Women 2.0 Appoints Makovsky + Company

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Early stage technology network and incubator to focus on
 brand awareness, thought leadership and social learning

NEW YORK, May 23, 2011 – Women 2.0, a social venture focused on increasing the number of technology companies founded by women, has selected Makovsky + Company, one of the world’s largest independent integrated communications firms, to develop and execute a communications campaign to raise awareness of the organization, its growing community of founders and investors, and its newest spin out, Founder Labs.

“Tech startups with a female founder are proven to be bigger, faster, and stronger.  And those most inclusive of women in top management achieve a better total return to shareholders,” said Shaherose Charania, CEO and Co-Founder, Women 2.0.  “Women 2.0 is focused on converting raw talent into new entrepreneurs that will create jobs in the U.S. while developing the business leaders of tomorrow.”

Beginning on May 21, Founder Labs NYC is kicking off a five-week pre-incubator to create new mobile technology startups.  Aspiring founders will learn technical, lean start-up skills, and validate ideas to find the right product-market fits.  Teams will be mentored by some of the most renowned technology entrepreneurs and investors, including Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures; Joanne Wilson, Angel Investor and Entrepreneur; Jim Robinson, RRE Ventures; Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Corporation; Jenny Fielding, Switch Mobile; Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, Accel Partners; and Naveen Selvadurai, Foursquare.

“Women 2.0 is providing an important and needed means to nurture the entrepreneurial spirit and skills to create new technology ventures, and we’re excited to help them tell their story and the stories of the hundreds of female founders worked with Women 2.0,” said Matthew Wolfrom, Executive Vice President, Makovsky + Company.  “We share the belief that the tech sector will be a critical driver of rapid, broad-based and sustained economic growth and competitiveness.”

About Makovsky + Company
Founded in 1979, Makovsky + Company is one of the nation’s leading independent global public relations, investor relations and branding consultancies, focused in financial services, professional services, health care, technology, energy and branding and interactive.  The firm attributes its success to its original vision: that the Power of Specialized Thinking™ is the best way to build reputation, sales and fair valuation for a client. Based in New York City, the firm has agency partners in more than 25 countries and in 35 U.S. cities through IPREX (www.IPREX.com), the second largest worldwide public relations agency partnership, of which Makovsky is a founder.

About Women 2.0
Women 2.0 is a social venture for future founders of technology startups.  Their vision is to be the global source of innovative technology startups, led by diverse founding teams.

About Founder Labs
Founder Labs is a five week pre-incubator focused on the first phase of launching a mobile startup – finding a team and validating the business idea.  Through Founder Labs, aspiring founders build a founding team, learn technical lean startup skills, validate ideas to find the right product-market fit and then rapidly prototype and test the concept.