So I stumbled across this list through the next women – and even though I appreciate it a lot – I think a list with the coolest geekgirls from a scandinavian/european perspective would be awesome! – and I am so doing that.

I am aiming for 500 geekgirls and 500 pieces of geekgirl business advice – both for the femmes but also for the hommes =)

I want to include all of you! – so drop me a note on henrietteATtoothlesstigerDOTcom or leave a comment below if you want in/knows someone who should be on the list – tell me a bit about yourself, give me your best business advice and give me a link to your twitter and site – and let’s build this together=)

1. “Don’t ever do anything mainstream” – Henriette Weber

2. “Follow your Passion and bring it into Action!” – Pernilla Näsfors

3. “Be trustworthy and kick assâ„¢” – Amelie Jacobsson

4. “Be a hub! With spokes! The hub is your core business, your specialty. The spikes is what you also make money on. Keep oiling the hub, keep it in top shape!” – Karin Høgh

5. “To slip on the right banana peel, you need to eat lots of lots of bananas. ” – Linn Grubbström

6. “Put yourself into your customer’s shoes and understand their business! Only then you will be able to help them finding “their” solution and sell them what really suits them best. If you cannot offer them anything really suitable, an honest “no” is better than selling them a bad solution. Honesty and helpfulness is core for establishing a long-term business friendship! Yes, friendship, not just relationship, since friendship is about helping, trust and honesty. That is what ensures future sales. Disregard this if you aim for business one-night-stands only.” – Anja Rauch

7. ”Remember that the path to luck must be weeded daily.” – Néné La Beet

You’re in- aren’t you ?

Tara is a fantastic femme that I have run into over the last 7 years, both in Europe and in the US. She did a talk for TEDxConcordia a while back about being a startup entrepreneur – a new opportunity for her to conquer, after being one of the coolest and smartest authors and marketers that I have ever met. The talk is entitled “the unclear path” and it made me think hard about my own path as an entrepreneur and as a business owner.

One of the things I personally struggle a lot with, is that I don’t think I do enough as an entrepreneur. There’s not enough hours in the day to have me do everything I want to do. Also the financial insecurity kinda sucks (as fx. now where we have two rents because we haven’t sold our apartment in CPH yet (oh and if anyone is interested in the coolest new yorker apartment 12 km outside of CPH you can see it here and you can buy it from me =) It’s the space where I’ve build Toothless Tiger and written my book so it just oozes with curly  creativity =))

The thing two rents has taught is to not be lazy and to think smarter. So as I see it the unclear path is a freedom to me – and also the path that without a doubt has taught me the most. I feel so rich in experiences and everytime the clients from hell doesn’t pay on time and I want to throw it all away and it doesn’t work out, I think about what a 9-17 job would mean to me and my family and I feel like a caged tiger. And I quickly change my mind again and I’ve realized there’s no way Im going back.

So what makes an entrepreneur rock ? For me it’s both to take the unclear path and make it more and more clear as you go. Getting more and more people in with different expert areas and grow the vision in that way. (ps. I wrote a free ebook a while back called “why every company should be a rockband” – you can get it here)

I’ve teamed up with amazing people. I have some kickass advisors and a fantastic partner in Toothless Tiger who is giving me structure and helping me out driving my dream forward, it’s something I realized I needed a while back because I was driving myself down like the struggling artist I am, thinking “I don’t do enough, and I don’t manage the business well enough” Well I found someone who can manage the business, My business backbone as I call him, and I can focus on my art: the art of marketing, branding and identity.

And YES I see marketing and branding and identity as art. It’s the art of the glorified word “virality” and it’s something that needs constant planning and taking-care-off.

It’s my art and I am an artist who thinks bigger and crazier and more curly than most other people. It’s how I see that I save the world and make it a better place day by day, especially since I only want to work with people who wants to make a difference.

So a couple of days ago, Fast Company launched a “25 women-run startups to watch” list. Today I am advisoring the Copenhagen Startup Weekend teams – so this is the weekend of startups for me.  Anyway the Fast Company article had two awesome women in it, that I’ve had the chance to meet and fall a little bit in love with, Tara and Wendy who rocks. But I think we should have a scandinavian list as well. Seen from my perspective, it’s a great way of giving out information about what ladies are in the startup scene up here. I have defined the ladies on the list as people who are running startups themselves, and not agencies, blogs or consultants, but startups as in convenience and services for the public.

Now, I know the list could be better, I hope that there are more ladies in startups in Scandinavia, that I just don’t know about. SO : If there’s anyone you think is missing on the list – please let me know in the comments – I personally think that there could be so many more ladies on the list. Im totally missing some startups from Norway. Anyway have a look at it – and let’s see if we can build this out more – together.

Here’s my list, most of the ladies on are people I’ve been introduced to, met or who I see regularly, they are truely an inspiration to be around:

Heidi Harman founder RunAlong and co-founder of Geek Girl Meetup. Runalong is a female health community focusing on group runs or walks. Geek girl Meetup is an un-conference for Geek Girls taking place so far in Stockholm, Göteborg, Øresund and Copenhagen.

Anna Oscarsson is founder of  Kvittar – a startup with the purposeful and convinient aim of making all the receipts of Sweden index’ed and searchable.

Ulla-maaria Engeström founder of thinglink a startup aiming to turn photos into a surface for advertising, commerce, entertainment, search and social connection

Tine Thygesen is CEO of 23 video – a company that helps individuals do visual sharing. She’s also the former CEO of Venture Cup in Denmark.

Annika Lidne is the founder of Disruptive Media – a company that helps people to understand the revolution within digital media.

Maija Itkonen is the CEO of Powerkiss a company that does wirefree charging through surfaces and furniture.

Camilla Ley Valentin Partner in Queue-it – a virtual queue system that prevents website crashes during user peaks.

Natasha Friis Saxberg of Gignal – presenting your event online.

Mette Lykke, co-founder of endomondo a community based on free gps tracking on sports.

Malin Str̦man Рformer VP of Stardoll a game and fashion community for girls.

Silje Vallestad founder of Bipper – a safe mobile tool for your kids

Tina Aspaila founder of Eat.fi – a finnish national restaurant search and review site

Tuula Antola founder of Kaipaus – a company that makes beautiful scent dispensers – jewelry like.

A while back I read this article on swiss miss (original call out was from the 99 % blog )- and I thought I would go through my own list of challenges for 2011 as well.

Rockin’ it out globally and online. I want to do more online writing and more e-books and online workshops. I have a very good friend of mine who’s an exec at a large danish communication agency – he’s one of  my branding mentors. He predicted that in a couple of years – I would rock it out globally + I would be all digital. At that time I didn’t think it would happen, I mean people needed me next to them right? wrong. During the next couple of months I’m starting up advising 4 new startups in different parts of Europe. Here’s the thing: they don’t really require my presence, they require my plans, maps, creativity and my advise. Im convinced that digital will never even come close to replace IRL meetings, but it can substitute it to some degree.

Doing more for Toothless Tiger. Im really getting into this business-building game – and Im starting to make Toothless Tiger into something more, It needs more structure, and needs more formality. We are currently gearing up the company so we can reach our goals for 2011 – with a new person as business backbone in the company, where my mind becomes the product. Now to everybody I have talked to about this, they’re over the top about this, because it also means that I will focus more on developing my core competences, and basically business administration is not (and will never be) the way I roll.

Turning more companies into rockbands+ making them do more good. It’s such a huge calling for me in my personal view of business, that we need to teach companies how to do social business and social media combined. In my view you have such an easier time online if people can relate to what you do as “cool” or “good” instead of going “are they trying to sell me products in my personal space on facebook ?”… A large part of this work lies in the actions and the identity of the company – where I see a lot of my work for 2011…

More geek girl and more social media club. In 2010 I did a lot of events – in 2011 even more. As an initiator of geek girl meetup copenhagen and social media club copenhagen, there’s going to be plenty of cool stuff to do out there, because the curiousity around both geek girl and social media club is enormous.

New startup. I think everybody should have a startup and I am building one together with a fantastic swedish lady. I won’t tell you more right now, and Im not going to say that this is going to be bigger than facebook or some shit like that, but it is going to change the lives and the conditions of some people. watch this space =)

So – last saturday I was running around at iværksætterhuset on Nørrebro, kind of like a hen without a head, but remaining calm and smiling. To arrange a meetup with 150 ladies requires a lot of planning and a lot of on the spot actions. People everywhere has said how great it was though.

Picture of yours truely by Amelie Berkeley

To be honest with you, We did expect it to be great. Karen, Karin, Malin, Lisa and I (aka. the planners) had a hunch. There where small indicators, like that the first 100 tickets sold out in 6 days, like we got a lot of support for the event from the participants beforehand – and a lot of hugs and smiles and laughter during the event. It confirmed me again that ladies do bond better and the coolness + approach-ability factor goes up. It just seem more down to earth, fun and dreamy. Yep I would argue that there was a fair share of unicorns and rainbows at the event (not only supplied by the Sony Ps3 Move).

I think my personal goal where met, when a couple of the ladies went home with a bigger dream avec un petit peu d’internet. I think my goal where met when ladies decided to give twitter a second shot. Or when so many at the event hooked up on facebook. When Sine told me that she’s doing something similar in Odense because she loved the feeling of it. Or when somebody magically cleaned up after cake and dinner, without me notising it. When Marie is setting up a blogger gathering in the spring in Ã…rhus -( and I will be there) When the sponsors clapped their hands because of the exposure they got and everybody left this magic place in the middle of Nørrebro called Iværksætterhuset with a feeling of go-get’em and we where told that we could have the place as a venue next time around as well.

A lot of the talks and workshops where amazing. or so Im told. I was so happy for the showroom set up by Malin and supported heavily by Camille and her blog hverdagshjem and her urge for everyone to do a hausfrau evening in their home. A creative feminine outburst. It rocked.

Today we could finally launch what we have been brewing on for the last while: Geek Girl Meetup Copenhagen.

Now I have talked about it before in relation to the ever cool Geek Girl Meetup Øresund that I attended a while back – so we are a bunch of ladies who have decided to give Copenhagen a shot.

The ladies we wish to see needs to identify themselves as übercool. If you do that, you will be spot on, and you will have a ball.

Geek Girl Meetup Copenhagen is going to consist of a whole day together with other cool ladies who will be doing 3 things:

1. they will participate in the un-conference – where they get inspired by other laides

2. they will participate in the academy – where they can learn about everything from digital publishing, social media, over arduino to marketing and communication to business (best practice)

3. they will hang out in the showroom – where a lot of fantastic things will take place – more to come on that =)

anyway join us for Geek Girl Meetup Copenhagen

ps. if you wish to sponsor or you want to give comments on the concept – let me know via mail or in the comment field =)

pps. tag for Geek Girl Meetup Copenhagen is #ggmcph and you can find us on twitter at @ggmcph as well =)

Nicole Simon has posted a very interesting post about women at technological conferences…

I want to discuss it further here..

I have been thinking about speaking at tech conferences… why ? not because I am an incredible tech geek – but I know something that most techs don’t.. and I am so convinced that they know things I don’t.

But let me point this out .. I don’t think women should speak at conferences just because they are women.. – they need to have some significance there…

I know I would be able to deliver a good show of networking and how to network. and discussing networking at new layers.. and I would be more then happy to do that…

but if it actually belongs to a tech conference ? I have no idea…