Tag Archives: Influence

Meet the Google for Startups Accelerator: Women Founders Class of 2023

Posted by Iran Karimian, Startup Developer Ecosystem Lead, Canada

It’s an unfortunate truth that women founders are massively underrepresented among venture-backed entrepreneurs and VC investors, with companies founded solely by women receiving less than 3% of all venture capital investments. In response to this, it has become more apparent of the need to invest in women entrepreneurs in alternate ways - such as mentorship guidance and technical support to help grow and scale their business.

Back in 2020, we launched the Google for Startups Accelerator: Women Founders program to bridge the gender gap in the North American startup ecosystem, and provide high-quality mentorship opportunities, technical guidance, support and community for women founders in the region. Since then, the program has supported 36 women-led startups across North America, who have collectively raised $73.46M USD since graduating from their cohort. Now in its fourth year, the equity-free, 10-week intensive virtual accelerator program provides women-led startups the tools they need to prepare for the next phase of their growth journey.

Today, we are excited to introduce the 11 impressive women-led startups selected to participate in the 2023 cohort:

  • Aravenda (Fairfax, VA) is a comprehensive consignment shop software that is leading innovation in the fastest growing segment of retail through resales.
  • BorderlessHR (Ottawa, ON) offers global talent solutions for small businesses, providing instant matches to pre-vetted talent and AI-powered interviewers, saving SMBs the cost and time spent hiring the right talent on time and within budget. Borderless HR also offers a free suite of HR products to help manage talent.
  • Cobble (New York City, NY) is a platform that helps people reach collaborative agreement with others on ideas. Cobble offers a combination of decision-making tools, curated content and AI-driven social connections.
  • Craftmerce (Delaware City, DE) is a B2B technology platform that links African artisans to mainstream retail partners by providing tools for distributed production, enterprise management, and financing.
  • Dreami (Redwood City, Calif.) powers data-driven career development programs for the 36 million people in the US who face barriers to employment.
  • Medijobs (New York City, NY) offers virtual recruiting for the healthcare industry.
  • Monark (Calgary, AB) is a digital leadership development platform, preparing the next generation of leaders through on-demand personalized learning.
  • NLPatent (Toronto, ON) is an AI-patent search and analytics platform that uses a fine-tuned large language model, built from the ground up, to understand the language of innovation.
  • Rejoy Health (Mountain View, Calif.) is an AI-powered mobile application that uses computer vision technology to deliver at-home physical therapy, enabling individuals to effectively manage and alleviate chronic musculoskeletal conditions like back and joint pain.
  • Shimmer (San Francisco, Calif.) is an ADHD coaching platform that connects adults with ADHD and expert ADHD coaches for behavioral coaching.
  • Total Life (Jupiter, FL) reimagines aging for older adults through an easy, one-click platform that connects users with a Medicare covered healthcare provider.

Through data-driven insights, and leveraging the power of AI and ML, these women-led startups are leading innovation in the North American tech scene. We are thrilled to have them join the 10-week intensive virtual program, connecting them to the best of Google's programs, products, people and technology to help them reach their goals and unlock their next phase of growth. The 2023 Google for Startups Accelerator: Women Founders program kicks off this September.

Developers Share How They Build with Google Tools and Bard

Posted by Lyanne Alfaro, DevRel Program Manager, Google Developer Studio

Developer Journey is a monthly series highlighting diverse and global developers sharing relatable challenges, opportunities, and wins in their journey. Every month, we will spotlight developers around the world, the Google tools they leverage, and the kind of products they are building.

This month, we spoke with several Google Developer Experts to learn more about their path.

Eslam Medhat Fathy

Headshot of Eslam Medhat Fathy smiling
Giza, Egypt
Google Developer Expert, Firebase
Technical and Design Mentor at Google for Startups Accelerator Program
Google Developer Group Organizer
Senior Flutter Developer at Sarmad

What Google tools have you used to build?

I have used many tools like Firebase, Flutter, Android, Kotlin, Dart, Assistant, and Bard, of course.

Which tool has been your favorite to use? Why?

My favorite tool is Firebase, because of how easy it is to set up and use. It also provides a serverless architecture, easy-to-use services, real-time synchronization, and cross-platform support, among other features. These benefits can help you build robust and scalable applications quickly and easily.

Tell us about something you've built in the past using Google tools.

I have more than 10 apps in the store created in Android native with Kotlin, Flutter and Dart. A few examples are Rehlatech and AzkarApp.

What will you create with Google Bard?

I use Bard every day for generating, debugging, explaining, learning code, and more.

What advice would you give someone starting in their developer journey?

I advise everyone about to start their developer journey to:

  • Start with the basics: It's important to have a solid foundation in programming fundamentals. Learn the basics of a programming language, such as syntax, data types, control structures, and functions.
  • Practice coding: Practice makes perfect. The more you practice coding, the better you'll become. Start with small projects and gradually move on to more complex projects.
  • Learn from others: Join online communities, attend meetups, and participate in forums. Learning from others can help you improve your skills.
  • Read the documentation: Documentation is your friend. Read the documentation of the programming language or tools you're using. It can help you understand how to use them properly and solve problems.
  • Be patient: Learning to code takes time and patience. Don't get discouraged if you don't understand something right away. Keep practicing and asking questions.
  • Build projects: Building projects is a great way to learn new skills and apply what you've learned. Start small and gradually build more complex projects.
  • Stay up-to-date: Technology is constantly evolving. Stay up-to-date on the latest trends and updates in the programming world. Attend conferences, read blogs, and follow experts on social media.
  • Have fun: Coding should be fun. Don't take it too seriously and enjoy the process of learning and building new things.

Carmen Ansio

Headshot of Carmen Ansio smiling
Barcelona, Spain
Google Developer Expert, Firebase
Google Developer Expert, Web Technologies
UX Engineer

What Google tools have you used to build?

I have used various Google tools to build projects including Angular, Dart, and Firebase.

Which tool has been your favorite to use? Why?

My favorite tool has been Chrome DevTools because of its versatile suite of debugging tools and its network panel, which I often use to optimize web performance. DevTools is an essential part of my daily development process as it allows me to test, experiment, and debug code directly in the browser.

What will you create with Google Bard?

With Google Bard, I plan to develop a Figma plugin for creating dynamic design prototypes. Leveraging the natural language processing and understanding capabilities of Google Bard, the plugin will allow designers to quickly convert textual descriptions into visual design elements. This can significantly streamline the design process, bridging the gap between ideation and visual representation, while enabling non-designers to contribute effectively to the design process.

What advice would you give someone starting in their developer journey?

For those beginning their developer journey, my advice would be: Always stay curious and never stop learning. Technology evolves quickly, and it's important to be adaptable. Also, never undervalue the importance of good UI/UX design. It's not only about writing code, but also about creating a great user experience.

Stéphanie Walter

Headshot of Stéphanie Walter smiling
Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Google Developer Expert, Web Technologies
Women Techmakers
UX Researcher & Designer

What Google tools have you used to build?

The main tools I use are the Chrome inspect tool and Lighthouse. I’m using Material UI a lot and the M3 design kit for Figma is a great time saver.

Which tool has been your favorite to use? Why?

Performance is important where I work, so Lighthouse is definitely in my favorite list. The function to get a quick report, which also shows main accessibility issues, is very nice. Of course it won’t show all accessibility issues, but it’s a good place to start improving a website.

Please share with us about something you’ve built in the past using Google tools.

Both Lighthouse and the Chrome inspect tool are lifesavers when building websites like my blog. There’s still improvement to be made on some pages on performance, but it’s getting there.

What will you create with Google Bard?

To be honest, it only has been recently made available for my country, so I haven’t had time to really play with it. For now, I use AI chatbots as glorified assistants. English isn’t my native language, so asking such tools to help translate some things and improve grammar in some sentences is very helpful. I might use it to help me with sharing knowledge: to improve my articles, conference slides, and training material.

What advice would you give someone starting in their developer journey?

Start with a project you are passionate about, something that would help you, or something you wish existed. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It also doesn’t have to be something that will bring money. And remember, you also don’t have to finish it. It’s nice if you can share it with peers to get feedback but you can also share unfinished projects. It’s all about learning while working on something that you like.But remember to also step away from the computer. Developing should not be your whole life - otherwise, you will burn out really fast.

Champion Innovator David Cardozo, based in Victoriaville, Quebec

Posted by Max Saltonstall, Developer Relations Engineer

Google Cloud Champion Innovators are a global network of more than 500 non-Google professionals, who are technical experts in Google Cloud products and services. Each Champion specializes in one of nine different technical categories: cloud AI/ML, data analytics, hybrid multi-cloud, modern architecture, security and networking, serverless app development, storage, Workspace and databases.

In our ongoing interview series we sit down with Champion Innovators across the world to learn more about their journeys, their technology focus, and what excites them.

Today we're talking to David Cardozo, a Machine Learning Scientist, Kubeflow Community member and ML GDE.

Headshot of David Cardozo, smiling

What tech area has you most fascinated right now, and why?

I love all the creative ways people are using Machine Learning (ML) to solve problems. There are a ton of cool applications that I see through my consulting work – counting cranberries from drone footage, tallying fish in fish farms, classifying plastics for recycling – and there's great stuff going on in both the public and private sector.

I'm also digging into the Kubeflow community right now, learning from that group. It's a melting pot of languages: Go, Python, etc. By participating in the working group and meetings I'm understanding so much more about current issues, blockers to progress, and get a deeper understanding of the technology itself. I love gaining that insight.

How do you like to learn new services, tools, and applications?

I read a lot: engineering blogs, books, documentation. Right now I'm learning system design from a variety of Google blogs, which helps me learn how to scale up the things I design. I'm also learning how to make ML models, and how to improve the ones I've deployed.

I'm passionate about contributing to the open source community and actively participate in various projects. Right now with friends in the community we developed Elegy – a high level API for Deep Learning in JAX.

Writing about a topic also helps me learn. Right now, I am working on blogs focused on Kubeflow pipelines in version 2.0 and Vertex AI in Google Cloud.

When I'm diving into a brand new technology I try to join the working groups that are furthering its development, so I get an inside look at how things are moving. Those working groups, their discussions and notes, teach me a ton. I also use the Google Cloud Forum and StackOverflow communities to deepen my knowledge.

What are some exciting projects you have in flight right now?

Getting to play with Generative AI within Vertex (on Google Cloud) has been very fun. I like hearing about what the other Innovators are making; it's a very smart, creative group with cool projects. Learning more about the cutting edge of ML is very exciting.

I'm doing a bit more with Open Source in my free time, trying to understand more around Kubernetes and Kubeflow.

What engages you outside of the technology world?

I stay active: swimming, lots of soccer. I also have been learning about option trading, testing out the waters of active investing. The complexity of those economic systems stimulates my curiosity. I really want to understand how it works, and how to make it useful.

My background is in the social sciences, I'm a bit of a frustrated historian. My interest in school was history, but my family said that I shouldn't focus on social science, so I majored in Math and Physics, but never finished my degree. Right now, after a few life and career pivots, I'm working on completing my Bachelor's through Coursera via the University of London, and earning a history degree requires a lot of reading. This has inspired me to make an AI project that summarizes the knowledge from very long documents, making history research more accessible by giving people a format that's easier to consume.

What brought you into the Innovators program?

I started as one of the Google Developer Experts, but I always wanted more opportunities to talk with Google engineers and get more feedback on the cloud architectures I was building, for myself or my clients. I also wanted to be more involved in the Cloud community.

When I see members of the community encountering challenges, struggling as I did, I feel the pull to help them. As a native Spanish speaker I wanted to make more content in Spanish for folks like myself. I didn't have a mentor as I was learning, and I'd like to fill that gap for others.

So I began organizing meetups in Latin America, and in Spanish speaking communities. I sought out more data scientists. And I went through Qwiklabs and Cloud Skills Boost to learn to improve my own skills.

After I joined the Innovators program, I've had the chance to play with new AI technologies, work more closely with Google experts and received credits for more Cloud experimentation.

What's one thing our readers should do next?

I recommend using some of the open, public teaching resources in Computer Science (CS), especially if you're like me and didn't focus on CS in school. For me, computers came very late to Colombia and I didn't have a chance to major in CS as a student, so I got into it via Math, then information security.

I also suggest taking a look at Elegy, and being involved in solving first issues, providing feedback and also some pull requests :)

I've liked Stanford's course on Neural Networks (CS 231n), as well as MIT's open courseware classes and ML videos on YouTube by Joel Grus.


Each Champion Innovator is not affiliated with Google nor do they offer services on behalf of Google.