Shark Tank Funds Fewer Women Than Men, With Less Money

Women Start Ups Underfunded

When Ann Crady Weiss pitched her first start up — a social network known as Maya’s Mom that would allow mothers to seek advice and share their experiences — male investors weren’t exactly enamored with the idea. “There were many investors I spoke to who said moms don’t have time for social networks,” Weiss told Mashable. Weiss would, of course, prove those investors wrong: Maya’s Mom would raise $1 million in angel funding in 2006 before being acquired by a division of mega baby brand Johnson & Johnson a year later. But Weiss’ story isn’t exactly shocking or unique: it’s well-known that women in tech aren’t embraced by the primarily male venture capitalist community. Only about 5% of venture capital for new startups goes to companies headed by women. Now Weiss is the co-founder and CEO of her second startup: Hatch Baby, which produces products to help new parents, like a changing pad that tracks a baby’s weight, growth, and feeding patterns. While Hatch Baby has already brought in $7 million in Series A funding, Weiss turned to an unusual source of funding for a proven Silicon Valley CEO: ABC’s “Shark Tank.” The competition show, in which entrepreneurs pitch celebrity […]

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The Women Behind Nix Hydra Are Shaking Up The Gaming World

Lina Chen and Naomi Ladizinsky, founders of Nix Hydra

Four years ago, Lina Chen and Naomi Ladizinsky’s plan to shake up the gaming world on behalf of girls seemed exceedingly improbable, even to them. Chen had a psychology liberal arts degree and Ladizinsky a film studies degree, both from Yale, where they’d met. They were out to disrupt one of the world’s most elite, tech-driven men’s clubs from a tiny office in Hollywood, yet, as Chen recalls with a ripple of laughter, “We didn’t have experience or money. We’d never worked as executives, and we had no connections in tech, startup or the gaming industry. And we didn’t have a product!” Neither of these two L.A. transplants knew how to code, so they taught themselves online. That all seems like a lifetime ago, given what has happened since. Early this year, their Los Angeles company, Nix Hydra, a rare gaming firm founded by women to create games for girls and women, will launch Egg!, a more complex successor to their wildly popular 2013 mobile pet game, Egg Baby. The two long-haired, soft-spoken co-founders of Nix Hydra are now in an enviable position, with just over $5.6 million from investors including venture capital firm Foundry Group, a built-in audience awaiting […]

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Maci Peterson, On Second Thought, “The Texting Savior” Is First Place Winner

On Second Thought is the flagship Digital Reputation Protection Platform (DRPP) and ecosystem that protects the reputations of individuals via mobile application technology. It does so by allowing users to take back text messages, chat messages, emails and social media posts before they get to the recipient. On Second Thought won 1st Place in the UpGlobal and Kauffman Foundation’s #StartupOasis pitch competition at South by Southwest in 2014, and it was recently named “The Texting Savior” by AT&T. It is currently available in the Google Play Store and Amazon AppStore.

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