Oh the thrill!

A thrilling experience at zombie dance in Revere

By Taryn Plumb |  Globe Correspondent

October 31, 2013

REVERE — It wasn’t anywhere close to midnight, but evil was indeed lurking in the twilight.
Mouths agape, eyes hollow, clothes filthy and ratty, zombies lumbered and shambled through the city’s streets.
But these weren’t of the raving, rabid, brain-munching kind.
They only craved one thing: to dance.

Gathering in a mob — as zombies are known to do — they hoped to break the record for the largest simultaneous, synchronized global dance to Michael Jackson’s iconic “Thriller.”

“Why not?” said zombie danseuse Eleanor Clements, 57, of Revere. “I always loved ‘Thriller.’ ”

At exactly 9 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time — which correlated to 5 p.m. here — on Saturday, thousands of the “undead” rose up in unison all over the world to shuffle, stomp, and roar along to Jackson’s homage to the unknown as part of the annual “Thrill the World” event.
According to organizers, an estimated 6,451 dancers from 134 groups in 22 countries on six continents followed the same steps for the same six minutes. Revere’s gathering, which took place in the park adjacent to Harry Della Russo Stadium and drew 59 zombies ranging from preschoolers to baby boomers, was sponsored by Agnes Strecker Dance Studio. Heather Murphy, one of the school’s instructors, led the local gore-a-thon.
“I thought it would be a blast,” said Nicole Nichols, 40, of Revere, a curly, garish black wig — complete with Elsa Lanchester-like “The Bride of Frankenstein” streaks — framing her face, smudged with white and black paint. “It’s festive for the holiday. And I love ‘Thriller.’ Who doesn’t love Michael Jackson?”
Created by Canadian Ines Markeljevic, “Thrill the World” started in 2006, when 62 dancers in Toronto set the first Guinness world record for “Largest Thriller Dance.”
The mark was beaten in a big way in 2009 — the year of Jackson’s death — when 22,571 people in 33 countries performed moves from his groundbreaking 1983 music video simultaneously, according to the United Kingdom-based Record Holders Republic.
As the annual event has grown, demonic Princess Leias, flamenco dancers, cowgirls, flappers, and bullfighters have shown up to perform stiff-limbed tributes to the late King of Pop, and the event — always held on the Saturday before Halloween — has evolved into a fund-raiser. In Revere, $10 voluntary donations went to support Boston Children’s Hospital and Alzheimer’s disease research.
To prepare for the synchronized spectacle, www.thrilltheworld.com provides videos breaking down the moves — with names like “hip n’ roar” and “shuffle ha slide” — and offers costume and makeup tips (sample: It’s good to have a bad hair day as a zombie).
The Strecker studio offered dance clinics for the last month at its locations in Revere and Groveland.
“It’s repetition and memory,” said Jennifer Close, 38, of Groveland, who performed the stiff, rote moves but described herself as “not at all” a dancer.
Andrea Faria is a dancer, though, and she noted “definitely, taking jazz helped with this.”
The Groveland 14-year-old came with face painted white, lips tinted black, and tattered plaid shirt ripped at the shoulders. Her twin, Bethany, meanwhile, zombie-fied herself by tinging her cheeks and forehead red, and scuffing up a turquoise sweatshirt with chalk and crayons.
Nearby, a group of girls prepared for their rigor mortis moment of stardom, working on one another with brushes and palettes of silver and black eye shadow.
“Can I spray you with blood?” one asked, to which her friend replied of her obliterated white collared shirt, “This is my dad’s. He doesn’t even know I took it.”
Others came with black stitches — a la Frankenstein — painted on cheeks and necks; fake blood dripping from lips or spattered across clothes; black, hollowed eyes; and dead leaves bobby-pinned in hair. Shirts, pants, skirts, leggings, and fishnets were ripped, tattered, torn, and full of holes.
Clements, in a white dress with a gemstone bodice and swathed in tulle, appeared like a bride whose wedding night had taken a decidedly bad turn.
As she explained, “I hated the dress, so I decided to use it.”
After assembling on the field and going through roll call, the assorted zombies got into position — lying on the ground — until promptly at 5 p.m. “Thriller” started blasting from a sound system.
They rose, stiffly marched forward and back; shoulder-stepped; clapped, slid, and stomped; shoulder-shrugged; and hop-stepped. (And repeat.)
At the end, after Vincent Price’s campily ominous rap, recorded with MJ in 1982, they threw their hands up and mocked his maniacal laughter.
The crowd lining the park’s chain-link fence hooted and clapped; the zombies hugged and high-fived, then posed for photos and celebratory selfies.
“Mezza mezza,” Clements said of her performance. “I did better than I’d hoped. Not as good as the others. But I had fun.”

Original story link. Photo slideshow. And video of the event. Photos and video by Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff

Navigating the used car buying process

Oct 25, 2013

 

TripAdvisor & SAP vets help consumers find car deals with iSeeCars

 

By Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal 

 

 

Courtesy

 

Phong Ly was in the market for a used car. But soon enough, he found himself ensnared in a "tedious" process: Searching numerous websites, and for every car he was interested in, doing a good deal of math, reading and questioning (was the asking price reasonable? Was the car well-maintained?)
“I did find a car eventually,” he said, “but it took a lot of hard work.”
And he knew he wasn't alone in his frustrations. So he teamed up with Vineet Manohar, formerly a senior software engineer with TripAdvisor, and in 2008, the two founded iSeeCars, a site that aggregates more than 4 million used car listings from thousands of sites across the country.
“There are a lot of cars on a lot of different websites,” said Ly, who serves as CEO of the Woburn-based company, and previously worked as a senior director of corporate business development for SAP. “We're making it super easy for consumers to get the best deals.”
Visitors to the site enter their zip code, and the make and/or model of the car they're looking for. Results then rank local, available cars in order of best deals, and include pertinent details about the car and its mileage, market price, as well as dealer ratings. Users then have the option to contact the dealer through an automated email form.
As Ly explained, the company's proprietary algorithm assigns cars scores based on analysis of their condition and history, price, seller, and negotiability. Listings come from dealers and sites big and small, he said: Anywhere from 10-car lots to Cars.com, CarMax, AutoNation and Autobytel.
iSeeCars is also taking five years worth of data generated by millions of transactions to provide what Ly called “nuggets” of insight to help both buyers and sellers. For instance, it recently found, by analyzing the average market prices of 20 million cars for sale over the past year, that consumers will find basically the same deal at a used car dealer as at a new car dealer. (The perception has typically been that used dealers had better prices.)
“We provide something that's very unique. We're breaking things down into manageable pieces,” said Ly. People can tend to be “intimidated” by the car-buying process, but “we're educating consumers about buying used cars, what they ought to look for.”
With eight employees, iSeeCars was self-funded as a startup, and is now profitable, Ly said. Revenues are derived from advertising and lead generation from dealers and sites it partners or works with – that is, if a user visits the site, finds a car they like, and contacts the dealer through the site, iSeeCars receives a payment.
Although the company doesn't disclose its revenue or number of visitors, Ly did say that it has been doubling its growth every year, and that, over the last 12 months, 30 million cars have been listed on the site.
Looking ahead, he said the company will continue to improve its algorithm, and is also looking to double its headcount over the next year.
And he expects interest in iSeeCars to only grow, pointing to the statistic that 40 million used cars are sold every year, compared to 15 million new cars.
“It's a huge market,” he said. “Lots of people want to find a good deal.”

Original story link.

Reach in Haverhill contributing to the city's burgeoning arts scene

Helping to weave the new fabric of Haverhill

By Taryn Plumb |  Globe Correspondent

October 24, 2013

After hours in his uncle’s Boston tailor shop, Giovanni Capato painstakingly taught himself to sew.
Coming to the United States from Brazil 15 years ago equipped with not even a phrase of English, he had considerable experience with fashion — as a model and stylist — but had not yet put needle to fabric.
You could say he’s come quite a ways: He’s done wardrobing for MTV, crafted dresses used in Boston Ballet performances, and was even set to be a contestant on the sixth season of the acclaimed fashion-designing show “Project Runway.”
Now he designs and teaches in the up-and-coming arts city of Haverhill, through his boutique Reach Fashion on Wingate Street.

‘I never went to school. I learned by doing.’

Locals point to recently opened custom fashion shops such as Reach and The Color Mint, as well as giant outdoor murals, public art (you may have noticed the enormous shoes that paraded all over town a couple years ago), and numerous other projects in the works as examples of Haverhill’s blossoming culture.
“The art scene is getting pretty good here,” said Jeff Grassie, a local sculpture artist who is involved with the volunteer group Team Haverhill. “The city is “pretty much on the tipping point of its greatness.”
Reach, which opened in Sept. 2012, offers several camps throughout the year for ages 6 to 18, as well as sewing lessons for all ages and open studios. According to Capato, there have been close to 100 students since February.
Its shelves and racks, meanwhile, showcase various custom-made items, jewelry, and even one-of-a-kind doggy clothes.
The shop also put on a fashion show last year, and will host a Haverhill Halloween Ball on Saturday.
“We love to work with the community,” said Capato, dressed in slim black jeans and a form-fitting gray sweater on a recent afternoon in his shop on Wingate Street. “We want to get more involved. We love to support anything that’s going on in town.”
Which is quite a bit, if you ask Grassie. He pointed to the Essex Street Gateway Mural, an enormous homage to various facets of the city’s past; the “Soles of Haverhill,” which literally stepped it up by placing 14 large, colorfully decorated shoe sculptures throughout the city in 2009; and the 30 or so other murals covering what were once boarded-up windows on historic brick buildings.
Then there’s the future “art walk” to be established on the Bradford Rail Trail, which will include permanent and rotating sculptures.
Of Capato, Grassie said, “he brings such a unique opportunity to Haverhill. He’s going to do wonderful things for Haverhill.”
But doing what he’s doing — and ending up in Haverhill — is something Capato never expected. Growing up on a farm among all kinds of animals, he briefly attended veterinary school. But he “always loved, loved fashion,” he said in his thick Portuguese accent. So he moved to Rio de Janeiro, working as a personal shopper and image consultant to politicians, musicians, and business people. He also became a model, which brought him to the states in 1998.
But with the nature of modeling like a “revolving door,” his career waned, and Capato eventually bought his uncle’s shop, Mario’s Tailoring, in Boston’s Bay Village, renaming it Giovanni’s Atelier. It closed about six years ago when the economy tanked, and he eventually moved his operation to Haverhill.
Always in the back of my mind, I wanted to sew,” said Capato, who is now married to his husband, Steven, and father to two adopted sons.
Then came the “Project Runway” opportunity, which unfortunately dissolved when the show was moved from Bravo to Lifetime.
In the warm light of his shop on a recent afternoon, he pulled out a striped, vintage-inspired dress, crafted from a throw rug, that he showcased when applying for the show.
“I washed, washed, washed,” he said as he rubbed a hand over the hand-stitched fabric, “put on so many softeners.”
Around him in the studio, five sewing machines sat at the ready, blank T-shirts in numerous hues were stacked for printmaking, and mason jars were filled with buttons of various sizes and colors. Framed oil paintings graced the brick walls, along with fleur-de-lis sculptures and vintage sewing machines. Meanwhile, at the back, bolts of fabric of all prints — stripes, plaids, tie-dyes, flowers, tropical designs — were lined up in a floor-to-ceiling case, an explosion of color.
Prints prompt students and budding designers to push their imagination, he said. “Having solid colors, it’s easier for you not to think farther.”
During fashion camps, students have created tote bags, headbands, skirts, pillows, T-shirts decorated with cut-outs and appliques, and — currently — Halloween costumes.
“They want to experiment,” he said of his students.
One of Emma Young’s creations was a skirt bedecked with colorful cut-out flowers and buttons, recycled from a salmon-colored T-shirt.
“I made it so I can wear it with leggings,” said the Haverhill 11-year-old, who crafted it as part of a weeklong camp at Reach in August.
Her dream: To be a fashion designer, particularly for plus-sized girls and women.
“Being a plus-sized girl myself, I know that shopping can be really frustrating,” she said. “I want to create some beautiful clothes that are plus-sized. I want to make girls happy about themselves, and confident.”
Before camp, she did a lot of sketching, but didn’t know how to sew — with a machine or by hand — or do the other essentials, such as cutting fabrics to size, marking them, and pinning them. Now, she’s proficient, and is working to get her own tool kit of essentials for her intended career, including a sewing machine.
Her favorite colors are blues, fall hues like greens, browns, reds, and oranges, and prints of the “hippie” variety, she said As a designer, her goal would be to create items with “pops” of colors.
“It made me so proud to see her eye for color and putting things together,” said her mother, Samantha. “Giovanni has been a great influence and mentor for her.”
But, Capato said, the inspiration goes both ways.
“They think they are learning with me, but I’m learning with them,” he said. “The more I share, the more I learn."

Original story link.

Additional photos by ZARA TZANEV for The Boston Globe.


 

"As good -- if not better -- than what you can purchase commercially"

Brew your own sites sprouting

By Taryn Plumb |  Globe Correspondent

October 17, 2013

 

Jonathan Delatizky raised the bottle to his lips, sipped, paused as he tasted, then sipped again.
“It’s really nice,” he said, passing the unlabeled brown bottle to his daughter Bethea, who proceeded with the same taste test.
She nodded. “I’m quite pleased.”
It was their family’s first experience brewing beer (in this case an India pale ale), but it wasn’t in their kitchen or basement. It was at Hopster’s Brew & Boards in Newton, one of the area’s most recent entrants in the burgeoning brew-on-site concept.
“I’d been talking about maybe trying some home brew — this is easier than doing it at home,” said Delatizky, a software engineer from Newton. “Someone tells you what to do, which for the first time is a good thing.”
Brew-your-own (both at home and on-site) is being spurred by the immense growth in microbreweries and craft beers.
Riding that trend, Hopster’s, which describes itself as a “community brewery,” opened on Centre Street at the end of September, supported by a $40,000 Kickstarter campaign. It joins locals Barleycorn’s of Natick and Deja Brew in Shrewsbury, as well as IncrediBREW in Nashua. 
“There’s a great deal of buzz with craft beers,” said Dan Eng, owner of Barleycorn’s, which opened in 1998 and offers about 120 recipes for customers to brew. “People are discovering all the different types, different flavors, getting away from mainstream lagers.”
According to a report by San Francisco-based Demeter Group, the craft beer market grew by 13.9 percent between 2009 and 2011, while the market for premium beers (such as Budweiser and Coors Light) fell by 2.3 percent .
Although in the past, mass producers like Budweiser were able to convince people that beer was best in a pale lager, Eng noted, consumer tastes have expanded, and “people are exploring all the different options.”
Hopster’s owner Lee Cooper agreed, describing the current trend as the “wine-ification” of craft beer, with the goal to be “innovative and push boundaries.”
And while home brewing has grown right along with the craft industry, it can be an expensive and complicated endeavor. Brew-on-site, on the other hand, gives people that do-it-yourself experience without having to invest in all the equipment and ingredients, he said.
Formerly in financial services, Cooper hails from Liverpool, where pubs are plentiful. He’s a passionate aficionado — along with his wife, Karen — and he began brewing at home before opening Hopster’s.
“I grew up surrounded by beer,” he said. “It’s very much a part of the culture in England.”
And the Boston area is becoming that way, as well; he called it a “beer climate” that Hopster’s hopes to foster.
Brew-on-site customers book a kettle (or kettles — up to 10 — depending on how much they want to make), then go through a process that Cooper describes as “a little bit of science and a lot of art.”
Choosing from among 30 recipes, they select specialty grains from an ingredients room, then measure, weigh, and grind them.
“It has a biscuit-y smell,” Cooper pointed out as he prepared grains for an India pale ale on a recent evening.
The room around him was filled with plastic dispensers of grains — anything from corn flakes to coffee malt — as well as mesh bags full of hops, and large blue barrels of liquid malt extract.
Hopster’s gets its ingredients from the Wood Family Farm in Dudley, and in a process that comes full circle, the spent grain from beer-making is fed to the farm’s livestock.
Amateur brewers boil the wort (a liquid extract containing sugars that will ferment) in the copper-jacketed kettles, and add hops and grains. They then cool the liquid in a heat exchanger, transfer it to a 15-gallon oak barrel, add yeast, and, finally, let it cool further to 35 degrees and ferment for roughly two weeks.
After that, they bottle it.
“The last thing, really, is to drink it,” Cooper said.
Per-kettle pricing ranges from $150 to $200, depending on the beer. Hopster’s “99 club” will also allow groups to come in every three months to go even further into the process and experience mashing – essentially the first step of crafting beer, by liquefying the starches in the kernels of the malted grain.
“It really gives them the full brewer’s experience,” Cooper said from his seat on a leather couch by the pub’s entrance, Centre Street traffic whooshing outside.
All told, “it’s self-directed learning. It’s really just to have fun, experience the process.”
Across the room sat the 10 kettles, lined up under bright lights. A large mural nearby depicted an overlaying graph of beer bitterness (ranked 0 to 80) and color (0 to 40-plus).
In a back corner, Delatizky and his daughter were busy bottling their brew, made 12 days earlier.
Bethea took photos with her phone as her father loaded brown bottles, one by one, into a bottling machine. They capped the full bottles, then loaded them into cardboard cases.
“I’m excited to have made this, to drink it, to hopefully have it be awesome,” Bethea Delatizky, who lives in Brighton, said just a few moments before taking her first satisfying sip. “We’ll give some of it away, unless it turns out to be awful.”
Popular as brew-your-own is, her apprehensions are common, noted Eng of Barleycorn’s.
“People are often surprised at the quality of the product they’ve made,” he said. “People associate something you’ve made yourself as inferior, when in fact it can be just as good, if not better, than something you purchase commercially.”

Photo slideshow by Essdras M Suarez/ Globe Staff.

Original story link.

© 2013 The New York Times Company

Comparison shopping for money managers -- and miming their portfolios

Oct 9, 2013

 

Spark-backed Covestor bringing copy trading to 50K investors a month

 

By Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal 

 

 

Courtesy

 

Successful investing is a skill, like any other.
It's a fact that Rikki Tahta learned after years of watching his oil executive cousin transfer his industry knowledge into fruitful trades on the stock market. Tahta, a serial entrepreneur and investor, attempted to capitalize on the advice his cousin happily offered, but ultimately wasn't as prosperous.
What he realized: Success lie in copying his relative's trades, in real time.
And so Covestor was conceived. The Boston-based company offers an online marketplace where investors can comparison shop for money managers, then duplicate their portfolios and trades. Initially founded in London by Tahta in 2007, Covestor was later relocated to New York City, then Boston in November 2012.
“We basically bring top-performing money managers to a very broad audience,” said CEO Asheesh Advani.
In what he described as a “completely honest and transparent” process, investors can view managers' backgrounds and track records, and filter results by portfolio or account types, asset classes, allocation strategies, geography, cap biases, and manager approach, type, or style. Tools on the site also help them determine the right fit, based on risk tolerance and goals.
The company's “Portfolio Sync” technology then allows real-time trade replication.
Managers set their own fees, which range from .25 percent to 2 percent, and Covestor derives its revenues from taking a scaling percentage of those – determined by various factors on a case-by-case basis – according to Advani.
In the end, investors benefit from the expertise of successful managers they likely wouldn't otherwise have access to, Advani said, while managers, in turn, reach more prospective investors and build up a track record.
There are now about 100 managers in Covestor's marketplace, which is curated: Managers apply to join, then go through a trial period. They are then formally added to the site if they meet the expectations of the investment committee, which is comprised of the company's management team, as well as board members John Sinclair, former director of research at Fidelity Investments, and James Cornell, managing director of Spinnaker Capital and The Bollard Group.
Advani said the company also has plans to allow hedge funds to join the marketplace, because they're now allowed to do so with the passage of the American Jobs Act.
Ultimately, Covestor reaches more than 50,000 prospective investors across the U.S. every month, Advani said, and has doubled its business – in terms of assets on the platform – since the beginning of the year.
Likewise, managers have “significantly outperformed” the market: As of June 10, the 10 managers with the most client assets in their portfolios have beaten the S&P 500 index by 28.5 percent over the last year.
With 25 employees, the company is backed by roughly $28 million in capital, including a $12.75 million Series B round announced in June, from Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners and Bay Partners.
Looking to the future, Covestor is recruiting a head of marketing, Advani said, and is also seeking out strategic partners.
“Boston is one of the asset-management centers of the world,” he said. “There's great talent here.”

Original story link. 

"Revolutionizing" the way we look at robotics

Oct 9, 2013

 

From first responders to spelunkers, Bounce Imaging aims to boost safety with new device

 

Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal 

 

 

Courtesy

 

After the 2010 Haiti earthquake left thousands of people trapped beneath rubble, overwhelmed search teams simply couldn't get to everyone in time.
More lives might have been saved with the aid of sophisticated robots and fiber-optic equipment, according to Francisco Aguilar. But those can tend to be costly, large and difficult to access (particularly in places like Haiti).
Aguilar knew there had to be a better way. And so he launched a company, Bounce Imaging, to develop low-cost, baseball-sized devices that can literally be thrown into risky or life-threatening situations to gather images and data.
“The key behind this is we're going for radical simplicity,” said Aguilar, who founded the company with David Young in May 2012.
Equipped with six wide-angle cameras and an array of sensors, the lightweight devices, once thrown, beam images and crucial data such as temperature, oxygen and carbon monoxide levels, back to a tablet — then continuously update that information.
The products are still in development, with the company focusing its initial efforts on police. “We've seen how much the world has changed for police,” Aguilar said.
Bounce Imaging expects to have trials with several police units in Massachusetts in late November, and the goal is to release a beta version to select departments in July 2014, Aguilar said.
Once publicly available, the units should retail for about $1,000, compared to anywhere from $10,000 to $300,000 for robotic or fiber-optic systems.
Based out of the Harvard Innovation Lab in Allston and with five U.S. employees, Bounce Imaging has raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding, and is currently working on its next round, according to Aguilar. The startup received $50,000 as a prize winner in the MassChallenge 2012 accelerator program, and is now planning a Kickstarter campaign for later this year.
Aguilar and Young – who spent four-and-a-half years as an active duty infantry officer in the U.S. Army and served in Baghdad and Afghanistan – initially interviewed “first responders of all stripes” and based much of the design around their needs, Aguilar said. They have also received insight from advisory board members John DiFava, former superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police, and Rich Breault, CEO of Haverhill-based Lightspeed Manufacturing.
The two first developed a device the diameter of a coconut, sizing it down to roughly the circumference of a baseball. The intent is to make the simplest possible product to serve a need, Aguilar said. The hope is that the data the devices collect can also be aggregated and used in the field. For instance: To help map razed buildings during a search and rescue operation.
And because the core architecture can accept a broad range of sensors, the devices could eventually be used in a wide range of situations beyond first response, such as nuclear safety, industrial inspections, and Homeland Security check-points, Aguilar said. The company has also seen unexpected consumer interest from such people as spelunkers and photographers.
“We want to get into more and more fields where we can increase safety for a broader range of people,” Aguilar said.
Ultimately, “we envision the company as something that really revolutionizes how we look at robotics.”

Original story link. 

Vying for an equal playing field

Oct 8, 2013 

 

Grommet CEO: Amount of VC going to women is 'damning'

 

By Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal 

 

 

Courtesy

 

Jules Pieri co-founded and runs a successful, venture-backed business — Somerville-based e-commerce site The Grommet. But she knows she's a unique case.
Women are drastically under-represented when it comes to both doling out venture capital and receiving it, thus hampering the amount of prosperous, female-led companies, Pieri notes.
And she wants to change that.
“Everyone in leadership has an obligation to think about what footprint they leave,” Pieri said. “This is where I want to leave a footprint.”
And clearly, she's getting noticed, recently making Fortune's 2013 list of “Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs.”
She'll celebrate the honor at an event in Washington this month alongside such high-profile guests as Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and IBM CEO Ginni Rometty.
“I'm happy to breathe the same air as these people,” Pieri said.
But the title benefits The Grommet immensely, as well. “It helps us cut through the clutter as a company to pay attention to,” she said.
Founded in 2008, the e-commerce site serves as a platform for largely undiscovered products. In May, Japanese company Rakuten, which previously funded the company with an undisclosed sum, took a majority stake. It was then rebranded from Daily Grommet, and moved from Lexington to Somerville.
Pieri noted recent successes, including major revenue growth and an increase in employees from 12 to 50.
“We've created a model to do something big and fundamental,” she said. “We're changing how products get launched, making the playing field more fair. And we're doing it successfully, and distinctively.”
It's the kind of fair playing field she'd like to see in the venture capital space, as well. She made that point in a big way in August when, in an open blog post to President Obama, she proposed ending the carried interest tax loophole for venture firms that don't back the same amount of businesses owned and run by women as by men. In addition to Obama, she said she has other “targets” in Washington she intends to approach about the subject.
Particularly, she cited an Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation report that found that female entrepreneurs have historically received a single-digit share of all available venture capital, somewhere between 4 and 9 percent, and that women represent less than 10 percent of high-level venture capitalists.
Given that “damning” statistic, she asked, “how many women are not showing up?”
And if they are but aren't receiving funding, how many are succeeding? She pointed out that some startups “just can't be bootstrapped,” and that the venture capital process not only provides an infusion of funding, but establishes businesses as a “better media target.”
She acknowledged that the tax loophole is controversial in general, but called it ultimately good because it brings money to companies and entrepreneurs.
“I'm not interested in getting rid of it,” she said, “I just want to make it equitable.”
Considering Obama has been rather preoccupied in recent weeks, she noted that she hadn't yet received a response, but remained confident. “I will. I always get my man.”
 
Original story link.