This is a guest post by Kim Polese, a prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneur, innovator and business leader and the co-founder and former CEO of Marimba. When I first read Eric Jackson‘s post Wednesday on FORBES entitled, “Sheryl Sandberg is the Valley’s It Girl – Just Like Kim Polese Once Was,” my immediate thought was – how sad. How sad that as an industry and a society we haven’t advanced over these past two decades when it comes to views on women and leadership. As with all the past lazy, stereotype-ridden articles like this one, it gets the facts wrong. For example, writing about Marimba, the software company I co-founded and led as CEO, Jackson states that “after the bubble burst the company had no future ... Continue reading →

Rep. Anthony Weiner says social networking identity hacking is to blame for the lewd material that a conservative news website reported was sent from his Twitter and yfrog handles to an unidentified woman in Seattle. The New York Democrat told POLITICO he thought it “obvious” that his account had been taken over, and he tweeted that his Facebook account had been hacked with the abbreviation “FB hacked.” Continue Reading VIDEO: Reporters grill Weiner A photo of a man’s bulging gray boxer-brief underwear was posted to Weiner’s account with yfrog — an online image-sharing site — on Saturday night, according to biggovernment.com, which is run by Andrew Breitbart. The photograph is from the waist down, and shows no face. “The weiner gags never get old, I ... Continue reading →

“There is a huge amount of money to be made out of taking women seriously and out of letting women see that you are taking them seriously.” – Cindy Gallop, Founder & CEO, If We Ran The World On May 13th, I attended a panel at the inaugural Benchmark Conference in NYC entitled “Women: Your Secret ROI Engine” and was struck by the similarities between the ideals being promoted at the panel and the findings of our 2012 goodpurpose study. In particular, the latest study found that 72% of consumers worldwide will recommend a brand with purpose, and 76% believe that it is okay for brands to make money and support causes at the same time. The age-old stigma that a company focused on profits ... Continue reading →

One might have expected the news that several Republican state lawmakers in New York want to pass a law essentially banning anonymous comments on the web to be met with outrage.But the reaction from New York's digital-media proprietors seems to be more of a collective eye-roll."This is a misguided idea that indicates a lack of understanding of not only the essence of the web but also the principles of the First Amendment," said Gaby Darbyshire, the attorney and chief operating officer for Gawker Media. "I don't believe it will come to anything.""This legislation is going nowhere," said Andrew Rasiej, a New York technology strategist and founder of the Personal Democracy Forum (and an adviser to Capital). "Its not OK anymore for politicians not to know ... Continue reading →