Leah Culver is a young female entrepreneur currently residing in San Francisco. She was a co-founder and lead developer of the site Pownce at the age of 24. This was a free social networking and micro blogging site, launched in July 2007.

The launch was covered by big names such as Wired, Business Week and Webware. Pownce was subsequently acquired by blog juggernaut SixApart at the end of 2008.

She stayed on with SixApart till February 2010 when she announced she was stepping down to develop an iphone application for Plancast. Plancast allows users to make location based plans for sharing via Facebook and Twitter.

Leah started out studying art at Minnesota University, but found her programming through a requisite programming class. After graduating in 2006 she worked at a couple of start ups before deciding to create Pownce which she built from scratch.

Her extensive programming skills meant her web site was relatively cheap, since she could do it all herself. She raised any funds that she needed from her friends and family.

“As a programmer the route to your own company is easy; you build a site and get people excited about it,” says Culver.

In 2008 Leah was named one of Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Web 2.0. She likes new challenges and is always looking forward to help develop further technologies.

She showed her natural innovation when in 2006 she planned to update her 6 year old computer with a nice new shiny MacBook Pro. To raise money for the purchase of a new laptop she sold advertising space which would be laser etched onto the top. She sold space for $50 a go and also offered to buy a drink for anyone who contributed $30 or more.

She is currently working on a new site called Leafy Chat. Watch this space!

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Let me introduce you all to Aaron Swartz, if you probably know him if you are one of those people that research into tool/applications that are around on the internet, Aaron was the co-author of the RSS 1.0 specification, he was founded a company called Infogami, a startup a result of the Y Combinator’s first Summer Founders Program.

Before Infogami, He attended Stanford University for a year, leaving to work on his company full-time. Infogami later merged with reddit.

In late 2006, reddit was sold to CondéNet (the online arm of Condé Nast Publications and the owners of Wired) and Swartz moved with his company to San Francisco.

In January 2007, Swartz was asked to resign from his position at Wired Digital.

In September 2007, Swartz, together with Simon Carstensen, launched Jottit, a website service quite similar to Infogami. Jottit was launched from bitbots.net, a project by Swartz and Carstensen.

At the moment, Aaron lives in Cambridge, Mass, He is also the co-director of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee where he works at the moment.

Check out this interesting video of him, an interview by spunoutmedia, He also has a very interesting blog, you should check it out to learn about him.