Posts Tagged ‘Women 2.0’
All posts tagged Women 2.0.
Last weekend, I served as a judge for the Women 2.0 business plan competition. Dozens of plans, submitted on a dinner napkin and supplemented by other materials, were vetted by a group of distinguished Bay Area investors, business leaders and entrepreneurs to determine five finalists to present at the conference. That’s where my fellow judges and I picked up the ball.
Each company gave a 10 minute pitch, took questions from the judges, and privately shared prototypes and demos with the judges. Our job, then, was to identify the winner, a tough job considering that the five finalists represented a range of ideas and stages of development. At the end of our deliberation, we selected Koollage as the winner. The company has developed a method for collecting and mobilizing diverse Web content.
Of course, any time judging happens behind closed doors, there are questions. How were the finalists chosen? (I don’t know) My plan was a favorite among organizers, so why wasn’t I a finalist? (Again, I don’t know.) Why did you choose Kollage? That I do know, and I promised I’d share some insight into the judges reasoning about each of the finalists. Doing so, I think, not only brings more transparency to the judging process, but also provides some lessons for young entrepreneurs. Read the rest of this entry »
As I approached the tent where the Women 2.0 conference was about to start, I was struck by the string of prayer flags along the back wall. That, as least, was what it looked like from a distance. Up close, I realized that the organizers had strung up the entries -dozens of plans sketched out on standard dinner napkins — in the “Business Plan on a Napkin” competition.
Looking at these plans, up close and from a distance, and thinking about the aspirations of the women (and men) in the room and the ambitions of every entrepreneur I meet, I decided that these are prayer flags of a sort after all.
Here are some of the images I captured at yesterday’s event:
By the way, notice Christine Herron in one of the photos… now we know where First Round Capital finds its deals.
I am a woman. I am an entrepreneur. I meet hundreds of entrepreneurs each year. Very, very few of them are women. Sometimes, I wonder why this is. Women start businesses, lots and lots of businesses. Just, apparently, not technology businesses. Or at least not venture-based technology businesses.
The stats have changed very little over the last 20 years. Less – much less – than 10% of venture-based technology companies have a woman on the founding team. Some have argued that venture is a male-dominated business and that women are not made welcome at the table. There are plenty of tales to support that perspective and enough anecdotal evidence to suggest there is some truth to it. Read the rest of this entry »
