SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. (November 4, 2010) — Women 2.0 PITCH Night brought the finalists of the Women 2.0 Startup Competition onstage to compete for top prize at the high-energy event attended by 300 entrepreneurs, investors and startup enthusiasts.

We at Women 2.0 never cease to be amazed by the range of startup pitches at PITCH Night. They’re not like Facebook (in a good way) – these ideas are different, the teams are different, the reach is different. By the end of PITCH Night, winners had been announced: Apply in the Sky to manage your b-school applications, mobile infrastructure of “top ups” to transfer money between consumers at Prepay Nation, and last but not least, BioLumber plastic that is as strong as steel but as light as lumber, saving the world from the plastic vortex!

Each year PITCH reminds us a few things:

• Innovation is everywhere — Submissions for this year’s 4th annual Women 2.0 Startup Competition came in from 78 cities in 12 countries — Not just in the Internet cafes of Silicon Valley!
• Female founders are innovating — We get more submissions for PITCH each year!
• Women 2.0 PITCH Director Aihui Ong, who is also the Founder & CEO of Love With Food has overseen four years of PITCH Competitions remarks, “All it takes is passion to solve a small problem — to germinate and bloom into an innovative business.”

Women 2.0 CEO Shaherose Charania talks about the winners of PITCH Night on TechCrunch here.

Diane Greene (right) was the Founding CEO at Silicon Valley tech company VMware. She shares her story with Arielle Scott (Founder, GenJuice) and the audience at Women 2.0 PITCH Night – “VMware initially took 6 hours to boot Windows on Linux. Don’t give up on your big ideas.” Diane Greene’s advice to female entrepreneurs: you too could start a VMware (via @Xconomy).

Finalists for the web portion of Women 2.0 PITCH Night 2010, Chiara Piccinotti and Emily Chiu of Apply in the Sky deliver the winning pitch and win the judge’s vote.

Cleantech finalist BioLumber CEO Kristin Kaune delivers the winning pitch at Women 2.0 PITCH Night 2010 to win a prized investor meeting with Esther Dyson!

Judges for the cleantech panel from left: Cindi Choi (Corporate Development, SunPower), Cynthia Ringo (Managing Director, DBL Investors), and Rachel Pike (Analyst, Draper Fisher Jurvetson) listen to pitches from Aesir Metals, BioLumber, and Chouette at Women 2.0 PITCH Night 2010.

Obopay founder and CEO Carol Realini (pictured right) tells the audience she has raised $200M to date in venture funding. Carol Realini advises not to be a “lone ranger” and shared her 10-5-3-1 recipe to venture success. Get 10 great meetings with investors, and 5 of them go through due dilligence. Get 3 good term sheets, because you need to have choices. In the end, it’s 1 bank transfer!

Lesa Mitchell from the Kauffman Foundation announces the winner of the 2010 Women 2.0 PITCH Night for the mobile category as Jessica Bishop of Prepay Nation.

From left, Kelley Boyd (Managing Director for New York, Women 2.0), Alexis Ringwald (Co-Founder, Valence Energy – acquired by Serious Materials), Lynn Jurich (Co-Founder & President, SunRun), and Shaherose Charania (Co-Founder & CEO, Women 2.0) at PITCH Night 2010. Quotable quotes from Lynn: “I talk about solar construction with SunRun, and my husband talks about beauty products.” Another crowd favorite: “We decided to approach our marriage like a portfolio: one of us works the steady job and one starts a company.”

Special thanks to Twilio for donating their office space for Women 2.0 PITCH Night 2010 — and providing free WiFi for all! The Twilio Lounge (pictured) was also appreciated by the Women 2.0 community.

The Women 2.0 community is a multi-tasking bunch, well-versed in cloud computing as well as various OS and iOS devices – three different ones pictured here.	Pictured from left, Baat Enosh and Aihui Ong of Women 2.0 at the 4th Annual PITCH Night in San Francisco.
Catered dinner thanks to Back-A-Yard Caribbean American Grill in Menlo Park — the curried goat was a surprise hit!	The advancement of women in entrepreneurship and business will not be achieved without everyone’s support. Thanks David Weekly!

Special thanks to Pokin Yeung and Julie Blaustein for photographing Women 2.0 PITCH Night 2010.