Women 2.0 unveils finalists for PITCH Startup Comp

Entrepreneurial network Women 2.0 has unveiled this year’s finalists of the Women 2.0 PITCH Startup Competition, including a shopping Q&A platform and a social app for college students.

Women 2.0, founded by Shaherose Charania and Angie Chang, is a US-based global network and social platform for aspiring and current female founders of technology ventures.

The Women 2.0 PITCH Startup Competition, held annually since 2007, is a global competition open to early-stage ventures operating in the tech scene.

To be eligible, companies must have a female in the founding team and a technologist, which could be an engineer, scientist, mathematician or biologist.

The venture must be in beta, which means a prototype is in existence or the product is already on the market, and cannot have raised or received more than $1 million in funding.

Applications are reviewed by online judges before finalists compete at a conference. This year, the conference will be held on February 14. More than 500 people are expected to attend.

“[The conference] is a full-day event to learn from the product innovation leaders who built Flickr, Facebook, Zipcar, TaskRabbit, LARK and more,” Women 2.0 says on its website.

“Both men and women working in technology are invited to hear speakers share best practices, growth strategies, and stories of disruptive product development.”

The winning team will receive meetings with top-tier venture capitalists, including Aileen Lee, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Mike Maples of Maples Investments.

The 2012 finalists are:

Business Productivity is aimed at business professionals who want to learn how to work more effectively using technology, offering a wide range of user-friendly videos online.

Buyosphere is a shopping Q&A platform. Buyosphere aims to solve the confusing product search experience online by leveraging the social web.

DINKlife is a social and services platform for couples without kids. DINKlife validates the unique lifestyle of couples without kids by helping them make the most of this time in their life.

DocPons is a healthcare company with a unique online platform for purchasing outpatient healthcare services, issuing discount healthcare coupons at affordable, out-of-pocket rates.

Evoz Smarter Parenting centralises children’s behavioral data, runs analytics algorithms, and provides insight for parents into their child’s daily experience and how they compare to others.

Hotseat gives college students a space to record practice interview sessions and receive feedback from their social networks and the Hotseat community, aiming to save students time and money.

Kismet is a real-time, location-based social app for meeting new people. Whether users want friends or business contacts, Kismet tells them who they should be meeting and why.

Perfect Beauty is a one-stop hub for women around the world to build a community based on beauty advice. Users receive incentives for writing reviews and purchasing products.

Prosperity provides small business budgeting software to non-accountant types, helping solo entrepreneurs reduce overspending, keep more of what is made, and survive tax time.

Tiny Review is like Instagram for Yelp reviews. Users say what they think about a place, take a picture and write three words. They can also follow people whose recommendations they trust.