Startup Weekend is an intense 54 hour event which focuses on building a web or mobile application which could form the basis of a credible business over the course of a weekend. The weekend brings together people with different skillsets – primarily software developers, graphics designers and business people – to build applications and develop a commercial case around them.

Here is a video to explain a bit more:

Next weekend will see Startup weekend take place in many cities including San Francisco where it is being held at pariSoma between 3-5th June. Every weekend after that will see more cities across the world play host to this hugely popular event.

The London event will be held over the second weekend of September with the venue TBC. To see the list of all the cities and dates visit the Startup Weekend site.

Founded by Andrew Hyde in July of 2007 in Boulder, Colorado, Startup Weekend saw over 80 events take place within the first two years and it has now spread to over 100 cities in 30 countries.

So how successful are these startups, well over 36% of Startup Weekend startups are still going strong after 3 months & Roughly 80% of participants plan on continuing working with their team or startup after the weekend. One of the biggest successes has been Foodspotting founded by Soraya Darabi (who we covered last year) has over 600,000 users and has received $3.75 million in funding.

Here is a video from a recent event in Baltimore:

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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.

Soraya Darabi is the founder of social networking food site Foodspotting. The site lets you find and upload specific dishes as opposed to restaurants. Foodspotting allows you to take a picture of the dish you’re eating and upload it to the website as well as giving you a chance to find some interesting dishes when visiting someplace new.

Soraya seeks her success through social media as shown by her career to date.

Soraya founded Foodspotting less than a year ago (at the time of writing), in December 2009 and has seen rapid growth on the website. The site is one that can only get better, as the more people join the more enriched range of foods and locations will be available. Foodspotting is great for casual and passionate users and has a twitter style follow option as well as a points system.

Prior to Foodspotting a 23 year old Darabi found herself with a job at The NY Times where she implemented social media integration for The NY times including a presence on Facebook and Twitter. Her social media prowess led her to winning first prize at the INMA Awards for excellence in marketing.

This determined young entrepreneur is pushing the way forward for other young female entrepreneurs, “We need more young women starting companies” she says, and with over half a million followers on twitter there are plenty of people listening.

Soraya was given the accolade of 53rd place in the top 100 most creative people in business 2010 list. She is the social media queen and always seems to know where the social media trends are, why?

“I get information from my peers,” Darabi says simply.

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