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Female Founders to Watch

Women 2.0 Labs: Meet the Founders of Summer 2010

Women 2.0 Labs is a pre-incubator for people with ideas to validate their ideas and rapidly prototype. After the 5-week program, we launched 5 startups who were subsequently covered by TechCrunch.

Here are the founders that came out of the Women 2.0 Labs (Summer 2010):

Cake Health: Meet The Women 2.0 Labs Team

Health Care Made Simple and Sweet.
Cake Health makes it easier to understand health care coverage and how to take advantage of it. Check out Cake Health at www.cakehealth.com. You can also follow Cake Health on Twitter at @cakehealth or like the Facebook page.

Rebecca Woodcock
Strategic business with expertise in market dynamics and user behavior
Follow her on Twitter at @rebeccawoodcock or check out her LinkedIn Profile

Sarah Kling
User experience designer with expertise in software systems and web apps
Follow her on Twitter at @UEVision or check out her LinkedIn Profile

Renuka Wariyar
Engineer with expertise in software architecture, development and web frameworks
Follow her on Twitter at @renukawariyar or check out her LinkedIn Profile

Adrien Arculeo
Engineer with expertise in data warehousing, data quality and cloud computing
Follow him on Twitter at @arculeo or check out his LinkedIn Profile

FreezeFare: Meet The Women 2.0 Labs Team

Freeze Your Fare, Not Your Plans.
FreezeFare keeps travel planning stress-free. Check out FreezeFare at www.freezefare.com. You can also follow FreezeFare on Twitter at @freezefare or like the Facebook page.

Clay Kramer
Business
Follow him on Twitter at @txnskr or check out his LinkedIn Profile

Yuri Parsons
Front end engineer
Follow him at @ninjakttty or check out his LinkedIn Profile

Jenn Chen
User experience designer
Follow her on Twitter at @jenn__chen or check out her LinkedIn Profile

Anna Billstrom
Engineer
Follow her on Twitter at @banane or check out her LinkedIn Profile

GeoQuish: Meet The Women 2.0 Labs Team

Save Time and Drive Customers to Your Business.
GeoSquish saves time and drives customers to your business. Check out GeoSquish at www.geosquish.com. You can follow GeoSquish on Twitter at @geosquish or like the Facebook page.

Lin Tam
Business
Follow her on Twitter at @tam55947 or check out her LinkedIn Profile

Nicole Dun
Engineer
Follow her on Twitter at @FunnDun or check out her LinkedIn Profile

Priya Sheth
Designer
Follow her on Twitter at @priyasheth or check out her Website

Tiem Song
Backend engineer
Follow him on Twitter at @tiembo or check out his LinkedIn Profile

Mikko: Meet The Women 2.0 Labs Team

The Beauty Genome Project.
An intelligent beauty recommendations site based on real reviews and a smart matching system matching “like-featured” women. Check out House of Mikko at www.houseofmikko.com. You can follow House of Mikko on Twitter at @houseofmikko or like the Facebook page.

Kimberly Dillon
Business development and market research
Follow her on Twitter at @prettylittleceo or check out her LinkedIn Profile

Erica Yamada
User experience design
Check out her LinkedIn Profile

Vida Ha
Engineer
Follow her on Twitter at @vidaha or check out her LinkedIn Profile

She Who Will Not Be Named
Algorithms engineer
Follow her on Twitter at @inventiongirl

Tripku: Meet The Women 2.0 Labs Team

Connect Today. Travel Tomorrow.
We connect your networks the world over so you can discover new cultures, meet new people and enjoy healthy travel discounts, together. Check out Tripku at www.tripku.com. You can follow Tripku on Twitter at @tripku or like the Facebook page.

Beatriz Cardona Tamayo
Business development
Follow her on Twitter at @beatrizcardona or check out her LinkedIn Profile

Tiffanie Kong
Product and database developer
Check out her LinkedIn Profile

Adam Silverman
Backend developer
Check out his LinkedIn Profile

Jeff Lagasca
Designer and frontend developer
Check out his LinkedIn Profile

Female Founders & COOs to Watch

Here are some female founders to watch. They are also the Chief Operating Officers at their startups! Check them out:

Elena Haliczer (Co-Founder & COO, Adaptive Semantics)
Elena’s startup Adaptive Semantics was acquired by the Huffington Post in June 2010. Follow Elena on her Twitter @elliesemantic and on Tumblr as startupgirl!

Laney Whitcanack (Co-Founder & COO, Big Tent)
Laney previously co-founded The Princess Project. Laney currently serves as COO of Big Tent, a women-led startup funded by Mohr Davidow and Menlo Ventures. Check out their team here!

Christine Lemke (Co-Founder & COO, Sense Networks)
Christine is an early-stage startupper. Prior to Sense Networks, she co-founded Channel Velocity and was the first employee at Returns Online. Follow Christine on her Twitter @cklemke!

Dina Kaplan (Co-Founder & COO, Blip.tv)
Dina oversees industry marketing, public relations, finance, key partnerships and human resources for blip.tv. Follow Dina on Twitter @dinakaplan and on Tumblr as dinakaplan!

Susan Coelius-Keplinger (Co-Founder & COO, Triggit)
Susan co-founded Triggit, a venture-funded online advertising technology company. Follow Susan on Twitter @sueck!

Do you know more female founders of startups that are currently serving as COO? Let us know in the comments below.

Female Founders to Watch from Startup Weekend

Women 2.0 is a frequent partner for Startup Weekend events in the Bay Area. Here are some female founders to watch that have launched ideas from Startup Weekends:

Sophia Perl (Co-Founder, Eventabulous)
Sophia leveraged the Startup Weekend process and participants to vet and build an idea. Today, she and a team member are developing a working prototype for Eventabulous.

Jennie Lees (Co-Founder & Developer, Project 42)
Project 42, or www.icanhassocialskills.com, came out of the recent South Bay Startup Weekend. Other female co-founders included Vivian C. Chien, Amy Piazza, and Adina Simu.

Alexa Andrzejewski (Co-Founder, Foodspotting)
Alexa brought her idea to Jumpstart Your Startup and then Women 2.0 Startup Weekend in 2009. Fast forward to 2010: Over 45,000 foods have been spotted around the world!

Mariya Genzel (Co-Founder & CTO, SayHired)
Recruiting was a pain point for her startup so Mariya came to the Women 2.0 Startup Weekend. She found a team member and created an innovative tech platform at SayHired.

Sue Kim (Co-Founder, Dress Me Sue)
Sue kick started Dress Me Sue at the Women 2.0 Startup Weekend. She found that the community support and friendships have lasted way beyond the weekend.

Do you know more female founders of startups that came out of a Startup Weekend? Let us know in the comments below.

Female Founders to Watch in Social Gaming

In anticipation of the Women 2.0 event Social Gaming 101 for Fun and Profit on April 15, here are 6 women-founded social gaming startups to watch:

Amy Jo Kim (Co-Founder & CEO, Shufflebrain)
Shufflebrain builds smart games for a connected world. They’ve helped design games including Bejewelled 2, The Sims, and Rock Band. Follow Amy Jo on Twitter!

Emily Greer (Co-Founder & VP of Marketing & Finance, Kongregate)
Kongregate has thousands of free Flash games you can play online. Kongregate also allows users to upload games created in Adobe Flash or Director. Follow Emily on Twitter!

Shanna Tellerman (Founder & CEO, Wild Pockets)
Wild Pockets is building the next generation platform, designed for independent game developers. Follow Shanna on Twitter!

Sue Zann Toh (Co-Founder & CFO, TheBroth)
The Broth is the social game company that makes popular Facebook games, like Barn Buddy. Read Sue Zann’s blog!

Susan Wu (Co-Founder & CEO, Ohai)
Ohai builds massively multiplayer games for everyone. Ohai’s first game is the world’s first major MMO set in the dark world of modern vampires. Follow Susan on Twitter!

Terry Redfield (Founder & CEO, Real Life Plus)
Real Life Plus is creating a virtual world that is fun, immersive, and simple to use. Follow Real Life Plus on Twitter!

Do you know more female founders of social gaming startups? Let us know in the comments below.

Female Founders to Watch in Mobile

The recent 2010 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and the Mobile Premier Awards brought together the global mobile community from carriers to handset manufacturers — and the application developers. The most interesting to Women 2.0 are the innovative startups.

Here are 5 (women-founded) mobile startups making waves around the world to watch:

Lana Hijazi (Co-Founder, Souktel)
Souktel provides SMS based service connecting job seekers and companies in low income communities. Souktel is located in Palestine. Follow Souktel on Twitter.

Claudia Poepperl (Co-Founder, Yellix)
Yellix’s Caller ID 3.0 gives real-time status updates of your friends as the mobile phone is ringing to allow more contextual conversations. Yellix is located in Austria. Follow Yellix on Twitter.

Claire Boonstra (Co-Founder, Layar)
Layar is augmented reality software displaying real-time information on top of reality through your mobile phone’s camera. Layar is located in the Netherlands. Follow Claire on Twitter.

Silje Vallestad (Founder, Bipper Communications)
Bipper created a safety solution for children’s mobile phones that easily can be used with any phone. Bipper is located in Norway. Follow Silje on Twitter.

Jane Sales (Co-Founder, Flook)
Flook is a location browser for your mobile phone. Flook is located in the United Kingdom. Follow Jane on Twitter.

Do you know more female founders of mobile startups? Let us know in the comments below.

Women 2.0’s Female Founder Successes of 2009

This has been perhaps one of the more challenging years we’ve seen. Still, we’ve been celebrating successes on Twitter at @women2 and below.

Are you a female founder with a success to celebrate in 2009? Join the list - here’s how:

Give us a sentence description of your accomplishment(s) in 2009, your full name, company name, and company link or relevant article to foundrtickr@women2.org. This list of Female Founders is limited to founders of technology companies (defined as a company with an engineer on the founding team). A “success” for this list is a company launch, significant product launch, significant milestone reached, funding received or similar success.

Catarina Fake (Co-Founder, Hunch; prev. Co-Founder, Flickr) launches Hunch! (more)

Clara Shih (Founder, Hearsay Labs: Author of bestselling book “The Facebook Era”) launches Internet company Hearsay Labs! (more)

Patricia Araque (Founder, Ellas 2.0) builds a local team and launches Women 2.0’s Official Sister Chapter for Europe Ellas 2.0! (more)

Leila Chirayath Janah (Founder & CEO, Samasource) launches an iPhone app to give work to refugees in the largest camp in the world! (more)

Susan Wu (Founder & CEO, Ohai) launches an online gaming startup is chosen as one of Silicon Valley’s 10 most influential people by San Jose Mercury News! (more)

Poornima Vijayashanker (Founding Engineer, Mint) cashes out with Mint, which sold to Intuit for $170M earlier this year, and is now starting her own startup! (more)

Shinyoung Park (Founder, Funji) wins fbFund and launches official service! (more)

Pokin Yeung (Founder, GeckoGo) joins fbFund and relaunches Travel Brain - currently the #1 app for sharing rich travel experiences on Facebook! (more)

Shanna Tellerman (Founder & CEO, WildPockets) raises $3M from SK Telecom and Levensohn Venture Partners! (more)

Helen Zhu (Co-Founder & CEO, Chictopia) and Corinne Chan (Co-Founder & CTO, Chictopia) become profitable and launch national campaigns for retailers like Topshop! (more)

Dianna Mullins (Co-Founder & SVP, Glam Media) raises another round of funding and launches Tinker, a micro-blog ad network! (more)

Maria Ly (Co-Founder, Skimble) goes out on a limb with the Founder Institute and launches Skimble! (more)

Hope Scultz (Founder, WebVet; Women 2.0 PITCH 2008 Finalist) launches with Microsoft! (more)

Danae Ringlemen (Founder, IndieGoGo) becomes #1 crowd-funding platform for film and opens up to music, art, design, new ventures & other creative ideas! (more)

Julie Greenberg (Founder, Jobnob) launches JobNob to connect and empower the job-seeker market! (more)

Alexa Andrzejewski (Founder, Foodspotting; Women 2.0 Jumpstart Your Startup Graduate) launches Foodspotting Alpha in November 2009 with over 3750 foods spotted! (more)

Maria Sipka (Founder, Linqia) launches platform with 230 social networks registering! (more)

Arielle Scott (VP Marketing, Indinero) and Jessica Mah (Founder, Indinero) launch accounting software for small business! (more)

Silvia Console Battilana (Co-Founder, Auctionomics) launches auction software company with world auction expert Paul Milgrom! (more)

Alexis Ringwald (Co-Founder & Director of Business Development, Valence Energy) launches Valence (more)

Suzanne Xie (Co-Founder & CEO, Weardrobe) gets acquired by Like.com in November 2009 and is also a winner of the 2009 fbFund competition. (more)

Susan Kang and Joyce Kim (Co-Founders, Soompi) launch fan clubs! (more)

Huijun Zhou Ring (CEO, YiGene/5iDNA) brings happiness of DNA service to 1 billion Chinese! (more)

Jane Nu Zhang (President, Silk Wings Aviation) reads a book, takes a flight lesson, and starts Silk Wings Aviation! (more)

Laura Fitton (Founder, One Forty) launches and raises $2.4M! (more)

Claire Boonstra (Founder, Layar) leads the mobile world with Augmented Reality with Layar, later in the year mashes up with location-based advertising! (more)

Travis Alber (Founder, BookGlutton) launches e-commerce on e-book social network! (more)

Anju Mathew (Co-Founder, LumaMed; Women 2.0’s Pitch 2009 Winner) cuts health care costs and saves people from skin cancer with the launch of LumaMed! (more)

Charisse McAuliffe (Founder, GenGreenLife; PITCH 2009 Finalist) merges with Vancouver based 3rdWhale Mobile and launches the ‘Find Green’ mobile app across 3 platforms! (more)

Rashmi Sinha (Founder & CEO, Slideshare) launches SlideShare for businesses - premium services for the SlideShare community! (more)

Mathilde Pignol (Founder, ZipZap Play) attracts cute animals, users and revenue with the launch of Happy Habitat! (more)

Ninas Alastruey (Founder, The Channer) launches to bring long-tail TV content to your mobile phone, and moves from Barcelona to Silicon Valley! (more)

Shruti Challa and Amara Humphry (Co-Founders, Tribal Atmosphere) launch Tribal Atmosphere (GoTribal) and GoHappi! (more)

Jessica Emmerich (Founder, The Dead Hub/The Live Hub AKA “The Hubs”) launches social media marketing site and grows reader base at her music media site, The Dead Hub! (more)

Priya Narasimhan (Founder & CEO, YinzCam) builds mobile live streaming solutions for other sports fans as well as mobile 311 apps to help city governments and empower residents! (more)

Natalie Gordon (Co-Founder, Lenguajero) launches language learning community where people meet to practice conversational Spanish and English! (more)

Shaherose Charania (Co-Founder, Women 2.0) cashes out a little with Telefonica’s acquisition of JAJAH where she was Director of Product Management and Marketing! (more)

Rachael Chong (Founder & CEO, Catchafire) completes pilot program for web-based service connecting volunteering professionals with non-profits that need skilled volunteers! (more)

Leah Busque (Founder, RunMyErrand) develops 100% of the website, which helps individuals and SMBs in a community outsource their tasks and deliveries! (more)

Michelle Bonat (Founder & CEO, RumbaFish) launches at DEMO and is named top 10 most innovative app companies by IDC! (more)

Andrea Chang (Co-Founder & CEO) and Gabi Barragan (Co-Founder & COO, Braingig) connect graduate students in the sciences with those seeking their expertise! (more)

Danielle Fong (Co-Founder & Chief Scientist, LightSailEnergy) raises funding for inexpensive, efficient energy storage systems in the plan to make the world’s electrical grid green! (more)

Suzanne Perkins (Co-Founder & CEO, Answers for Elders) receives funding and builds private beta for social site and portal targeting boomers seeking answers for their elderly parents! (more)

Maria Trullàs (Founder & CEO, Cuponeo) launches free mobile coupons in Barcelona via SMS in July 2009 and will soon launch in other main Spanish cities! (more)

Arlyn Davich (Founder & CEO, PayPerks) launches perks platform rewarding usage of paperless payment solutions, wins Columbia Business School Lang Fund for Entrepreneurship! (more)

Christine Lemke (Co-Founder & COO, Sense Networks) raises another round of funding from Intel Capital for one of the world’s most intriguing startups according to BusinessWeek! (more)

Jennie Lees (Founder, Affect Labs) launches FestBuzz this year for her Edinburgh-based data intelligence startup! (more)

Six months pregnant, Michelle Crames (Co-Founder & CEO, giiv) raises seed funding from Eric Schmidt, launches, then raises Series A when her daughter is 3 months old! (more)

Victoria Ransom (Founder & CEO, Wildfire) leads Wildfire to profitability in a year, builds an impressive client list, and wins FbFund twice! (more)

Jen McCabe (Founder & CEO, Contagion Health) launches Get Up and Move!, a social motivation app and microfitness exchange on Twitter! (more)

Emily Greer (Co-Founder, Kongregate) reaches 20k games uploaded, 8 million monthly unique visitors, and launches Konduit app platform for social games! (more)

Vicki Saunders (Founder & CEO, Zazengo) works with Walmart on a global employee-engagement program using Zazengo’s white-label platform and launches Facebook app Hopenhagen! (more)

Unha Engels (Co-Founder & Creative Director, Curious Brain) launches guitar learning app which shot to top 5 in app store’s music category within a few weeks and still remains in top 10! (more)

Margot Eiran (Founder & CEO, HomeEnergySaver) launches! (more)

Julia Hartz (Co-Founder and President, Eventbrite) secures $6.5M in funding from Sequoia Capital and welcomes Roelof Botha to the board of directors! (more)

Jessica Jackley and Dana Mauriello (Co-Founders, ProFounder) launch in August to help SMBs raise seed and growth capital through crowdfunding! (more)

Christina Brodbeck (Co-Founder & CEO, Pickv & Founding Team Member, YouTube) launches Pickv in alpha and angel invests in Heyzap! (more)

Annie Chang (Co-Founder, Lolapps) launches social gaming platform of games and applications on Facebook, entertaining over 44M unique users per month! (more)

Stephanie Renda (Founder & CEO of a German-American startup in mobile b2b apps) receives funding and launches apps, including MemberScout for Lufthansa frequent flyers program! (more)

Caroline Dahllöf and Carolyn Uy (Co-Founders, Lyn And Line) launch educational story apps for pre-school kids for Android and iPhone, starting with The Rescue of Ginger! (more)

Kelly Fitzsimmons (Co-Founder & CEO, HarQen) raises $2.7M and successfully launches VoiceScreener - TiVo(TM) for interviews) - to the staffing and recruiting space! (more)

Laura Valverde García (Co-Founder & CEO, Beecoder) launches software development company making Ruby on Rails apps, the last product integrating Shopify with Facebook! (more)

Michele Colucci (Founder & CEO, MyLawsuit) launches social empowerment network connecting those who have lawsuits with lawyers who take their cases for contingency fees! (more)

Diana Hage (CEO, RFID Global Solution; Founder, Quantum Leap Technologies) launches Visi-Trac software for real time visibility of assets and supply chains, and grows 30% in 2009! (more)

Promise Phelon (Founder & CEO, UpMo) raises over $2M in private investment and creates strategic channel partnerships for online career management service! (more)

Tina Bean (Co-Founder & VP of Sales and Marketing, VisiStat) launches product for her real-time analytics company that provides B2B Website Caller ID, called LeadCaster! (more)

Keara Schwartz (Founder & President, Share Some Sugar) launches online service that finds someone in your neighborhood willing to lend you something that you need! (more)

Cathy Edwards (Co-Founder & CTO, Chomp) worked on an app to show users relevant & personalized iPhone apps; officially announced on January 6, 2010! (more)

Other Related Awesomeness:

Sarah Allen and Sarah Mei (Co-Founders, RailsBridge) launch free Ruby classes with SF Ruby and taught over 200 women and girls (and some men!) how to program in Ruby! (more)

Wendy Lea (CEO, Get Satisfaction) joins Get Satisfaction and talks to Women 2.0! (more)

Rebecca Weeks Watson (Founding executive, Real Girls Network) grows RGM to over 5M monthly users, and joins the founding executive team of gWallet! (more)

Maya Baratz (Product Manager, MTV) joins MTV and writes for the Huffington Post! (more)

Emily Goligoski (Strategic Programs Manager, Federated Media) joins FM and launches Ignite for Women Innovators — and also starts writing for the Huffington Post! (more)

Jazmin Hupp (Web Sales & Marketing, Tekserve) launches Tekserve’s Web Store, bringing NYC’s famous Mac & iPod dealer online! (more)

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