started pitching her tech start-up to West Coast investors two years ago, she expected to raise big bucks. Instead, all she got from the roughly 25 all-male investors she met with were dismissive looks and patronizing advice. “I wouldn’t even finish my sentence, and they’d say I should be a nonprofit,” said Cachette, now 26, who was building a startup designed to help companies manage product recalls. “I found it impossible to raise money.” So Cachette made a bold decision: She headed to New York to test the waters of the city’s burgeoning tech scene.
“The tech scene in New York is just a lot more female friendly,” said Cachette, CEO of ConsumerBell. The city outpaces the nation’s other tech meccas — Silicon Valley and Boston — in the number of investors and initiatives focused on boosting the industry’s oft-overlooked gender. Report: Women-owned or Led Firms are Becoming a Leading Entrepreneurial force in Technology : The Next Women. "New research shows what many have long suspected: women entrepreneurs are poised to lead the next wave of growth in global technology ventures.Cindy Padnos of Illuminate VenturesThis is conclusion from the very thorough research on entrepreneurial women in tech, called High Performance Entrepreneurs: Women in High Tech, performed by a team led by founder and CEO Cindy Padnos of Illuminate Ventures, a venture fund that focuses on women led companies.
Women are more efficient, have fewer failures, submit more patents, and start more companies and are heavily involved in IPO's. But is not all sunny: there still very few female investors, while women take on less capital than men. Here's a summary "Report: High Performance Entrepreneurs: Women in High Tech The report, prepared by Illuminate Ventures, documents the out-performance of women entrepreneurs in the past decade and the trends that are propelling them towards critical mass in the high-tech sector. Are Women Bad for Start-ups? You've Got To Be Kidding... Posted by Tom Foremski - August 7, 2011 By Vanessa Camones, PR veteran and founder of theMIX agency.
Women have made astounding advances in the workforce in the past fifty years. Even in the tech sector, traditionally an enclave of geeky guys, women have progressed from support roles to becoming respected builders, leaders and innovators. Study finds VC bias against female entrepreneurs. Female entrepreneurs seeking investors know the difficulty of crashing through that funding glass ceiling.
A new study out of the University of Utah backs up what many women in business have suspected for years—investors favor men. MBA students Lyda Bigelow and Robert Wuebker created a fictitious technology firm with identical company information, with the exception of the gender of the founding team members. The faux tech businesses submitted their information to investors to evaluate the CEO’s capabilities and determine how much compensation the CEO should receive. The study found that: Of course, this is just one small study, but replicating the research with a larger group could yield some interesting results and spur a rousing chorus of “I am Woman.” Full story at SmallBizTrends. Why Aren’t There More Female Entrepreneurs? I’m often asked the question about why there aren’t more women who are entrepreneurs.
On my blog I’ve been hesitant to take the topic head on. Where The Ladies At? Funds Seek To Bring Diversity To Venture Capital - Venture Capital Dispatch. Is there a female Mark Zuckerberg? By Gina Bianchini, guest contributor FORTUNE -- Where is the female Mark Zuckerberg? I've heard this question a lot. Typically, a fair amount of hand-wringing comes with trying to answer it. There's a reason that the question is hard to answer. It's the wrong question. Newsflash: Grass is Green, Sky is Blue, VCs are White Men.
Yeah, I love being famous. It’s almost like being white, y’know? —Chris Rock On Monday November 21 the National Venture Capital Association and Dow Jones VentureSource released the results of the 2011 Venture Census, which reported statistics about ethnicity, gender and other characteristics of the venture capital industry garnered from a poll that included 600 VC industry participants. Sheryl Sandberg: 'The Most Important Career Choice You'll Make Is Who You Marry' Business Insider / Matthew Lynley At the 2011 IGNITION conference in New York, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg talked about what it's like being one of the most powerful women in Silicon Valley. Five Ways To Get More Women In Venture Capital. Hey VCs: Stop Saying This To Female Entrepreneurs.
Silicon Valley: You and Some of Your VC's have a Gender Problem. “People in technology businesses are drawn to places known for diversity of thought and open-mindedness”, is what Professor Richard Florida concluded after studying the growth and success of 50 metropolitan areas in the U.S. The most successful regions were those with the most gays, bohemians, and immigrants. These groups flourish in Silicon Valley, and its diversity has undoubtedly provided it with great advantage. But after attending the recent Crunchies Awards, I realized that something important is still missing — women entrepreneurs. Are Startups Better as Single-Gender Affairs? Last Updated Aug 3, 2011 7:12 PM EDT.
How Women Are Getting Left Out of the Venture Capital Game. The Rise Of The Female CEO And The Folly Of Men Who Just Don't Get It. Are Networking Groups for Young VC's Subtly Shutting Women Out? Names You Need to Know: Ernestine Fu. Thirty Women Entrepreneurs To Follow On Twitter - Forbes.com.