Vote for Your Favorite Women-led Startups to Win Up to $240K in Prizes

The sold out Women Startup Challenge at LinkedIn on June 14th showcased 10 of the best early-stage women-led startups. The startups pitched to Lisa Stone, entrepreneur and cofounder of BlogHer, Nisha Dua, partner at BBG Ventures, Susan Kimberlin, venture partner at Backstage Capital, and Ajay Chapra, general partner at Trinity Ventures.

The startups are pretty impressive and for those of you who were not able to make it, you can check out all of the startups pitches and vote for your favorites, thanks to The Audience Awards (AudAwards). You've got the chance to help award prizes to women-led startups, and really make a difference.

Ten finalists were selected from a pool of over 400 to compete in the Women Startup Challenge, and they all pitched their ventures on June 14. The live audience at the Challenge voted in-person for their favorite pitch, and $120K in cloud services (from IBM) was awarded to Blendoor, a blind recruiting app that hides candidate name and photo to circumvent unconscious bias and facilitate diversity. Two more prizes of $120K will be awarded to the two startups with the most votes by June 20 at 5pm PST.

Votes can be cast on the AudAwards site, or via the app, until June 20th. Less than 10% of startup investments are directed to women-led startups. That’s not only unfair, it’s bad business. The tech world needs to be promoting its top talent regardless of gender. You can help out by voting.