Cindy Padnos is the founding Managing Director of Illuminate Ventures, focusing primarily on Internet, SaaS/cloud computing, digital media, technology-enabled services and mobile communications investments. Cindy currently serves as a director of privately held companies BrightEdge, CalmSea, Wild Pockets and Xactly Corporation. Prior to founding Illuminate, Cindy was a Director of Outlook Ventures where she was one of three investment professionals responsible for committing the firm’s $140M fund.Before entering the venture capital community Cindy gained almost 20 years of operational experience culminating in her role as founder and CEO of Vivant, an innovative SaaS company, where she successfully led this venture-backed company to its acquisition (EVLV). Cindy can be found at Illuminate Ventures & on Twitter @IlluminateVC .
technology
Jalak Jobanputra, FuturePerfect Ventures: European Startups and Venture
Jalak Jobanputra has over 16 years experience in venture capital, media and technology, most recently with the NYC Investment Fund. She spearheaded the formation of NYCSeed in 2008, a seed fund dedicated to funding early stage tech entrepreneurs in NYC. She was previously a principal at New Venture Partners, a $300 million early stage venture fund that incubated technology at corporate labs. Prior to that, she was at Intel Capital in Silicon Valley and was on the launch team of online financial information startup Horsesmouth in 1997, during which time she first discovered the NYC sample sale scene in Nolita. You can find her @jalak and her blog Nothing Ventured
Are Women Smarter than Men?
There have been a few posts on the net this week about women entrepreneurs prompted from a New York Times article ‘Out of the Loop in Silicon Valley’ (Why So Few Women in Silicon Valley) by Claire Cain Miller which spoke about a woman Candace Fleming who failed to raise investment in Silicon Valley for her company Crimson Hexagon. Another post tried for a more positive take on women in technology ‘Stop talking, start coding’ by Hilary Mason.