Leena Rao
Leena Rao is currently a Senior Writer at Fortune Magazine.
Leena had a brief stint at Google Ventures as an Operating Partner.
Leena’s first role out of journalism school was at TechCrunch which she joined in 2008. She rose through the ranks becoming the Managing Editor for TechCrunch and a voice at TechCrunch Disrupt.
She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City.
She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was the captain of the women’s varsity tennis team. She has also contributed technology content for Oprah.com.
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Latest from Leena Rao
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Y Combinator's Airbed And Breakfast Casts A Wider Net For Housing Rentals As AirBnB
AirBed and Breakfast, an online portal for renting space on a stranger’s airbed or couch, has re-launched its website to AirBnB, an eBay-like marketplace for all accommodations. Now a Y-Combinator start-up (the startup is currently in the winter session of the incubator), AirBnB, which launched as AirBed and Breakfast last August, found that users wanted to use the site for more than… Read More
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Will A Credit Card Solve MySpace's Woes? Who Cares, Get Free Music.
MySpace may be in deep trouble, but that isn’t stopping them from capitalizing on middle America (and Los Angeles), which still rampantly loves the site. You can now get a MySpace branded credit card and rack up points to download free music on the site. MySpace and Citi are offering the Citi Forward/MySpace credit card. In an economy where signing up for a credit card is hardly a… Read More
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Dashboard May Not Be Just Another CRM
Startup Lead Log recently launched CRM product, Dashboard, that is hoping to differentiate itself from the millions of other CRMs in the enterprise space through simplicity. Dashboard is an easy-to-use, simple web service that is targeted towards small businesses looking to turn sales leads into deals. There’s no doubt that Dashboard keeps it basic with its options. There are four… Read More
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TinkOmatic Makes Deal and Job Hunting More Organized (500 Invites)
In this economy, everyone is looking for a good deal. Startup TinkOmatic (currently in private beta) allows deal-hunting consumers to search and track classifieds or auction sites for multiple items at once, all in one location. Tracking classifieds on Craigslist or deals on Ebay can be overwhelming and tedious to consumers and TinkOmatic is hoping to provide an easier way to view these… Read More
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Google Code Lab Is Like High School For APIs
Google has launched Google Code Labs, a central place where developers can find links to the early-stage Google products. With over 60 Google APIs already available on Google Code (Google’s general code site), the company is using the Code Labs group to engage the greater developer community in the early-stage product and API ideation process. Google Code Labs will also include its… Read More
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TheFunded Founder Creates A Startup Camp For Young CEOs
What this economy needs to get out of its rut is more startups. Adeo Ressi, the founder of VC-rating site TheFunded, wants to do his part to help jump start the economy with fresh ideas and leaders. He is planning to roll out a start-up incubator, TheFunded Founder Institute (the site isn’t live yet), to groom young founders into CEOs. The Institute will play in the same… Read More
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Vanno's Watchdog Index Keeps Companies Honest With ReputationCheck
Social evaluation platform Vanno launched a widget application of its real-time company reputation index called ReputationCheck. Vanno’s platform allows customers and others to share stories about their personal experiences with a particular company, submit news articles they’ve read about companies, fill out surveys and comment on companies. Vanno then quantifies this dialogue… Read More
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Kutano Hopes To Draw Crowds In Crowded Online Commentary Space
Why do online commenting start-ups keep beating their heads against the same wall? Kutano, a browser add-on that lets users read, write and search comments side-by-side with any webpage, launched at DEMO today. With over one-third of the 1.574 billion internet users worldwide participating in online commentary and forums, Kutano is joining a slew of other start-ups hoping to capitalize on… Read More
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Content Tracking Service Tynt Scores $3.9 Million in Series A Funding
Tynt, a start-up that allows publishers to monitor and track when users copy content from a web site, has secured $3.9 million in series A funding led by iNovia Capital, AVAC Ltd, along with angel investors. Tynt’s product, Tracer, lets website publishers see what content is being copied and pasted off their sites. Each time a user copies content from a website and pastes it into an… Read More
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X Marks The Spot, Foxmarks To Become Xmarks
Foxmarks, one of the most popular Firefox add-ons for social bookmarks, is re-branding itself as Xmarks and making significant additions to its functionality. Since Foxmarks has collected so many urls (600 million to be exact), the company is creating a search feature that turns up pre-qualified results. Since Foxmarks’ launch, the bookmark synchronization add-on has been downloaded over… Read More
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Marketo Taking The Lead On Marketing 2.0
Marketo, an SaaS company focused on providing marketing automation software for B2B companies, has launched a bigger, better version of its sales and marketing optimization application. The software allows web-based marketing and sales teams collaborate on a single revenue cycle, turning web visitors and sales leads into customers using tools like email marketing, lead nurturing, lead… Read More
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GridIron Flow Takes Workflow Organization To A Whole New Level
GridIron Software, the provider of workflow tools for professional creative market, has launched a new workflow product for businesses, GridIron Flow. Flow tried to eliminate bottlenecks in a project, such as searching for files, for graphic designers, video editors, developers and other creative professionals. Users can track every move that is made in the creation and completion of a project. Read More
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The Top 21 Twitter Applications (According to Compete)
We’ve accumulated a list of the twenty most popular Twitter applications, based on monthly unique visitor data from Compete. Twitpic, an app that lets users share photos on Twitter, took the top spot with 1,236,828 unique visitors in January. Tweetdeck, which came in second with 285,864 monthly visits, is a Twitter app that streamlines notifications and tweets. Third place went to… Read More
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DocStoc Does Its Part To Rid The Web Of Download Links
Document sharing site DocStoc has launched DocShots, a free service that allows publishers to convert any document on a website into a hoverable link that provides an instant online document preview. DocShots’ technology cuts long downloading times while also giving readers an easy way to preview documents in a pop-up window. DocShots allows website and blog owners to easily add a… Read More
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Flip Or Bust? FlipGloss Debuts Glossy Digital Photo Magazine
FlipGloss a Forbes Media-funded digital magazine focused purely on editorial and advertising photo content, has launched the beta version of its site. Featuring “lifestyle” based photography focused on fashion, design and travel, FlipGloss wants to combine search engine capabilities with the experience of flipping through photo content of a magazine. Users actually click and… Read More
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Google Needs French Lessons; Translates "Vimeo" to "YouTube"
How do you say Vimeo in French? Google Translate thinks it is pronounced “YouTube.” It is translating the English sentence “videos on Vimeo” into “des videos sur YouTube” when prompted to translate from English to French. When you try to translate Vimeo alone (not in a sentence), the French translation results in “Vimeo.” But in a… Read More
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Widget Powerhouse JS-Kit Strikes Deal With Sun Microsystems
Widget provider JS-Kit has struck a deal with software vendor Sun Microsystems to provide cross-platform widgets to Sun’s internal and external properties. JS-Kit offers rating, polling, commenting and widgets that can be ad-supported or ad-free (in which case, the company charges a monthly fee). Widget making is appealing to enterprises. It’s not the first time businesses… Read More
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WeddingBook Marries Search Aggregation With Wedding Vendor Listings
With upwards of 200,000 wedding vendors in the U.S. alone, the wedding industry can be both fiercely competitive and highly profitable for businesses. A new website, WeddingBook, is attempting to become a highly comprehensive search aggregator for or U.S. wedding vendors by offering highly exposed listings for free. WeddingBook allows vendors to list an advertisement on the site without… Read More
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Snapstream Mini Is A DVR On Steroids For Enterprises
Snapstream, who brought us BeyondTV and Snapstream Enterprise, has launched a more budget-friendly standalone TV search engine appliance for enterprises. The Snapstream Mini costs $2000 ($6000 less than the original Snapstream Server) and offers most of the capabilities of the more expensive product. One of the main differentiators is memory capacity; the Mini offers a little over 1000 hours… Read More
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CardPricer Finds There Is More Money Selling Baseball Card Data Than Selling Baseball Cards
CardPricer, a sports card valuation site, has undergone several transformations as a start-up and has learned that being flexible with a business model is a necessity in the start-up world. Founded in 2005, CardPricer was originally an online auction house specializing in high value collectibles. The company realized the value of creating pricing data on collectibles (particularly sports… Read More
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