“Asian Americans need to develop and hold an entrepreneurial mindset and consider entrepreneurship as a viable career option. From being an English and Social Welfare major at UC Berkeley who loved computer science but couldn’t get the grades, to being rejected more than once in applying to work at Facebook and Google, to becoming enamored with the concept of running her own startup (despite shunning business as a career choice in college), Chang also shared some thoughts on Asian Americans in entrepreneurship. Once operating out of coffee shops, Chang now rents a co-working space in the SOMA neighborhood, where she met with us to chat about her journey as a social entrepreneur. It probably didn’t hurt that in October 2011, Women 2.0 received a second round of corporate sponsorship from the prestigious Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, one of the 30 largest foundations in the United States and with a special focus on entrepreneurship. I was gently pushed out the door and was so happy because now I got to do what I love all day long.” I would take really long lunches and sit there thinking about what I would post for Women 2.0 that night. I already had my own company, but as a woman I wanted to wait until my ducks were lined up in a row.”Ĭhang confessed, “Everyone knew I had this thing on the side. So why did it take Chang so long to really take the plunge and fully immerse herself into Women 2.0? “A lot of the guys at my job would leave and start their own companies and they didn’t even have a concept. With results such as these, it is no wonder that Chang and Charania were named in 2010 among Fast Company’s most influential women in technology. Chang also manages the company’s network – 30,000 members via a weekly email newsletter, 22,000 via Twitter, 10,000 via Facebook, and 28,000 via LinkedIn. I was gently pushed out the door and was so happy because now I got to do what I love all day long.”Īs Editor-in-Chief, Chang also bears responsibility for Women 2.0’s dynamic web platform that on any given day teems with news, information, and resources for and by women entrepreneurs, realized through a blog network that carries the voices of tech women and writers from all over the world. ”įeatured at the event were celebrated entrepreneurs including Caterina Fake ( Flickr), Robin Chase ( Zipcar), and Danielle Fong ( LightSail Energy), as well as venture capitalists such as Aileen Lee ( Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers) and Sukhinder Singh Cassidy ( JOYUS), who served as judges for Women 2.0’s annual startup competition.Īside from organizing sold-out conferences, Chang also produces Women 2.0’s other signature events including the PITCH startup competition ( with one in NYC inaugurating this fall), startup workshops, and monthly networking events called Founder Fridays that are in 11 cities in the United States, Spain and Latin America and, according to Chang, “growing every month.” “Everyone knew I had this thing on the side I would take really long lunches and sit there thinking about what I would post for Women 2.0 that night. “Our events usually sell out, so it was no surprise. “It was our biggest and best event to date,” Chang recalled. This past February, Chang delivered Women 2.0’s fifth annual conference. “At every tech conference, we were the only women in the room.”
Its mission is to inform, inspire and educate a new generation of females who are entrepreneurial and successful. It is now an emerging global media company and business network supporting women in technology and startups. That was how, like many successful startups that originated with one simple concept, Women 2.0 was born. Chang said, “We were flooded with questions – when is the next one, where’s your sign-up list, what’s your website, how do I get more information?” The women came up with the name ‘Women 2.0’ and set out to create a conference specifically for women.Ībout 100 women attended the first Women 2.0 conference and discovered a sort of intrinsic connectedness that led to a demand for more. “We wanted to meet role models – women who had started their own companies.”Ĭharania, now CEO of Women 2.0, had a colleague who matched the four founders and tossed them into a room at Facebook where he worked.
“At every tech conference, we were the only women in the room,” Chang said. Chang packed her things and moved to another San Francisco startup, but this time it was not anyone else’s but her own – Women 2.0 – which she co-founded in 2006 with three other twenty-something women, Shaherose Charania, Shivani Sopory, and Wen Wen Lam. In December 2011, Angie Chang, 29, got laid off from her job as product manager at a startup company, her sixth startup in six years. Photos by Eric Bothwell of ALIST Magazine
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