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01/12/12 | Uncategorized

2012 PITCH Startup Competition Finalists Announced

By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0)
The run-up to Women 2.0 PITCH Conference on February 14, 2012 is defined by Women 2.0’s fifth annual Startup Competition for early-stage tech startups.

Watch the finalists of the 2012 Women 2.0 Startup Competition pitch live on February 14. Hear first-hand feedback from panels of real investors on what makes a successful pitch for investment.

Here are the 10 finalists of the 2012 Women 2.0 PITCH Startup Competition:



Business Productivity is the premier channel for business professionals worldwide who want to learn how to work smarter and more effectively using technology. By offering a wide range of short, user-friendly videos online, users are encouraged to invest a few minutes of their valuable time to increase their knowledge in how to use technology in order to increase their business productivity.

Buyosphere is a shopping Q&A Platform. Just ask what you are looking for and the platform will route your question to those who know how to find it. Buyosphere is all about solving the confusing product search experience online. Buyosphere leverages the social web to help you find what is right for you, saving you time and uncovering gems you could never find on your own.

DINKlife is the only social and services platform for the second fastest growing life-stage demographic in the US: couples without kids. DINKlife validates the unique lifestyle of couples without kids & helps them make the most of this time in their life.

DocPons is a national healthcare company with a unique online platform for purchasing outpatient healthcare services. The company issues discount healthcare coupons at affordable out-of-pocket rates for healthcare services that ordinary people need and deserve. DocPons is revolutionary in that it’s the first of its kind healthcare company that opens access to outpatient health and wellness services.

Evo connects busy parents to their child from anywhere in a way that fits their active lifestyle. Evoz Smarter Parenting service centralizes baby’s behavioral data, runs analytics algorithms and provides visibility for parents into their child’s daily experience and how they compare to other babies, connecting parents to content, products and expert services that fit their children’s needs.

Hotseat gives college students a space to record practice interview sessions and get feedback from their social networks and the greater Hotseat community. The app is free, but subscribers can access more challenging video content such as case interviews, technical questions, and ideal responses. We aim to save students time (stop crawling the forums and start practicing now!) and money (stop buying all those guidebooks).

Kismet is the best real time, location based social app for meeting new people. Whether users want friends or business contacts, Kismet tells them who they should be meeting and why. Kismet also shows users how they’re connected to everyone they encounter and which friends they have in common. The company, an alum of AngelPad, was founded by an ex-Google, ex-Apple engineer and a prior founding team member.

Perfect Beauty is a one stop hub for women around the world to build a community based on trusted beauty and self image advice. Perfect Beauty provides a platform for social networking and a product marketplace. Users receive incentives for writing reviews and purchasing products through the site or mobile app. Perfect Beauty obtains revenue through user purchases, mobile phone app, online marketplace, and advertisements.

  • Presenting at Women 2.0 PITCH Conference and Competition on February 14, 2012 in Mountain View will be Perfect Beauty Founder and President Daisy Jing, Perfect Beauty Head of Technology Arushi Raghuvanshi, Perfect Beauty Head of Business Development Son Ca Vu, and Perfect Beauty Head of Sales and Marketing Karen Alonzo.

Prosperity is small business budgeting software for non-accountant types, helping the solo entrepreneur reduce overspending, keep more of what is made, and sparkle at tax time. Prosperity excels in her simplicity and use of a web-based “envelope system. ” Unbeknownst to the user, Prosperity is a full blown dual-entry accounting system hidden by intuitive features and language. Light enough for a teenager selling homemade aprons, Prosperity is heavy enough for an All State Agency’s books.

Tiny Review is like Instagram for Yelp reviews. Say what you think about a place quickly: take a picture and write 3 words. Follow people whose recommendations you trust. Quickly get an impression based on other tiny reviews: “Butter, Overrated, Line” Tartine in SF. Tiny Reviews make reviews fun, short and easy. Tiny Review is angel funded and part of 500 Startups and Designer Fund.

Thanks to everyone who applied this year! Each year, we receive more and more impressive applications to dazzle our judging panel of investors and startup executives.

 

Join us for the Women 2.0 PITCH Conference and Competition on February 14 to watch as the competition finalists vie for prizes including “Most Fundable”, “Most Disruptive Product”, “Most Promising Team” and “Product Most Likely To Change The World”.

The Women 2.0 PITCH Competition on February 14 will be judged by:

Aileen Lee (Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers)
Aileen is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, having joined the firm in 1999. Her primary area of focus is working with consumer-oriented digital companies. Aileen has worked closely with the teams at companies such as Blue Nile (Nasdaq: Nile), Bloom Energy, Friendster (acquired by MOL Global), Good Technology (acquired by MOT), shopkick, Tellme (acquired by Microsoft) and Zazzle.

Christina Brodbeck (Angel Investor)
Christina is an angel investor. She is also co-founder of theicebreak, a new service that helps couples to create more rewarding relationships with snack-sized activities. Prior to theicebreak, Christina was a founding team member at YouTube and the company’s first UI Designer. She later went on to lead UI for YouTube Mobile and mentors at various places including 500 Startups and The Designer Fund.

Dave McClure (Founding Partner, 500 Startups)
Dave is a venture capitalist and founding partner at 500 Startups, an Internet startup seed fund and incubator program in Mountain View, CA. He likes to hang out with entrepreneurs, and occasionally help or invest in their startups if they are foolish enough to let him. He has worked with companies such as PayPal, Mint, Founders Fund, Facebook, LinkedIn, SlideShare, Twilio, Simply Hired, Intel and Microsoft.

Joanna McFarland (Vice President of Publisher Networks, AT&T Interactive)
Joanna is the Vice President of Publisher Products at AT&T Interactive where she heads up the YP Local Ad Network, including the recent launch of the mobile local ad network with in-app hyperlocal display ads and the new YP Developer Program offering developers open API access to local business data. She has 15 years experience investing and managing businesses in technology and media.

Joy Marcus (Partner, DFJ Gotham Ventures)
Joy joined DFJ Gotham Ventures as a Venture Partner in May 2011. Prior to joining DFJ Gotham Ventures, Joy was General Manager, US for video website Dailymotion, from its US launch through its acquisition by Orange (France Telecom) in January 2011. Prior to Dailymotion, Joy was SVP Global Marketing at Time Warner and served as VP Business Development of Barnes&Noble.com. She began her career as an M&A lawyer.

Naval Ravikant (Co-Author, Venture Hacks)
Naval is an entrepreneur and angel investor, a co-author of Venture Hacks, and a co-maintainer of AngelList. Previously, he was a co-founder at Genoa Corp (acquired by Finisar), Epinions (IPO via Shopping), and Vast. He has advised Bix.com, iPivot, and XFire, among others, and invested in many companies including Twitter, FourSquare, DocVerse (sold to Google), Mixer Labs (sold to Twitter), PlanCast and Stack Overflow.

Rachel Pike (Investment Professional, Draper Fischer Jurvetson)
Rachel joined Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 2010 and is active in the clean technology, software, and mobility sectors. Prior to joining DFJ, Rachel completed her Ph.D. in atmospheric chemistry at the University of Cambridge, where she served as President of the Gates Scholars, worked on a field campaign in Malaysia, and gave a short TED University talk on the scale of scientific research behind climate headlines.

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy (Founder & Chairman, JOYUS)
Sukhinder is Founder & Chairman of JOYUS. Prior to JOYUS, she served as CEO and Chairman of the board at Polyvore, and CEO-in-Residence with Accel Partners. From 2003 to 2009, she was a senior executive at Google. While at Google, Sukhinder also chaired the Women’s Leadership Community to help initiate networking and development opportunities among Google’s female management community.

The winning team as decided by the judges on February 14 will receive meetings with top-tier venture capitalists after the conference, including:

Aileen Lee (Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers)
Aileen is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, having joined the firm in 1999. Her primary area of focus is working with consumer-oriented digital companies. Aileen has worked closely with the teams at companies such as Blue Nile (Nasdaq: Nile), Bloom Energy, Friendster (acquired by MOL Global), Good Technology (acquired by MOT), shopkick, Tellme (acquired by Microsoft) and Zazzle.

Mike Maples (Managing Partner, Maples Investments)
Mike Maples, Jr. is the Managing Partner of Maples Investments. He was recently named as one of “8 Rising VC Stars” by Fortune Magazine for his investments in business and consumer technology companies. Before becoming a full-time investor, Mike was an entrepreneur and operating executive who worked in a variety of senior management roles in high-growth companies.

We look forward to seeing everyone on February 14 at our biggest event of the year – PITCH Conference. Get your ticket to join us now! Speakers include women leaders of product innovation in both tech companies and successful startups, and network with 800+ of the Women 2.0 community at our biggest event of the year!

Photo credit: Comedy Nose for microphone image on Flickr

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