Meet ELLE's Women in Tech
Danae Ringelmann, Cofounder, Indiegogo Danae Ringelmann
Ringelmann’s business began with a problem. She was working in finance, keeping tabs on big entertainment companies like Pixar and Lionsgate, when she noticed that independent artists, filmmakers, and theater producers had a terrible time finding investors to fund their ideas. Through Indiegogo, a crowdfunding site, Ringelmann sought to “democratize access to capital,” making fundraising tools available to artists and entrepreneurs of all stripes. “It’s working,” she says of the 200,000 campaigns that have used Indiegogo, “and ideas are getting unleashed every week.” Also unleashed every week? Several million dollars, to efforts across the world. It was tough to quit her job, go back to school, and then gamble on Indiegogo in 2007, especially because her parents had owned a small moving company and often struggled to make ends meet. “I wanted to be that security blanket for my family,” says Ringelmann, now 36. “But the day to day of finance wasn’t feeding my soul.” Now she’s doing what she loves, and Indiegogo just locked down another $40 million in funding. To her, doing good and making money are not opposing goals. “Everybody wants to make the world better,” she says.
Grace Woo, Founder, Pixels.IO
Genevieve Bell, Vice President of User Experience Research at Intel Labs
Padmasree Warrior, Chief Technology & Strategy Officer, Cisco
Danika Laszuk, Vice President of Marketing, Jawbone
Jessica Livingston, Cofounder and Partner, Y Combinator
Gwynne Shotwell, President and Chief Operating Officer, SpaceX
Sarah Friar, Chief Financial Officer and Operations Lead, Square
Jennifer Pahlka, Founder and Executive Director, Code for America
Kara Swisher, Co-executive Editor, Re/code
Kara Swisher was a business reporter for The Washington Post in the mid-1990s when she realized that a digital revolution was afoot—and she wanted in. “I was kind of a storm chaser,” she says. She moved to the Bay Area, later left the Post for The Wall Street Journal, then joined forces with journalist Walt Mossberg to create All Things D, a wildly popular tech conference and blog that they operated independently but that were owned by the Journal’s then parent company, Dow Jones. “If you have an entrepreneuring nature and you’re around entrepreneuring people, you start to feel like that,” says Swisher. So in January, she and Mossberg launched Re/code, a tech-news site, with funding from NBCUniversal. It’s already a must-read for tech insiders and interested outsiders. “People sometimes tell me they’re scared of me—I think that’s ridiculous,” says Swisher, 51, who was born in Philadelphia but grew up a New Yorker and maintains the directness of one. “My goal is to speak some amount of truth to power and not get sucked into the hype of the industry.”
Alison Pincus and Susan Feldman, Cofounders of One Kings Lane
“I’ve had two great blind dates in my life. One was my husband, and one was Ali Pincus,” says Susan Feldman, 58, who was introduced to Pincus, 39, by a mutual friend. Feldman, who had years of experience in apparel sales, and Pincus, a digital-marketing whiz (who once worked at ELLE), hit it off instantly and together created the curated flash-sales site One Kings Lane, which is now synonymous with tasteful home decor—and stratospheric start-up success. The company, founded in 2009, has 500 employees and is valued at around $1 billion (up from $440 million in late 2012). The site has gone from offering one sale each day to up to 15. “It’s like we’re putting on a Broadway show every single day,” says Feldman, who is also the site’s chief merchandising officer. By focusing on home goods and Pinterest-like curated collections, One Kings Lane has become a destination with staying power. “It’s super important that you’re always talking to your shoppers,” Pincus says, confessing that she sometimes conducts market research at the hair salon. Pincus recently launched Hunters Alley, an eBay-style marketplace for home wares. “We’re changing how people can think and shop for their personal spaces,” Pincus says.
Caterina Fake, Founder & CEO, Findery; Cofounder, Flickr and Hunch
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