Proxfinity at the WiSTEM Networking Event at 1871

1871 MEMBER COMPANY CEO ELISA ALL AT GOOGLE BLACK BOX

Blackbox Connect and Google for Entrepreneurs Partner To Accelerate Female-Founded Startups - 1871 Member 30Second Mobile Selected

Blackbox Connect and Google for Entrepreneurs Partner To Accelerate Female-Founded Startups

Google for Entrepreneurs Demo Day Winner To Participate in Female Founders Edition

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Female Founders Edition Startups

San Francisco, California (PRWEB) April 24, 2015

Blackbox, the Silicon Valley accelerator dedicated to leveling the playing field for global startups, today announced their first-ever program comprised exclusively of women founders. Blackbox Connect Female Founders Edition is committed to helping women gain access to Silicon Valley resources and funding networks, and is powered by Google for Entrepreneurs. Since its inception, Blackbox has dedicated itself to maintaining diversity by ensuring that 50% of their program startups are founded by women. The nonprofit Blackbox has hosted hundreds of companies from 50 countries over the past three years with 90% funded, and all deeply embedded in a growing network of successful entrepreneurs.

One participant in the Blackbox Connect program, Tatiana Birgisson, Founder of Mati Energy, just won Google for Entrepreneurs Demo Day. The other entrepreneurs chosen hail from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Lebanon, Poland, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and the United States. The businesses bring innovations in a variety of industries, including art education, enlightened dating, eyewear, fashion, healthy eating, location-based e-commerce, mental health, native advertising, and wearables.

The full list of female founders and their companies are available on the Blackbox website and the program will be held in Palo Alto from April 27 - May 8, 2015.

“There are many underrepresented women founders in both the U.S. and abroad that could benefit from more support,” said Fadi Bishara, Founder of Blackbox. “Silicon Valley does not have a monopoly on talent, but access to the valley’s rich resources are critical to an entrepreneur’s success. Blackbox creates that access and helps startups learn, collaborate and grow. Along with Google for Entrepreneurs, we are thrilled to have the privilege of welcoming such talented female entrepreneurs to Blackbox.”

“Through our efforts like the #40Forward initiative, we've seen how access to funding and mentor networks is critical to the growth of any business, especially female-led startups,” said Bridgette Beam, head of women’s outreach at Google for Entrepreneurs. “The women joining us in the Blackbox Connect Female Founders Edition represent some of the most promising female entrepreneurs from around the world, and we're excited to help them connect to the best of Silicon Valley and support them in building high growth businesses."

About Blackbox Connect:
Blackbox Connect is a two-week, residential program in Silicon Valley designed to immerse founders in the startup culture, to learn from other successful entrepreneurs, to connect with potential partners and investors, to forge valuable business relationships, and to receive expert advice from venture capitalists, successful founders, and game changers. Sponsored in part by Google for Entrepreneurs, Blackbox Connect gives founders a foundation of knowledge and access to the expertise needed to expand their vision and scale their companies globally. To learn more about Blackbox Connect, visit Blackbox and find us on Facebook, Twitter and G+.

About Google for Entrepreneurs:
Google for Entrepreneurs provides financial support and the best of Google's resources to dozens of coworking spaces and community programs across 125 countries. We also create Campuses: physical hubs where entrepreneurs can learn, connect, and build companies that will change the world. To learn more about Google for Entrepreneurs, visit googleforentrepreneurs.com or follow us on G+ (+GoogleForEntrepreneurs) and Twitter (@GoogleForEntrep).

1871 Member 30Second Mobile Selected to Attend Google For Entrepreneurs’ Blackbox Connect Accelerator Program

                                            

1871 Member 30Second Mobile Selected to Attend Google For Entrepreneurs’ Blackbox Connect Accelerator Program

Elisa All, Founder and CEO of 30Second Mobile, to spend two weeks at Google for Entrepreneurs’ Blackbox Connect program for female founders

Chicago (April 16, 2015)—Google for Entrepreneurs announced today that 1871 member company 30Second Mobile, a women-led mobile media company, has been selected to participate in Google for Entrepreneurs’ Blackbox Connect Female Founders Edition, a two-week immersion program where the most promising global startups grow and connect with top VCs and game-changers in Silicon Valley. Elisa All, founder and CEO of 30Second Mobile, will travel to Google Headquarters with other companies nominated by partners of Google for Entrepreneurs for a two-week accelerator program exclusively available to high potential women entrepreneurs.

“1871 is constantly working to offer a wide variety of opportunities and resources that help our member companies succeed,” said 1871 CEO Howard A. Tullman. “As one of only nine members of the Google for Entrepreneurs North American Tech Hub Network, our close relationship with Google continues to create amazing opportunities for 1871 companies. We are especially excited to work on a program that focuses on supporting women entrepreneurs, and we congratulate 30Second Mobile on being selected for this year’s Blackbox Connect program.”

Google for Entrepreneurs selected the most promising startups from across the globe to participate in its first Blackbox Connect program focused specifically on female founders. These startups will travel to California from April 27 through May 8, where they will have the opportunity to collaborate with like-minded entrepreneurs from around the world and partake in an intense agenda of strategic meetings and workshops with entrepreneurs, investors, experts and executives. Each of the participating companies is required to have launched a product and received customer feedback.

“I am thrilled and honored to have the opportunity to participate in the first Blackbox Connect program to focus specifically on female founders,” said Elisa All, founder and CEO of 30Second Mobile. “I look forward to collaborating with other female entrepreneurs while learning from Google’s experts and representing the amazing startup community at 1871 and in Chicago.”

30Second Mobile is a women-led mobile media company creating authentic, easily-consumed content for mobile and social users. The company licenses its content to media companies and creates custom branded content for companies that bring their brand messages to life. 30Second Mobile’s first vertical, 30Second Mom, is a free website and app that enables mothers to access quick and helpful information tailored to their interests and share that information via social networks – in about 30 seconds. The company has received numerous accolades, including being named “One of the 5 Hottest Startups in Chicago.”

Prior to 30Second Mobile, Elisa All founded iParenting Media, a highly-regarded dotcom acquired by The Walt Disney Company in 2007. Elisa led the company to be recognized as “Best of the Web” by Newsweek, US News & World Report, The London Times and more. After iParenting was acquired by Disney, Elisa served as Director for the Disney Interactive Media Group, where she led the integration of iParenting into the Disney Family Network. Elisa also has served as a video and radio host, newspaper columnist and editor-in-chief of six national newsstand magazines: Pregnancy, Baby Years, Women’s Health & Fitness, Family Energy, European Homes & Gardens and The Buyer’s Guide.

"I am woman, hear me code" - 1871 FEMtech in United Airlines Hemispheres

Tech

I am woman, hear me code

Even in the seemingly progressive world of high tech, women face outdated stereotypes. Female-friendly incubators are giving them a space to thrive.

Author Cristina Rouvalis Illustration Scotty Reifsnyder

When Elisa All launched iParenting Media back in 1996, she did so in almost total isolation, building her business at home with an infant. Eleven years later, she sold the online parenting publishing conglomerate to Disney for an undisclosed (but significant) sum, but that has done little to rid All of the sense that she remains on the margins of her chosen field.

“You feel like an anomaly,” she says of being a mother of two in the tech world. “It can be daunting.”

Only 10 to 15 percent of all entry-level jobs in tech are held by women, according to executive search firm Harvey Nash, and, barring a couple of colossal exceptions (COO of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer), female bosses are an even rarer occurence. As dispiriting as such statistics may be, says All, who’s currently working on video-streaming apps and a website for moms on the go, they don’t even begin to describe the difficulty female tech entrepreneurs encounter in trying to build their businesses. The networking events she attends usually resemble an old-boys club, she says, in which investors “throw money at the male tech superstars” and dismiss companies like hers as “fluffy women things.” But thanks to female-friendly incubators like the Chicago-based 1871, the 45-year-old All can talk to mentors, pitch investors and tap business resources in a way that was impossible before.

“You are plopped into a thriving community with other entrepreneurs,” she says. “I was accepted and welcomed here.”

Of the 240 startups at 1871, which investor and philanthropist J.B. Pritzker set up a couple of years ago, more than 25 percent include women among the founders, and this fall, the organization aims to boost those already impressive numbers with the launch of FEMtech, a program that will offer female entrepreneurs from around the world the financial and logistical support they’ll need to turn ideas into businesses.

A big part of the work FEMtech will do as it develops is help women with children balance work and family commitments. Networking events, for example, will be scheduled at midday rather than the conventional late-afternoon happy hour. “The end of the day is a horrible time if you are a parent,” says Howard Tullman, 1871’s CEO.

This family-friendly approach is a rarity in the “bro-gramming” world of Silicon Valley—where you are far more likely to encounter a foosball table than a nursery.  In fact, even in this supposedly progressive milieu, caveman attitudes are rife. “This can be a very difficult place for women,” California-based employment attorney Kelly M. Dermody says of Silicon Valley. “They are often not given credit on work, are excluded from networking, are sexually harassed. Many leave.”

Women may be at a disadvantage in the tech field long before they set foot in the workplace. Studies show girls’ propensity to shy away from math and science begins in elementary school and continues through college. In 2012, for example, women received 57 percent of all undergraduate degrees in the U.S., but only 12 percent of the computer science degrees awarded by major research universities.

And yet, as Tullman puts it, the “dirty little secret of tech startups” is that you don’t necessarily need a computer science degree. “You don’t have to geek out,” he says. “No one is doing machine code. You need to devote resources to design and user interface. There is no reason why women cannot play a more significant role.” This is certainly true of All, who studied journalism in college and had a freelance writing and editing business before launching her startups.

For All, the beauty of FEMtech is that it will allow her to share her insights and experiences with women who face the same problems she has encountered since she entered the field 18 years ago. And one of the first messages she wants to impart is that hers is not so much a story of female empowerment as it is one of good business sense.

Cristina Rouvalis, a Pittsburgh-based writer, is considering learning how to code.

1871's ELISA ALL (30 SECOND MOBILE) JOINS P&G "COURAGEOUSNESS IN THE WORKPLACE" PANEL

The panel included Karenann Terrell, CTO of Walmart, Laura Desmond, CEO of Starcom MediaVest, Joanne Bradford, Head of Partnerships at Pinterest, and Julie Eddleman, Brand Operations Director at P&G.