Poornima Vijayashanker (Internet RockStar)

Poornima Vijayashanker has never been afraid to take risks. In 2006, she jumped ship on her master's in computer science at Stanford University to join the Mint.com team as its third employee and founding software engineer, aka "code monkey.”

As the only female on the team, she got "picked on a lot." But she thrived nonetheless, handling nearly everything from front-end to back-end. She even came up with the company's name.

Since leaving Mint in January, the self-professed "femgineer" has set out to start her own company, BizeeBee, and has been pitching her product to investors. "I came up with the concept for BizeeBee by exploring my passions, one of which is yoga,” she says. “Over the years I've noticed a lot of pain points”—in the business sense of the term—“that the owner of my yoga studio has had that I thought could be easily resolved with simple software solutions."

BizeeBee will produce software for small businesses, aiming to translate the simplicity of Mint’s user experience to her own product. Despite her entrepreneurial spirit, Vijayashanker is an engineer at heart. "I truly love coding and solving engineering problems day and night," she writes on her website.

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By Joyce C. Tang
The Daily Beast