Women 2.0’s other goal is to increase the stock of female role models, Charania says. “As a woman, how can you relate to Bill Gates? There are so many women who have great ideas but aren’t making them realities. To do that, they need capital and inspiration from peers.”

After arriving in Silicon Valley, Charania worked at several start-ups, focusing on product development and marketing. She boosted her profile through networking events but was alarmed at the lack of women. Along with three other twenty-something women, she hosted a conference in 2006 where female founders of tech companies gave business advice; the event attracted 100 women. When Charania and friends were presented with an award for their efforts to increase female leadership, that event drew 600. Women 2.0 was born. The four women officially share the CEO role, with Charania responsible for seeking corporate sponsorships, soliciting venture capitalists and angel investors, and managing operations.

Women 2.0’s monthly, women-only mixers help attendees make professional connections. The quarterly panel discussions address practical topics such as raising money and scaling up start-ups. Women 2.0 branches are being launched in New York, San Diego, and Vancouver.

When not working on Women 2.0, Charania holds down a day job as marketing head for Jajah, a global telecom start-up in Mountain View, California, and moonlights as a consultant for consumer-focused tech companies. She has no plans to slow down. “If you have an idea and a passion but don’t pursue it, that’s a waste of your life. I want other women to find their passion and live it up.”

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Fast forward to the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. There, Ringelmann and two colleagues announced the creation of their new company, IndieGoGo, an online social marketplace that helps filmmakers solicit funding from the most logical source of all: fans.

“We give filmmakers audience-building tools and free ‘real estate’ on the Web,” Ringelmann explains. Producers and 
directors can post unlimited information about their films, including trailers, and they receive free clickable codes (called widgets) that they can insert into their own websites, blogs, and emails to direct enthusiasts to their project. Fans learn all about the films and are provided easy ways to contribute money and marketing muscle in exchange for perks. IndieGoGo earns its bread by slicing off a modest fee from contributions.

Some 800 films are now posted on the site, and, so far, IndieGoGo has helped 15 projects raise more than $70,000. Among them are Tapestries of Hope, a documentary about the virgin-rape crisis in Zimbabwe, and The Lilliput, a feature film based on the real-life story of one man’s survival of the Holocaust.

“I’ve always wanted to start my own business,” says Ringelmann, who 
attended the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, on a prestigious Morehead scholarship. She fell in love with the film industry while working at J.P. Morgan and then Cowen & Co., where she was a securities analyst covering big media companies like Pixar and Disney. Pursuing an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley with a focus in social entrepreneurship, she talked up her seedling idea for a business to 
democratize film funding, eventually finding her core startup team in classmate Eric Schell and his colleague, Slava Rubin, who both shared with Ringelmann her experience in raising money for 
artists and a passion for film.

“In giving filmmakers more choices, IndieGoGo allows me to align my values with what I do for a living,” she says. “I wake up every morning and say, ‘I can’t wait to go to work today.’”

Danae Ringelmann’s advice for entrepreneurs
1) Action speaks louder than words. Don’t let lack of information paralyze you from making decisions and taking action early on. No decision is too big that it can’t be undone later.

2) Share your idea. You can’t start a company alone. Talk up your concept with everyone you meet and infect them with your passion.

3) Test and retest. Don’t build your company in a black box. Find customers desperate for your product or service and show them your idea to get feedback.

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1. Young Entrepreneur: Sumaya Kazi

Kazi launched TheCulturalConnect (TCC) in July 2005, only two weeks after she came up with the idea for the site. Its purpose is to connect dynamic young professionals under the age of 35 with others of the same cultural background, which it does through five weekly e-magazines, The DesiConnect, The MidEast Connect, The AsiaConnect, The LatinConnect, and The AfricanaConnect. Their readership numbers 50,000 in some 100 countries, and Kazi’s initial staff of 3 has expanded to 30.

“I oversee everything—publishing, recruiting and hiring, marketing, business development,” says Kazi. But I definitely do not take the credit for TCC’s success. I have an amazing staff that spans two countries, eight states, and 18 cities. Without them, there would be no TCC.”

Kazi, who graduated from UC Berkeley in marketing and strategic planning, was named one of America’s Best Entrepreneurs Under 25 by BusinessWeek magazine in 2006, and was the only woman featured individually in the magazine’s Global Top 75 Entrepreneurs List

Sumaya Kazi’s Advice for Young Entrepreneurs

• Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. It can only breed success.
• Make sure that everyone on your core team has a PhD mentality. In other words, they must think as if they are poor, hungry, and driven.
• Don’t sit on great ideas. Collaborate with others to get them off the ground.
• Remember that people who reach for the impossible make many more things possible happen along the way.
• Network like crazy.

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1. Young Entrepreneur: Danae Ringelmann