hy! Berlin is back and better than ever! For the second time, the new Berlin-based event series brings together the European startup community. Europe’s most promising startups will be competing again for prizes even better than last year’s. With a prize package worth over €200,000, finalists and winning startups can look forward to receiving an all-inclusive curated tour to the Valley, the opportunity to win €15,000 in cash, a service package worth $10,000, a PR package with a total value of €15,000, and many more great prizes - not to mention exposure to a highly relevant audience of early adopters, international investors and press. Applications are still open until January 11th, 2013. Prospective startups and already launched companies can submit their application via www.hyberlin.com/application. On January 18th, the finalists will also attend a private conference program with 150 invited leaders from around the world on all levels of the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Geekettes are in the House!

In addition to the startup competition the audience can look forward to a package of entertainment, insights on trends and developments within the scene and a unique opportunity to network with accomplished entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and media. In the spirit of the Berlin Geekettes, we’d like to introduce two high-profile participants of the hy! event on the 18th who will take part in the public Startup Competition. Jude Widmann, recently writing for the Geekettes states “Hilary Clinton famously declared during the 2008 US Democratic Presidential primary that each vote for her nomination was a crack in the ‘glass ceiling’. Tired and inaccurate, the glass ceiling is insufficient to describe new challenges women face in 2012, particularly in rapidly changing business sectors like technology.”

Perhaps a better way to describe the situation is to highlight two women, amongst numerous others, who are part of the upcoming hy! event. As the Huffington Post has it, Esther Dyson is an active angel investor in a variety of start-ups, for-profit and otherwise, around the world. She also operates as the Internet’s court jester, a person of no institutional importance who somehow manages to speak the truth and to be heard when and where it matters. She does business as EDventure, the reclaimed name of the company she owned for 20-odd years before selling it to CNET Networks in 2004. Her primary activity is investing in start-ups and guiding many of them as a board member. Her board seats include 23andMe, Airship Ventures, Boxbe, Voxiva, Eventful, Evernote, IBS Group (Russia, advisory board), Meetup, Midentity (UK), NewspaperDirect, Yandex (Russia) and WPP Group (not a start-up). Some of her other direct IT investments include Flickr and Del.icio.us (sold to Yahoo!)

Another International Geekette

Named by Forbes as one of tech’s most powerful disrupters in 2012, Megan Quinn is a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers where she focuses on consumer Internet investments. She specializes in designing, building and scaling transformative consumer products and companies.Megan joined KPCB from Square, the company revolutionizing payments for buyers and sellers. As Square’s director of products she led strategy and development of the company’s products across merchant and consumer audiences.Prior to that, Megan spent seven years at Google where she held various leadership positions in communications, business development and product management. She oversaw the development and marketing of some of the company’s most successful products, including Google Maps. Her team’s work continues to serve as the foundation for Google’s location-based consumer and advertising products.

There are 35 free tickets on offer for Berlin Geekettes compliments of hy! to honor all the fabulous local women in the local tech scene. Contact Brock at brock@berlin42.com. Otherwise, ticket sales for the Startup Competition can be found via the hy! Facebook page or by visiting the hy! Eventbrite page. Looking forward to seeing you there!