Bay Area BusinessWoman
www.babwnews.com
October, 2005
A Computer in Every Purse — Technology By and For Women
—By Janet Rhodes
"In the palm of your hand, you'll be able to readany website out there in the near future," said Candice Brown Elliott, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Clairvoyante, Inc., who started her first business, After School Science Enterprises, when she was 15 years old.
Like other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Brown Elliott used the garage in her parents' home to launch her business venture.
"I used an old wooden lab bench my father brought home from work," she recalled. "It's been my dream since high school to participate in the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial world."
Over many years, she would pursue her dream and became one of the leaders to shape technology. Like the other women interviewed for this article, Brown Elliott was not only a visionary, she was also a doer. She has turned her dream into a tangible reality by taking one step at a time.
After building her first crystal radio when she was 8 years old, people in her neighborhood began bringing her broken phonographs and radios. "I'd fix it. If I couldn't fix it, I'd tear it apart and study it," said Brown Elliott, who is now one of the estimated 6 percent of electrical engineers in the U.S. who are women.
She also began studying the lenses in binoculars and telescopes and became interested in optics, a pursuit that would eventually lead her to raise $14 million in venture capital and develop the PenTile Matrixô subpixel architecture, which dramatically increases the resolution and brightness of "almost any flat-panel display," such as a TV, computer, or cell phone.
After noting that she has focused on cells because they need better resolution, she added that the typical cell phone today has 150 dpi. Clairvoyante is now developing a display for Samsung at 400 dpi. Brown Elliott recently previewed it at the Silicon Valley Women in Technology showcase where she received an award for female leadership and innovative technology. She has also been nominated for a 2005 World Technology Award in communications technology.
"The resolution will knock your socks off," she promised, and added, "smart phones already are pocket computers. Someday your laptop will be in your smart phone. Why go to your desk?"
That was the same question Kristin McDonnell, CEO and cofounder of Limelife, kept asking herself during workouts at the gym. McDonnell, who had served as an executive for several Silicon Valley telecommunications and entertainment software companies, was trying to lose 25 pounds after her third pregnancy. Although she had researched information on weight loss on the Internet, she repeatedly became frustrated during workouts, because the information was not where she needed it — at her fingertips while she was exercising. So she began to use the extra features of her cell phone to record specifications for her workout routine where she could access it without stepping off the treadmill.
Limelife was born soon after. It is the only mobile content publisher of phone games and lifestyle applications that focuses exclusively on the women's market. Through focus groups, McDonnell learned that women depend more on their cell phones than men do.
"Women said, 'I feel naked, as if I've lost a body part, when I don't have my cell.' Women are connectors more than men," McDonnell added. "Our company puts women more in control with tools, information, and fun."
She noted that she and the other cofounders of Limelife were familiar through their software careers with research showing differences in female and male play patterns. Men liked games that featured shooting at moving targets in a 3D environment while women preferred puzzles and word games that did not have set time limits.
They developed Word Heaven, which allows Verizon customers to create words from blocks of scrambled letters. Limelife also has partnerships with Sprint and Cingular. "The secret to Limelife is that it's designed by women for women," said McDonnell. "Our design team is absolutely magical. It takes living your life as a woman to design your game for a women's target market. It's easy to hire a woman artist and say, 'Make it blue and calm.'
"It's rare to have a development team made up of women, she continued. "Our design staff is 90 percent female."
"Today the technological head of the household is still the man, but women now influence emerging technology more," noted Christina Seelye, President and CEO of Avanquest USA, a software publisher. "Women are the historians of the family." She added that everything surrounding digital technology such as cameras, iPods, Tivo, and phones, is shaped increasingly by women's preferences.
"When the home movie of the baby's first steps is lost and there's no backup, you're going to see women get involved in backup software," she said, noting that although there are a lot of good back-up and storage devices out there now, "you have to be proactive." Seelye envisions a future camera that will automatically back up photos while being used.
When queried about the influence of women on the development of cell technology, Seelye saw the field as currently being driven more by men. However, she ageed with McDonnell and Brown Elliott that "The convergence of the personal computer and phone is in process today. Phones are becoming your mobile computer." She noted that women are more concerned with results than men, whose interest in gadgetry is because it's new, even if an older, more stable technology could do it in one half to one third the time. "Women entrepreneurs don't care about the bleeding edge of technology," she said. "They need to get things done."
With that in mind, Avanquest has designed software that is fast — because it is very task-specific. The company software packages bear the picture of a clock, indicating that it can be installed in five minutes or less.
Seelye's perception that women are oriented toward efficiency while men are more inclined to tinker with gadgetry was the one opinion that was unanimous among the four technology leaders interviewed for this article, including Sally Crawford, CEO of Crawford International and President of the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Alliance of Technology and Women. She polled employees of Crawford International and discovered that "men liked features, gadgets, and cool stuff like buttons while women focused on 'How can this help me in my life?' In general, women benefit when women develop products for a women's audience."
She noted statistics from the National Science Foundation showing that although women are pursuing technology-related education, they are not pursuing technology careers. In the government and private sectors, women occupy just 23 percent of science and engineering jobs. "That's kind of terrifying," she said. "We want them to be in those careers." Crawford commented that the ATW offers the Great Minds Program, which encourages students from middle school through college to develop critical-thinking skills and leadership traits such as risk taking.
"Girls are raised to play nice and get along," she said. "The geek who's into math and science often becomes an outcast." She added that leaders "use the whole brain. They think outside the box, take risks, and think in future tense."
Janet Rhodes is a freelance writer and editor whose mission is to capture the spark that sets your business apart. Reach her at janet@bratcat.com. .
copyright @ babwnews.com