Sexy and technology aren’t always two words you hear together. In fact women and technology aren’t two words you hear together that often, unless it’s highlighting the overwhelming lack of the former within the latter. That said, these ten women represent high-powered entrepreneurs, executive, artists and techies who are defying statistics, pioneering the industry and making a name for themselves. From ecommerce to marketing to blogging, spanning from corporate to indie, our top ten have taken the high-tech industry by storm, and quite frankly, they look good doing it!

Cyan Banister, Entrepreneur & Artist

Cyan was born into a family of artists and grew up around paint, photography and music. From these beginnings, she developed a life-long appreciation for the arts that eventually inspired the Zivity platform, an ad-free social network for models, photographers, and video artists. This platform she created is a new way for artists to profitably connect directly with their fans in the rapidly changing digital media landscape.

Cyan has held many leadership roles throughout her career, from leading technical operations teams in an enterprise software company to helping women master technology as CTO of a nonprofit organization. She is also an angel investor and has invested in Facebook, EQAL, Mimoco, OtherInbox, Thumbtack, Tagged, Hot Potato, Powerset, Topsy and others.

Cyan is also an event and portrait photographer and enjoys jugglers and magicians.

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Twitter is a great example of simplicity. A straightforward concept with a clean user interface. It may almost be too simple because I don’t fully “get it” sometimes. That could be that I’m still searching for my purpose on Twitter. As you might guess I have a hard time keeping anything beyond a URL under 140 characters.

On the flip side, Facebook is a growing example of the ultimate end-all be-all social network experience, packed with functionality–plenty of buttons to click and things to do. Thus, the dilemma when embarking on a social network concept. Aim for simplicity, or mash Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and eHarmony into one website and hope that it ultimately outgrows and outshines them all? (more…)

Step one: Create a Twitter account.

Step two: Add “Social Media Consultant” into the Bio line.

Step three: Let the clients roll in.

Seriously though, that’s pretty much all it takes to call yourself as a Social Media Expert these days. Even though most people in our office would consider themselves experts in the world of social media, it’s almost taboo to don the title because of this overpopulation of supposed experts and gurus on the subject.

Silly as it may sound, I feel a bit like a veteran in this industry. I made my entrance “back in the day” when MySpace wasn’t even on the radar as a marketing tool, before every major household brand had an official profile and a fan page, before Facebook surpassed MySpace in growth, and way before Twitter was chronically over capacity. Part of my sales pitch was convincing companies why social media was relevant, and how creating a professional presence on sites like MySpace and Facebook would be a progressive and important step for their business. Nowadays, it’s more a matter what can we do, not why should we do it. Social networks are no longer considered just for kids, or just a passing phase. They are now widely known as vehicles for viral, targeted and cost-effective marketing campaigns. (more…)

On Saturday night I received unexpected news that my project manager needed to be out of the office for the whole week. With baby in arms, I immediately went from “I love being domestic” mode to “shit, I have to go back to work” mode. To be honest, after the initial panic wore off I was secretly excited. The entire day I was actually feeling rather tormented about how to apply my energies now that I was feeling healed and more energetic, contemplating crafts and more house projects.

The cold hard reality is that I am habitually, neurotically productive. As much I sometimes love the idea of kicking back and taking it easy, I can only realistically do that for so long before the train goes off the tracks from the wheels in my head running a little too fast with nothing substantial to do. I’ve spent the past five years running this business, and at the end of the day it’s much more efficient for me to be doing this than making jewelry professionally or devoting myself to scrap booking full-time, both of which I was seriously considering prior in the day. (more…)

“Use your creativity.”

“Make it pop.”

“Can you make the logo bigger?”

“Make it look just like [insert industry leading website here]…”

If design feedback had a 10 commandments of things not to say to your designer, these four would very possibly be among them. Designers think in colors and styles and audience, and they pull inspiration both from current design trends and hopefully an overflowing pool of visual ideas. “Make it pop” means nothing, visually speaking. “Use your creativity” basically implies that we’re not already using it. We like your logo too, but we don’t agree it should be the biggest element on the page. And, honestly, we won’t and legally can’t make something look “just like” something that’s already out there. Getting vague and generic feedback is frustrating, especially when the ultimate goal by client and designer is to nail down a great design: a product that the client is excited to use and one that the designer will proudly display in his or her portfolio.

So, how do you give constructive feedback to your designer for hire, or in my case, to your designer employee? (more…)

When I first discovered the term “mommypreneur” I took to it pretty quickly. I still celebrate being a mother and a business owner, and the challenges that those dual roles play in my life, at home and at work. I recently learned that as a female C.E.O. of a high-tech firm, I represent less than 1% of the total private companies founded in a year. I knew I was an oddball, but I don’t think I quite realized to what extent. With so few others, it’s obviously difficult to find peers or even mentors. In fact, searches to connect with other pioneering mothers or successful young women are often met with a bunch of spam.

For example, on Twitter, to build a following you often “follow” other users with the same interest based on some keyword searches. Following multiple accounts who identify as working moms or mommypreneurs yields a barrage of spammy Direct Messages. Some of them lead you to scam websites that promise profitable work-from-home opportunities, or only marginally better opportunities to network with thousands of other professional woman–for a price! Why is a window into this very small world fraught with scams and closed doors that only open with hefty membership fees? It truly saddens me that this community has been targeted as vulnerable for exploitation, when I imagine what women starting out in the business world are met with on their initial search for insight and resources.

That said, in my ongoing search to find like-minded others, I have found a few valuable online meeting places for professional women and mothers. Unlike the majority of sites that target the same demographic, these sites are focused on important professional topics and have the ultimate goal of elevating women professionally, not just lining their pocket books. (more…)

Venture capital (also known as VC or Venture) is a type of private equity capital typically provided for early-stage, high-potential, growth companies in the interest of generating a return through an eventual realization event such as an IPO or trade sale of the company. Venture capital investments are generally made as cash in exchange for shares in the invested company. [wikipedia]

I’ll be the first one to admit that I don’t know all that much about VC or the process of acquiring it, so I figured that I might as well share a little about my experience as I learn how to navigate through this community. Even though the chances of women CEOs getting VC are increasingly slim, I like beating the odds, so hopefully this series doesn’t end with, “Giving up on Venture Capital Quest: Part 27.”

To date, my experiences with VC have primarily been through various clients. Typically clients come to us with an idea for a unique social network, and some who treat the project as a serious investment often supplement their own monies with third-party funding in the form of venture capital. This funding might be secured at the onset of the project, partially through the development, or after the site has launched and proven itself to its community and potential investors. We rarely if ever connect directly with clients’ investors, but indirectly, we contribute to the process of securing funding pretty significantly, if that is in the form of a prototype or demo, a fully functioning network, or very early on through a detailed design and development plan that goes into the clients’ business plan.

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Today the Harvard Business Review published an article, Why Peace and Harmony are Bad for Innovation by Andrew O’Connell. I hate it because it’s true, but I also loved this article because it’s the type of insight that I know from experience is so true. So I figure after two posts on cookies, naps and office synergy I can write a bit on less feel-good circumstances and instead on those arduous journeys that (ideally) bring us to some hard-won nap and cookie time.

Entrepreneurship is survival. If you’ve done it, you know it’s true. No ifs, ands or buts and no matter how much preparation is met with luck or opportunity, building something from nothing in this economy is a trying experience. There are moments in running my business day-to-day that are incredibly intense, frightening and of course rewarding. Nothing is ever certain. Once I start to believe that it is, some unexpected force rocks us into action and reaction.

I write a lot about office synergy lately because for many months, we didn’t have much of it. We started gaining momentum in this area when I made a rather bold move to bridge the gap between executive level detachment and production minutia, taking over both creative direction and the majority of the project management for the company. The transition took about two months to complete, but afterward, life at work was eerily calm. I actually started having some significant anxiety at this point, because that lack of stress was stressing me out. I felt like conflict was coming… Well it did, occasionally, but on a different fronts. Thankfully what started working exceptionally well in our office restructuring keeps working. But that doesn’t keep other annoyances from keeping my blood pressure relatively high. (more…)

It may be an offshoot of my own personal resistance to authority in the workplace, but I have never really subscribed to an especially hierarchical structure in our company. In my pre-C.E.O. days, I was always trying to position myself as independently as possible, making my own hours, avoiding time slots where I would be subjected to a lot of management meetings, even talking myself into a pretty comfortable “work-from-home” schedule at one point. This may sound incredibly clever and lazy, but in truth, I just wasn’t a big fan of hierarchies that were designed to squeeze as many productive hours out of its employees as possible, with the assumption I, the employee, needed that structure to be productive. At the end of the day, despite my little rebellions, I was able to get all of my work done–possibly more than I would have otherwise.

So when I found my way into entrepreneurship, I wasn’t especially surprised when the schedule and flexibility suited me very well. Now that I am the big boss lady of course I adhere to the 9-5 + schedule, because honestly if I didn’t I’d never catch up. Outside of my being the overarching “boss” however, I try to avoid burdening our staff with unnecessary bureaucracy within the company itself.

At a recent meeting with prospective clients, I was asked about our company structure. While we have members of the team who I would call “key players” namely due to their experience and long-term knowledge of the company, we are each masters of our domain in many respects, which is precisely how I answered the question. Our “hierarchy” is based on knowledge of what we do, and together, those who know more or less about a particular subject do not represent a stereotypical “ladder.” At least in our cozy Salem office, our varied skills and expertise represent degrees of knowledge in many fields of this industry. (more…)

It could be a matter of personal preference, but I know that I don’t personally respond too well to threats, disrespect and attempts at intimidation. Despite being young and occasionally on the learning curve, I take a lot of pride in my work, my business and the journey that has brought me here. Possibly one of the worst mistakes you can make when doing business with me is to talk down to me. Although being 5′ 3″, sometimes that’s unavoidable. But you get the point.

I don’t imagine anyone especially likes being underestimated or insulted, but still people occasionally dish it out, possibly thinking that they’ll be more likely to get what they want out of the exchange? I end that sentence with a question mark because I don’t quite understand how someone could rationalize that. Like our breakfast waitress in Las Vegas this summer who took our orders in a rather militant fashion. Does she really expect a tip when she is nearly yelling at me for not having my ID ready when ordering my mimosa? I’m on vacation, lady. Plus I’m down $300, tired and hungover, geesh.

The oddest situations are when I’m paying a service provider and they’re talking to me like I’m a jerk. What’s wrong with this picture? Is this reverse psychology? Regardless, I try to treat everyone with a level of politeness and respect that I would expect from them, whether or not I pay them or they pay me. I think they call it “common courtesy.” (more…)