About Monika Jansen

Monika Jansen is a writer and editor who is happiest pounding out blog posts, newsletters, website content, and other materials for her partners and clients.

Monika has over 10 years of marketing and corporate communications experience at companies as varied as a high-tech start-up (which survived the dot com bubble, but sadly no longer exists), a chef/hospitality placement service, and a small, international arts education non-profit.

When she is not hunched over her laptop, she hangs out with her husband and kids, sits on the beach with a good book (May-September), snowboards (January-March), cooks, drinks wine, travels, and laughs as much as possible.

Recent Post by this Author

3 Reasons to Rebrand and Relaunch – Case Study of At The Pool

When I last covered Hyphos, CEO Alex Capecelatro explained the goal of his team’s new, LA-based social discovery site: “Our social networks are built around the people we know; they don’t help us expand our local social network…. Hyphos should make it easier to meet new people outside your Facebook friends’ networks.” And it did,…

Hinge’s Facebook App Matches You Up With Friends of Friends

If I were single, I would totally use DC-based online dating app Hinge. (Of course, Facebook didn’t existed back when I was single – in the 20th century – but this post is not about how old I am….) Rather than using some crazy algorithm, Hinge is a Facebook app that uses your Facebook friends…

Cervia Diagnostics Founder Arman Solomon: “Cervical Cancer Has to Disappear”

Breast cancer fundraising, prevention and treatment gets a lot of press – and rightly so. About 1 in 8 U.S. women (just under 12%) will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime. Cervical cancer is just as awful: it is the leading global cause of cancer-related deaths among women – every 2…

Swamped With Wedding Invites? Buy and Sell Gently Used Dresses at Couture Circle

‘Tis wedding season, and if you’re in your late 20s or early 30s, chances are you have a stack of wedding invites sitting on your desk. Just attending one wedding could translate into a pretty good cash outlay, and for us girls especially it can get expensive – after all, you absolutely must have a…

Furnishly Co-Founder Bryon Finke on Startup Life – And Why It’s Better Than Corporate Life

It seems like a lot of startups are popping up to address the numerous shortcomings of Craigslist. We’ve covered Purge, Rumgr, and Jobaline just in the past month. Another such startup is Furnishly, a local furnisher exchange based in Chicago that we covered this spring. Co-Founder Bryon Finke originally began pursuing the idea for Furnishly…

When Bootstrapping Is Not the Answer – and Other Funding Advice from Yesware’s Matt Bellows

Matt Bellows knows funding. As Co-Founder and CEO of Boston-based Yesware, a sales productivity tool, he closed a $1M seed round in April 2011 and a $4M Series A round this past April. At his previous startup, he bootstrapped. While bootstrapping is often touted as the end-all, be-all of funding your startup, it isn’t always…

EnergySage Founder Vikram Aggarwal: “Clean Energy Should Be A Mass Market Product”

EnergySage founder and CEO Vikram Aggarwal got the idea for his clean energy information and education startup from a rather unusual place: the lumber yard market. While investing in a lot of different industries for Fidelity, he began working on a big project: consolidating the lumber yard market that supplies custom home builders – “We…

Lessons Learned From a Kickstarter Campaign Gone Wrong

A word to the wise for all of of you startup founders considering raising funds via Kickstarter: “A product is not a product,” Mike Vahey and Frank Taylor told me. “Kickstarter has a very interesting vetting process.” Vahey and Taylor are working together on a non-tech product called The Travel Halo, an alternative to the…

Meet 21 Diverse Startups At Tonight’s Tech Week Startup Mixer in Chicago

We look forward to seeing everyone at our Tech Cocktail Startup Showcase & Mixer as part of TechWeek, where we will be hosting a fantastic mixer in the Merchandise Mart in Chicago to preview some of the LAUNCH startups – and quite a few others. Thank you to sponsors Motorola Mobility, who will be showcasing the…

Accidental Entrepreneur Enjoys Early Success With Social Gift Registry GiftSimple

There are a lot of startups out there that want to make gift giving easier. NoBadGift is universal wish list that accepts donations towards the items on your list, and GiftCaddie is a universal wish list heavily used by moms and girlfriends. Giftiki is a group gifting platform that pools money to be turned into…

Job Seekers: Get an Inside Look Into Companies at Company Muse

The Daily Muse, one of our former Tech Cocktail NYC showcased startups that provides career and job advice to women, launched Company Muse in February to give job applicants an inside look into companies. “A big predictor of whether an employee stays with a company is based on company culture,” Kathryn Minshew, Founder and CEO…

Zappos-Funded Startup Rumgr Part of Growing New Tech Scene in Vegas

Once only home to gambling, over-the-top casinos, world-class restaurants, and top-tier entertainment, Las Vegas is becoming a tech hub thanks to the efforts of Tony Hsieh and Zappos’ Downtown Project. Backed by the Vegas Tech Fund, startups are launching in the revitalizing downtown area of Vegas, worlds away from the Strip. One such beneficiary of…

Social Discovery App Answers “What Are You Doing Tonight?” – And Only Tonight

Does the world need another social discovery app? Doingtonight co-founders Raji Bedi, Dan Koza and Alan Laudicina think so. “The world needs an easier way to find an answer to ‘What are you doing tonight?’” said Bedi. “We are deadset on making that conversation easier because it’s a simple question that’s really complex. ‘Social discovery’ happens, as…

MyPod Studios CEO Jay Miletsky: “We Don’t Want to Be YouTube”

Jay Miletsky was a traditional marketing/advertising guy and self-described big brand person. He had his own marketing agency in NYC with some pretty big clients – Hershey’s, NBA, Washington Mutual. Several years ago, one of his clients, Asco Energy, which is a division of Emerson Electric, wanted to publish videos privately, rather than on YouTube. …

The Almost-Summer Startup Update Edition – With Lots of Mobile App Updates

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Happy almost-summer! Before diving into the mobile app updates, great news to share if you can’t manage your email inbox – and if you love sports. If you are a typical entrepreneur, your inbox is overflowing day in and day out. SaneBox, makers of the cure to inbox madness, just released a new, very useful…