Postcards

Raising Venture Money: 10 tips for success

On Friday in Silicon Valley, I emcee'd the finale of BlogHer BET, a confab about Business, Entrepreneurism and Technology. One of my panelists was Janet Riccio, an EVP at Omnicom Group (OMC), who came on stage with 10 tips for raising start-up money. Riccio had gotten the list of tips from an entrepreneur she knows: Communispace CEO Diane Hessan, who agreed last month to sell her company to Omnicom for MORE

Meg Whitman to join Kleiner Perkins

Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO who got trounced in the race for California governor last November, has a new career plan: Venture capital with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

By Patricia Sellers

Meg Whitman, who is in Hawaii until Wednesday with her neurosurgeon husband Griff Harsh, declined to comment, but sources close to her and to the venerable Silicon Valley venture capital firm say that Kleiner will bring Whitman in as a MORE

How to help Japan: Start a movement

by Patricia Sellers

In this era of social media, where we are all super-connected, the most ingenious do-good movements can begin with a tiny idea.

Make 'em viral and they will spread.

It happened with "The Last Text," the riveting video that AT&T (ATT) produced to coax people like you and me not to text and drive. The 10-minute film, which I wrote about on Postcards last month, has drawn more than two MORE

75 Rock: A tower of power

There's no sign in the lobby. There's no web page. There's no clue -- until you arrive on the 23rd floor of 75 Rockefeller Plaza -- what Pilot Group is. Sure, it's the private equity shop of Bob Pittman, former COO of AOL Time Warner (TWX) (AOL)  (parent of Fortune's publisher). But it's also a hostel for former Masters of the Media Universe. "Come stay at MORE

Warren Buffett, corporate culture guru

by Patricia Sellers

How critical to success is a healthy corporate culture?

As my Postcard last Thursday noted, Ginny Rometty, one of the top execs at IBM (IBM), says that culture is emerging to be the No. 1 corporate asset.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks Animation's (DWA) chief, seems to agree--as yesterday's Postcard details.

Another guy who deems a thriving culture to be a vital ingredient of a successful company: Warren Buffett. I spent much MORE

How DreamWorks' CEO builds a happy workforce

by Patricia Sellers

You have to wonder whether the CEOs who run the Best Companies to Work For were born to lead great companies.

In Los Angeles on Friday, I had a chat with Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks Animation (DWA), whose company sits perpetually near the top of Fortune's annual list.

Katzenberg is so proud of the achievement that every DreamWorks announcement includes the ranking in the boilerplate corporate description. (DreamWorks is No. MORE

Stop the PDF invitations, please!

by Patricia Sellers

It's nice having a place to vent.

And while I usually use Postcards as a platform to share insights into powerful people and how they navigate their careers, today I need to gripe.

PDF invitations drive me crazy.

You can't copy and paste the information into your calendar.

You have to write everything manually.

Who has time for this?

I recently aired my compliant to someone who sends more invitations than I: Maryam Banikarim, MORE

IBM exec: Culture is your company's No. 1 asset

by Patricia Sellers

Culture.

Now that's a subject that most leaders would be wise to pay more attention to.

One boss who does: Ginny Rometty at IBM (IBM).

And to her benefit. Currently in charge of sales and marketing and strategy at Big Blue--and No. 8 on Fortune's Most Powerful Women list--Rometty is mentioned in Fortune's current cover story about IBM as a possible successor to CEO Sam Palmisano.

Recently Rometty spoke about culture at the Yale CEO MORE

Making a difference on International Women's Day

Today is International Women's Day--as Google (GOOG) notes by placing a colorful graphic, honoring women, above the search box on its homepage.

If you click on that graphic, you'll arrive at a page that lists a multitude of ways to help women around the world. Google lists 44 organizations--such as Women for Women International and Vital Voices and Camfed--that deploy your donations to empower women.

Click on the link for Camfed, a not-for-profit that MORE

Career Rx: Raise the roof and reinvent

by Patricia Sellers

Delivering a talk on Women and Power in Princeton on Thursday night, I tossed out a term that the crowd really liked: Raise the roof!

As I told the 400 people gathered at the YWCA "Tribute to Women" dinner, the "glass ceiling" concept is out of date--and let's rethink how far corporate women have come.

Not that bias against female managers has gone away--far from it, as I've written right MORE