Tag Archive | "Jessica Mah"

10 Women-Run Startups To Watch This Year

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

10 Women-Run Startups To Watch This Year


10 women run startup to watch out for

There are a lot more women run startups these days but often they don’t get the same amount of publicity as there male counterparts.

Although much progress has been made there still seems to be a lingering attitude of assumption that a successful business is owned by a man. It is often that many women especially young women come away from business meetings feeling like they are not being taken seriously.

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch says “the press is dying to write about women startups.” but only 10% of the speakers at Techcrunch Disrupt are women, but not from the lack of trying.

Anyways here are 10 women-run startups that I’m sure you will be hearing a lot more of this year:

1.) Alexa Andrzejewski & Soraya Darabi of Foodspotting

CEO Alexa and Co-founder Soraya began Foodspotting in 2009 alongside Ted Grubb. The idea for Foodspotting came after seeing that although there were many restaurant review apps there weren’t any that aloud you to rate specific dishes. So the idea for Foodspotting was born. Ever since officially launching in January 2010, there has been rapid growth and the app now sees over 500,000 users.

2.) Julia Hartz Co-Founder and President of Eventbrite.com

Eventbrite is a ticketing and event management site that has also seen massive growth in the last year reaching series D round of funding, $400 million in gross ticket revenues and currently gets 6 million unique monthly visitors. Julia founded Eventbrite in 2006 alongside Renaud Visage and husband Kevin.

3.) Wendy Tan White founder of MoonFruit

Moonfruit provides software that allows users, to build and develop websites with great ease, so much so that even my dad managed to get on there and create a site without any help! The company actually started in 1999 but faltered after the dot com bubble burst. Wendy didn’t give up and MoonFruit has made a great comeback since 2009 and has seen the over a million sites made through MoonFruit.

4.) Alexa von Tobel founder of Learnvest

Learnvest a site dedicated to provide unbiased financial information to all women so that they can make the best financial decisions possible. Founded in 2008, the Harvard student, took a leave of absence to get Learnvest of the ground. By the start of 2009 Alexa managed to secured $1.1 million in seed funding from executives at Goldman Sachs. The company closed its second round of funding of $4.5 million in February 2010.

5.) Viviane Jaeger and Emma-Jayne Parkes founders of SquidLondon

Viviane and Emma are brightening up those rainy days with there innovative colour changing umbrellas. When the umbrellas get wet the design changes colour. Now branching out into a corporate branding market customers can customise umbrellas with there own logo/advert. The fashion graduates are mixing science and art with stunning results and have a huge scope to expand over the next couple years.

6.) Cathy Edwards co-founder at Chomp

Chomp is the search engine that finds the apps you want. Cathy luanched Chomp at the bigining of 2010 and has secured over $2million in funding. In 2010 Chomp reached over 300,000 users and will reach the half a million mark sometime this year.

7.) Jessica Mah founder of inDinero

Founded in 2009, inDinero helps business owners monitor the financial health of their companies. It’s simple, easy and quick accounting software. Jessica Mah started her first business aged 12 and by 18 she started inDinero. As of summer 2010 inDinero is backed by Y-Combinator.

8.) Rashmi Sinha founder of SlideShare

SlideShare is a platform where users can share powerpoint presentations publicly or privately. Rashmi founded slideshare in 2006 and has since seen over 40 million visitors. She decided to get into startups as she found her Phd and working in a lab boring. SlideShare is her second venture after Uzanto a design consultancy.

9.) Caterina Fake founder of Hunch

Caterina was a co-founder of the popular Flickr before becoming founder of Hunch, which has ambitions to create a taste graph of the entire internet. Hunch personalizes the internet by getting to know your habits and then make recommendations on what you might like.

10.) Carol Realini founder of Obopay

Obopay is a service that allows users to transfer money using a mobile phone. Carol got the idea when she was in Africa and saw that many people had mobile phones but didn’t own a wallet. In 2009 Nokia invested in Obopay and last year they announced a platform for banks to integrate with Obopay. Transfer money through a text; sounds good.

So that’s my list, who did I miss? Let me know in the comments below or via Twitter.

Posted in Entrepreneurs, Start-UpsComments (0)

Jessica Mah’s InDinero raises over $1M

Tags: , , , , ,

Jessica Mah’s InDinero raises over $1M


Indinero

Ok Guys, do you all remember Jessica mah, the young female entrepreneur i interviewed a while ago.

Well, Reports from techcrunch says her company Indinero has just recently raised over $1M
Confirmed investors in the round includes 500 StartUps ‘ Dave McClure, Microsoft’s Fritz Lanman, and YouTube’s Jawed Karim.

Indinero is the Mint for small businesses and is off to a running start as this latest round is set to close between 1 and 1.5 million.

Apparently she has to turn down other investors, i guess it shows the potential of her company, i guess your company must really kick ass to be compared to mint.

We await reports of the closure of the deal, YHP wishes jessica the best!

Did you like it? For more posts like this, please subscribe to our RSS feed, Become a fan or follow us on Twitter.

Posted in Start-UpsComments (0)

YHP Interviews young entrepreneur,founder of Indinero – Jessica Mah

Tags: , , ,

YHP Interviews young entrepreneur,founder of Indinero – Jessica Mah


Jessica is definitely another young entrepreneur to keep on your radars for years to come; haven started her first internet company at the age of 13, finishing high school at the age of 15, She has then started her first notable company internshipIN.com, which has since helped thousands of college students find their first internships, then to founding her new company Indinero, which she started when she met co-founder Andy Su at the University of California, Berkeley while studying computer science during when they built Indinero’s first prototype, the rest is now history has they say.

Jessica mah

Hello Jessica, how are you doing? Great to have you here on YHP

Glad to be here!

I mean starting a business as a 13 year old must have been very exciting for you? How do you feel you have developed from that little girl starting her internet company till now?

I think the most important thing I learned since then has been humility. I know that I’m constantly learning, and being that I’m still relatively young and inexperienced in the world, I’m trying to figure out what I don’t yet know.

What inspired you to start a business, especially as a 13 year old?

I thought it’d be fun! Middle school can be stressful, boring, and full of drama. So I thought focusing my time and energy on something more productive would take my mind off the less meaningful things in life. (aka, school)

You said you’re working full time on Indinero.com, Does that mean you are not playing any part in the running of internshipIN.com?

I stopped running internshipIN last January. It was a fun side project, but by no means a business I wanted to devote myself fulltime to. I still keep the server running in case students are still looking for internships. And many still are!

Who would you say has been a major influence in your business life?

I’d say my mom. She’s an entrepreneur too, and her advice has been key to my development. Unlike anyone else I ask for advice from, mom gives me the candid feedback that I need to hear most.

On your blog, you said that if you have could pick one question in hiring a business person, you would talk about the conflict in the Middle East? So Jessica, let’s just say i was hiring you about a job position in my company and i asked you that question? How would you respond?

I’d have to write a long essay on that! The point of talking to people about politics is to learn how they interact with you during a debate. Do they try to listen, are they making assumptions based on opinion, do they negotiate? These are pretty important things to know before you hire a business person.

Who is your favourite young entrepreneur at the moment?

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. A lot of people critique him for his business decisions, but he knows who’s worth taking advice from.

On those impossible days, what motivates you to keep going?

My team – Andy, Arielle, and Ljuba keep me motivated day in and day out. I also think about how it took companies like Microsoft and Twitter years before they hit critical mass. Businesses don’t explode overnight, so persistence is key.

Do you have a favourite business tool or resource?

My favorite resource is Paul Graham’s archive of essays. They teach you the ins and outs to entrepreneurship and technology, and tell young founders what they need to know instead of the meaningless things that most business books teach.

Paul Graham

Where do you see in yourself and your business in the next 5 years?

I hope to be still working on Indinero. We have a lot of great things planned for Indinero and the future of business software, but it’s all speculation for now.

What is the most crucial decision you’ve made so far regarding your business?

The decision to come back to school was pretty difficult. Andy and I were on the edge of leaving before our senior year here at Berkeley, but we ultimately decided to give this entire year to figuring out our business and finishing up our degrees.

What’s your biggest distraction?

School. Between classes and homework, it takes up a lot of time. But on the other hand, it’s definitely taught me how to better manage my time, and focus on the things that matter most.

Excluding yours, what company or business do you admire the most?

I’d say Apple, and not just because I enjoy their products. They operate in small and agile teams, their product development team takes a lot of time perfecting core features instead of creating new ones, and they think more about user experience than any other company in the industry.

What are your views on young entrepreneurs that quit school/college for the sake of pursuing a dream of a young entrepreneur?

It’s a huge decision. Most young entrepreneurs have the problem of “not knowing what they don’t know”, so they don’t realize what value they might be missing out from finishing college. It’s a very personal decision, and it highly depends on what college the entrepreneur is attending.

What advice would you give to a young entrepreneur starting up their business?

Do as much as you can to learn about entrepreneurship faster and sooner. Start your business as soon as possible, and make it be the driving force behind your education.

Thanks for your time Jessica.

Blog
Indinero

Posted in Interviews, TechnologyComments (3)









  • Popular
  • Latest
  • Comments
  • Tags
  • Subscribe

Archives

Join the YHP community

Subscribe via RSS

Categories

YHP Calender

May 2012
M T W T F S S
« Apr    
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031