Message from the CEO
Get ready for uncomfortable The LP, GP, Strategic, Angel Investor disruption is well under way - leaving the market in a bit of a state of flux at the moment. To give you just a few proof points that I observed last week at the 4th Annual Women In Private Equity Summit - some LPs are investing in Strategic funds and Angel funds (What, you say?! You read that correctly, no need to read again); some GPs are investing in what looks more like mutual fund or public market activity (i.e. note the recent investments in Facebook, Twitter and Zynga as examples). So who are the brave who will invest in early stage start-up? I posit that the intrepid entrepreneur and brave angel will become the heroes of this story. But as we are only on chapter one (or is this the prologue), we will have to keep an open eye - and mind - to what lies ahead. But there is more to be uncomfortable with. I believe it is time for investors and entrepreneurs alike to mainstream the Astia conversation and commit to the discomfort of working with those with whom we have less in common than we may normally choose. Those of us who do this successfully will also live to be heroes of the story. In this instance, we are well in to the book - and I believe that we even know how this story ends! Why do I feel so confident about this? Because innovation craves a diverse perspective. The fire of invention burns most brilliantly when stoked with the creativity of a panorama of viewpoints. But this too, requires a commitment to being uncomfortable as we make the transition from the same old - to the new paradigm. At Astia, we strive for 50% in all we do. 50% of my board members are men; 50% of our Advisors are men; 50% of our event attendees are men. And let me tell you from this experience. No one is comfortable with 50/50. The men notice how many women there are (always thinking there are many more than 50%) and the women notice the same. So, my simple take-away - and my latest mantra? Get used to it! It will do you good. Think of it as the broccoli on your plate. You may not like it at first, but after a few samples of it prepared by different chefs - you may even grow to like it! Cheers, Sharon Vosmek, CEO PS Make sure to read the section about Astia's growth. We are delighted to introduce you to new members of the team and even more excited to see the infusion of expertise and energy! Team Astia is growing!We are thrilled to announce new additions to the Astia team. Kindra Tatarsky joins the team as Vice President of Silicon Valley. She brings a wealth of experience with 18 years in research and investment business. Most recently, Kindra was Managing Director at Golden Seeds where she oversaw screening, deal flow and investment process during her tenure, as well as wearing several operational hats during a period of tremendous growth at the organization. Previous to working with private companies, Kindra spent 10 years in Equity Research, with the majority of her career at Montgomery Securities/BofA Securities. In addition to critiquing and communicating business strategies to identify compelling investment opportunities, Kindra was involved in numerous IPO's, which also required her to help young companies develop, launch and sustain a public presence. Kindra is on the board of RuMe, an environmentally focused consumer products company, and was previously on the board of the Montauk Playhouse in Montauk, NY. Kindra graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in English, and a Business minor. She also holds a CFA certification. Again, we have brought on a stellar new team member who came out of the community. Kindra's insight into the dynamic world of investment business transfers seamlessly into the work she will be doing at Astia. Kindra's forward thinking and strategic planning abilities will drive Astia forward, and her ties to the New York community will strengthen the bridge of our networks. Bringing enthusiasm and innovative ideas, she is exemplary of what the Astia community is made of and we're thrilled to have her as part of the team. Catherine Berman pilots the role of Vice President of Strategic Partnerships which is an avenue that Astia has looked to leverage and now will be driving forward. As an experienced entrepreneur, Catherine has launched and co-launched a number of successful social ventures including Global Brigades, Deloitte Center for Leadership & Community, ITC, and Oxford Women in Business Network. Prior to joining Astia, Catherine maintained a host of management positions, including Chief Executive Officer, Global Brigades Panama, Strategy and Operations Manager at Deloitte Consulting, LLP, Director of Marketing at Redefining Progress and Vice President of Evins Communications, LLC. Her international work experience spans from India to Israel with extensive work in Central and South America. Areas of expertise include strategy, international expansion, and management of both financial and social returns. Catherine graduated magna cum laude from Boston University and received her MBA from Oxford University, England. She is passionate about the intersection of money and meaning and serves as a mentor for Hub Ventures Impact Fund. Catherine comes to Astia at the perfect moment bringing with her a dynamic background and multifaceted layers of expertise that will strengthen our community. We can't wait to see what lays ahead! Patty Breslin joins Astia as Director of Operations. Wearing many hats she is holding responsibility for all operations, human resources, finance and IT functions at Astia. With more than 20 years of experience in the software industry, she has held executive management positions in Operations, Professional Services and Consulting at Borland, ADP, London Bridge Software and Kivera. With exceptional initiative, Patty has taken on many projects and is driving them full speed ahead, we couldn't be happier to have her as part of the team. Patty is a long time supporter of Astia, as an advisor, volunteer and client. We love having entrepreneurs in our midst and are grateful for all her contributions.
Astia's Global Entrepreneur Program - Call for Applications for 2011The Astia Entrepreneur Program is an unparalleled resource for success - a transformative program designed by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs who want to become dominant players in their sectors. The Format? A comprehensive multi-day workshop, 2-month program of personalized advising from premier experts and the opportunity to start benefiting from the global ecosystem of Angels, VCs, corporations, and entrepreneurs that is Astia. Who Should Apply? Exceptional women-led high growth start-ups who know that success is not just about raising money but about growing a business and thriving in today's tough market. Applications are taken on a rolling basis. Apply today if you have...
Visit Astia and complete your application to be considered for the Astia Entrepreneur Program.
Astia 2011 CalendarAstia Entrepreneur Programs Astia Investor Forums Annual Events Astia NewsAstia on BloombergTVAstia CEO, Sharon Vosmek, and Astia Client, Alexa von Tobel of LearnVest on Bloomberg TV Street Smart! Escape from Corporate America: Astia Propels Women EntrepreneursRead more here. Women Entrepreneurs in Europe vs. USBusiness Association Italy America Event recap: Women Entrepreneurs, the US vs. the European/Italian Experience. Astia staff at 3rd Annual Women Leadership ForumAstia staff, Jen Shelby was a panelist at OPEN Silicon Valley Third Annual Women Leadership Forum on how The Art of Being Effective and Authentic. Xconomy: Astia: Knocking Down the Hurdles for Women-Led StartupsRead more here. Astia board member on MSNBCJennifer Hill, chair of the New York City advisory board of Astia, answer viewer questions about how to set up your business and the best way to manage digital marketing. Two Agency Partners Join Astia's Advisory BoardTier One Partners Helps Build Brand Awareness, Promote Value of Gender Diversity in Driving Business Innovation for Venture Accelerator, Astia NewsTalk Radio 710 WOR with Liz Hamburg interviews Sharon VosmekListen here. Astia VP of NY attends Women's Entrepreneurial Council EventRob Delman recently traveled to Boston to participate in the formation of the Women's Entrepreneurial Council. The Women's Entrepreneurial Council is a "super" organization created to align the many groups that support women entrepreneurs. The WEC mission is to create a powerful, connected ecosystem for entrepreneurial women. By facilitating communication, coordination and collaboration among the many groups and academic institutions that support women as entrepreneurs in New England, WEC's goal is to ensure that women entrepreneurs have the resources and support that they need to create, launch and build their businesses, regardless of scale. Stay tuned for more as this develops! Astia Joins Startup America Initiative NewsParticipation made possible thanks to the financial commitments from:AOL Matching significant funding received in 2010 from the Read the press release here. Astia Blog Notes on White House Initiative for EntrepreneursSharon Vosmek Blog Notes on her visit to the White House with Astia client, Jenny Zeszut of Scout Labs for the launch of the Startup America Initiative Bloomberg Businessweek on The White House's New Campaign to Encourage StartupsRead more here. TechCrunch: A Campaign To Celebrate, Inspire & Accelerate EntrepreneurshipRead more here. Fenwick & West Sponsors Astia's participation in Startup America InitiativeRead more here. Smart Brief: Astia Joins White House's Startup America InitiativeRead more here. Startup America needs to look more like America. Where are the Startups of Color?Read more here. San Jose Mercury News: Obama taps Santa Cruz entrepreneur and Astia client, Jennifer ZeszutRead more here. Community NewsBloomberg Business WeekBusiness Plan Contests: Where Are the Women? Read more here. Hillary Rodham Clinton: Empowering Women Helps World Growth. Read more here.Kauffman Foundation Webcast of State of Entrepreneurship AddressWatch here. Steve Blanks: Startups - So Easy a 12 Year Old Can Do ItRead more here. An Exciting Idea for Job Creation & Women in SF BayLiz Hamburg on Micro-Enterprise British Airways Gives Entrepreneurs A Ticket To Global ExpansionRead more here. Fred Wilson on Female Role ModelsRead more here. My experiences as a female software engineerJean Hsu, staff at Google, blog entry on being a woman software engineer. |
In This IssueSUPPORT Astia as a donor! 2010 Marked the beginning of the Decade of the Woman Entrepreneur. As the year comes to a close, support Astia today! Help us maintain our momentum to grow our networks globally and expand the reaches of our community. Operating on less than a one million dollar budget annually, Astia continues to deliver unparalleled programs and services to women entrepreneurs, but we can't do it without you! Contribute today! Astia is now blogging! Join our ongoing discussions at Astia Notes You can now follow Astia on Twitter: Sharon
Vosmek | AstiaSF | AstiaEurope | Astia is also on Linked-In and Facebook. Be sure to join our groups! Astia Investor Advisory Council JOIN Astia's Investor Advisory Council
Alloy Ventures How to Get Connected Silicon Valley New York Europe India |
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Market Updates |
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Silicon ValleyAstia Silicon Valley has been a bevy of activity, with some team member changes and strategic reflection on the multitude of opportunities for Astia Silicon Valley. A Thank You reception ended SV Program 2010, enabling us to recognize the many valuable contributions from the community and bid farewell to Katie Nittler. In welcoming new team members Kindra Tatarsky, VP of Silicon Valley, and Catherine Berman, VP Partnerships and Strategy, Astia spent a reflective day of orientation and strategic planning, where we also met our founder, Cate Muther. We are feeling energized and ready for a terrific year of collaboration and growth with our clients, partners and advisors. Planning for Silicon Valley Program 2011 is revving up with committee meeting kick offs and recruiting. If you have not done so already, we encourage you to get involved by clicking here; the high caliber of our clients, advisors and partners feeds upon itself, as you will hear reiterated again and again - it is the network itself that makes Astia such a success. New Dates: As part of our planning for 2011, we have decided to shift the Entrepreneur Program and Investor Forum in Silicon Valley. We hope that you will agree that this change will ease year-end calendar challenges and enable a more engaged client/advisory period. Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Program will now be October10 - 14 and the Investor Forum will be the week of November 28th, coordinating with the Kauffman Global Entrepreneurship Week. Are you following @AstiaSF on twitter? In recognition of women's history month we'll be tweeting about women who inspire us. We want to know who inspires you? IndiaDid you know that Astia is serving companies in India? Two stellar clients, Embrace and Frontier Markets are working in India. Embrace is a sustainable social enterprise that is addressing the issue of global infant mortality through an innovative infant warmer that costs less than 1% of a traditional incubator. This life saving product has been well received at various hospitals in Bangalore and they look to expand their reach through the rest of the developing world. Frontier Markets is also providing much needed goods to rural India. Frontier Markets is a product distribution company bringing Fortune 500 products to the microfinance community. Through creating sustainable and cost-effective model for Base-of-the-Pyramid market, Frontier Markets is provided goods such as solar-powered lanterns, smoke free cook stoves and energy efficient lighting systems. |
New YorkAstia New York is gearing up for our Entrepreneur Program, taking place April 25-29, 2011. With the generous support of Silicon Valley Bank, we recently hosted About Astia events in Boston and New York. A big thank you to Dogpatch Labs in Cambridge and General Assembly in New York for hosting. At these events, entrepreneurs had the opportunity to hear about our upcoming Entrepreneur Program in New York and to meet current Astia portfolio companies, Astia advisors and other members of the Astia community. The application deadline for our New York program is March 18, 2011 so we encourage all interested entrepreneurs to apply soon! We recently attended the Funding where we met dozens of entrepreneurs starting fascinating companies. We also visited the hottest new entrepreneurial space in NYC -General Assembly, which is an urban campus for entrepreneurs seeking to transform industry and culture through technology and design. They provide programming, space, and support services to foster collaborative practices and learning opportunities. For entrepreneurs, there is an interesting event taking place on March 18 - High Peaks Venture Partners is hosting their annual Peak Pitch event at Hunter Mountain ski resort where entrepreneurs get to pitch investors as they ride the chairlift together. To find out more, click here. EuropeThe 2011 Astia Europe Programme continues until the end of this week in London. This year’s Entrepreneur class is comprised of 11 exciting new ventures in the technology, life science, and clean technology sectors. The interactive and well-structured workshops delivered by leading members of Financial and Consulting industries, as well as successful Serial Entrepreneurs, provides the best network support that a budding entrepreneur could wish for. Some of the topics already covered are advising on building the proper team, finding the right investors based on strategic fit, the entrepreneurial leadership role, etc. Astia Europe and the Global Astia network is excited to welcome the 2011 Astia Europe Class of Entrepreneurs! Technology Life Science Clean Tech |
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Client NewsBioVantage won the Clean Tech Open's National Sustainability Award! Learn more about it here.
DegreeArt.com in Association with HRL Contemporary Presents Un-Possible retour and Other Recent Works By Clarisse d'Arcimoles in London 1st - 27th February 2011. RSVP to [email protected]. Embrace was featured on 12/17/10 as part of ABC's 20/20 Be the Change: Save A Life Global Health Segment and ended with Diane Sawyer praising the Infant Warmer! Elizabeth Vargas traveled to Bangalore to visit our office and presented at Cradle Hospital. The second clinical study kicked off at 3 hospitals in Bangalore, India in partnership with Million Dollar Baby, a baby product and furniture company. We had a launch event at Fred Segal in Santa Monica in February to kickoff the sales of a new baby blanket. DNA Guide President and Founder, Alice Rathjen, won the Kauffman Lab's Women in Science and Engineering Business Idea Competition. She received an all-expense-paid trip to TED 2011 in Long Beach, California, as a guest of the Kauffman Labs. Fanminder was featured in the March issue of STORES Magazine, the official magazine of the National Retail Federation. Read the article here. Global Health Research Foundation Director, Dr. Erica Weirich will speak at the Global Philanthropy Forum April 13-15, 2011. Keynote Speaker with be Michelle Bachelet, Under Secretary General UN and Executive Director, Women's Health, United Nations. Find out more about the event here. Hey, Neighbor! is not yet launched and is already receiving global coverage! Hey, Neighbor! was prominently featured at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) in London. RSA - The Rise of Collaborative Consumption in a talk by Rachel Botsman, Author of What's Mine is Yours. Watch the video here. By the end of the month we will be launching private beta tests. Stay tuned for more! The Kiboo website gets a makeover! As we transition out of stealth mode into the public view, we are starting with our website design. Check out kiboo.com/blog. Magnolia Prime has secured funding from the Twilio Fund, a micro-fund targeting startups that are powered by Twilio's APIs, or application program interfaces, for phone calls and text messages. This fund is part of 500 Startups, a seed fund and startup accelerator where Dave McClure is Founding Partner. (500 Startups Twilio Fund Companies) Marbles The Brain Store was featured on MSNBC during a six minute segment on using small business blunders to your benefit. President and Founder, Lindsay Gaskins, talked about her experiences of being an entrepreneur and business owner. Michelle's Miracle has recently launched two new products - Michelle's Miracle Joint and Michelle's Miracle Sleep formula. We hired a VP of Operations/Finance, a CEO. Our products are retailed in over 500 store fronts across the US, we were recently featured in print, on radio and on television in Michigan and to date we have established a presence in all major health food distribution warehouses across the US. Furthermore our core product, tart cherries, was recently highlighted on national TV by Dr. Oz. We also recently closed a new conventional financing agreement to support working capital requirement and closed our Series A capital funding, over-subscribed! Ocimum Biosolutions Founder & CEO, Anuradha Acharya, has been honored as a 2011 Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. The honor, bestowed annually since its inception in 2004, acknowledges 100-200 excellent young leaders from across the globe for their professional achievements, commitment to society at large and prospective contribution to shaping the global future. This year, the World Economic Forum has named 190 Young Global Leaders, out of which 18 are from South Asia and 12 from India. Read more here. Renewable Fuel Technologies has just completed a successful test burn of our BioCoal, produced from torrefaction processor at a California power plant producing 90 minutes of renewable power to PG&E's grid produced from PG&E's vegetation management aka green waste from tree trimmings. There was a very good result with the test burn. There were no changes in plant performance during the test, which was the ideal outcome. RumbaFish partners with LocalGetaways to bring a new experience to local travel that is easier and more relevant. RumbaFish, the next generation social commerce platform for companies, helps LocalGetaways monetize their content, reinforce their brand, increase revenue, build their mailing list, increase website traffic, drive better SEO, and view customer activity from promotion through purchase in real-time. ThirdSolutions company, MyReceipts, was featured in Fast Company's list of 25 Women-Run Startups to Watch. MyReceipts is a green solution for consumers to receive and file receipts. Participating retailers include Whole Foods (who also offer digital coupons to MyReceipts users), Best Buy, Amazon, WalMart and more. MyReceipts Founder, Birame Sock is also the Cartier Women's Initiative Award recipient in 2010. TravelSort has launched its exclusive luxury hotel sales, starting in the New York and Las Vegas markets. To participate, you must register on TravelSort and complete a profile, then buy credits. 2 complimentary credits available to Astia supporters, use code ASTIA, exp. 3/31/11. TravelSort's new reverse auctions were mentioned on USAToday. TravelsinTaste launched its next private dining experience - "Deep Sea Delights and Saucy Sea Bites" at SHO Shaun Hergatt. This once-in-a-lifetime culinary experience allows you to experience Chef Hergatt's award winning cuisine and interact with chef and sommelier alike at a member's only evening. Click here to join the party. Market Spotlight: Q4 2010 US VC Market Trends
Market Spotlight: Q3 2010 Global Clean Tech Trends
Sponsor SpotlightAOL & AOL Ventures combine to be Gold Sponsors!
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Silicon Valley | New York | Europe | India |