Just two months ago, a group of founder friends came together to live in Founder Grand, an exquisite and historical grand Victorian lady. We found the house in serendipitous fashion on Craigslist and thought it would be a great opportunity to share it with other entrepreneurs who too believe hackathons can start at 2am and owning 2 laptops, an iPhone, an Android phone, an iPad and an external monitor seems about par for the course. So on Friday, we co-hosted the Sweet Startups Housewarming Party @ Founder Grand.
There was a lot to celebrate at the housewarming, what with Earth Week (April 17th-25th) & Dance Week (April 23rd-May 2nd) happening back to back *and* our coincidental Skimble™ trademark approval papers arriving in the mail that day!
We first kicked things off by baking Skimble™ cupcakes in our traditional 'creative' style. We modified this excellent red velvet cupcake with cinnamon cream cheese frosting recipe into a meaningful creation of purple/choco cupcake (passion) with green frosting (earth) and blue sprinkles (groovy!):
Cupcakes were enjoyed in our urban garden, complete with massive succulents and lots of sun:
We danced off the sweet treats with fellow Skimblers:
And to give you a little more insight into our new trademarked name Skimble™...
We came up with 'skimble' by combining sky + nimble. To us, it meant being active in the outdoors. We went with Skimble™ because:
it was the winner in a naming survey we conducted
it sounded pretty cool when used in verb form (e.g. you better skimble that)
Skimble was the name of a nimble cat in an old T.S. Eliotpoem so it was poetic justice!
During our naming process, we considered Nimble (but that wouldn't sell at any reasonable price), Zimble (but Mr. Zimble wasn't interested) and finally Skimble. Turns out Skimble™ had the best legs and we got the domain on back order via GoDaddy for only $18.99. Almost nine months after filing for the SKIMBLE trademark, here we have our certified trademark approval document:
This will go down in Skimble™ history. Thanks to all our friends and community of Skimblers for their support and encouragement along our early way.
A couple days ago, I (Maria) sent out a tweet listing several women-led startups in response to TechCrunch's tweet asking for Twitter list suggestions. That inspired me to write about these female entrepreneurs, what they're starting up, and how they're staying active!
Samasource brings dignified, computer-based work to women, youth, and refugees living in poverty. They are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit social business that's in the seed stage after launching mid 2008. Samasource derives its name from the Sanskrit word sama, which means “equal”.
Former Principal at Charles River Venture, Susan is effervescent and driven. She has a lot of fun doing whatever she does. Susan was the former CMO of the Apache Software Foundation and has significant experience in online gaming. It's not too surprising she's taking on Ohai. next.
Ohai builds flash-based massively multiplayer online games (MMOG). They are venture backed by $6M and, with an impressive team, Ohai has just launched! Here's Susan presenting at Le Web about Virtual Goods and Ohai:
Rashmi is a fearless woman who writes a great blog and shares a candid perspecifve of the challenges for women raising money, She puts her Cognitive Psychology PhD from Brown University to work at Slideshare and within the tech community.
Gina is a social networking expert who was a former financial analyst for Goldman Sachs and most recently co-founder of Ning with Marc Andressen. She hold a Stanford MBA and she puts it to good use by evangelizing Ning and constently improving an already great product.
Ning is a service provider that lets you build social networks around any interest. Founded in 2004, launched in 2007, Ning has raised $119M in venture funding and has a massive amount of users.
Sandy and Elaine are the co-founders of Meebo. These two females and Seth Sternberg met at during their studies at Stanford. They all co-founded Meebo and continue to solve hard technical challenges.
Meebo is an ajax-based in-browser instant messaging program which supports multiple IM services. They've been around since 2004, raised nearly $40M, and have gained a strong following. As I've mentioned, these ladies are smart and here's Sandy sharing her experiences leading the technical team at Meebo:
Caterina is a fellow Canadian who is most known for co-founding flickr. She's tenacious, passionate about user experience design, and all around fun. I've met Caterina before and her startup life is an interesting one.
Currently, it's Hunch. Hunch a consumer web applicationthat helps users make up their minds. They raised a $2M series A earlier this year. Previously, it was flickr and you all know what happened there.
Regardless, I am a big fan of flickr and you can view a glimpse into my life via my flickrstream.
How does she stay active?
I've heard she works out at a fitness gym (ping me to update).
Joyce Kim and Susan Kang make up the female-duo being Soompi. Joyce is an attorney and was the former co-host of the GigaOM Show on Revision3. Susan builds the technology powering Soompi and is a prominent k-pop enthusiast known widely from Korea, LA to SF. Together they rock my Asian pop world!
Soompi is an Asian focused entertainment site, the largest English-speaking Korean and Asian website about pop, dramas, and celebrities. Back in the late nineties, Susan's original K-pop blog started taking off and, in 2006, Joyce and Susan decided to make it a real business. They are profitable through direct advertising and a premium 'Friends of Soompi' model. Here's a pretty random video they did, all in the name of entertainment:
Vicki is a firm believe of pursuing your passion and working on things that resonate deeply in your heart. I met her back in Canada, when I was working on my wee startup Kiwi Innovations (customized cell phones) and when she was the CEO of the NRG Group and KidsNRG, Canada's premier catalyst and supporter of youth entrepreneurship!
Shinyoung was the first female CEO in Korea, having built an education website, Bebetown, which was acquired by Iconsupe. She's got spunk, is not a follower, and will always be doing something entrepreneurial. Shinyoung attended Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU where she was often found prototyping new ideas such as the original Funji device.
Jen's been in the art and technology scene since the nineties. She owns an art gallery, actively writes on her blog called Personism and runs a quarterly photo competition, Hey, Hot Shot!
It's art, for everyone. 20x200 is an e-commerce site for art collectors. This site champions affordable art and so far they've raised a series A round.
