Who: Eileen Carey and Lauren Mosenthal, co-founders of Glassbreakers, an online platform that matches women in technology with peer mentors.
Why: These women understand and value the importance of mentorship for women in the technology space. Their platform is “kicking glass.”

It’s no secret that the technology industry, from New York City to Silicon Valley, is overloaded with men, especially in the top ranks. Furthermore, it seems to be a vicious cycle: the more men hired for top jobs, the more they tend to hire men themselves.

Well, two female entrepreneurs, Lauren Mosenthal and Eileen Carey, are changing that tableau. Their recently launched startup, Glassbreakers, is a peer-mentoring platform that matches women in the same profession with other women at relatively similar levels so they can share tips, contacts and skills. The ultimate idea? Create a path to gender equality through peer mentorship — i.e., mentorship from people at your same skill and career level.

“Our mission is to empower women to break through the glass ceiling together to get over imposter syndrome,” Carey said in an interview with Femsplain.com. “We want to build a hyperconnected, supportive workforce. We don’t have to do this alone; we can do it together.”

Based on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, Glassbreakers relies on an algorithm that’s a bit like a dating site, matching people by location, career goals, background and needed skills. Users sign in via LinkedIn, and then Glassbreakers works its magic with an algorithm that takes into account items extracted from users social network profiles (e.g., education background, skills, past employers). Women who have already signed up for Glassbreakers will start receiving their first matches this month. (The service was launched on Jan. 20 in the Bay Area, and around 1,500 women have already signed up.) Once that happens, they’ll have the opportunity to accept or reject their potential mentors; if two people accept each other, they’re invited to connect offline.

The road to launch wasn’t easy for Glassbreakers, according to a Newsweek article. For example, investors didn’t pony up the pre-seed financing goal. Carey noted that the setbacks were balanced out by promising signs, including the support of older influential women. Eventually, Glassbreakers picked up some male investment interest, including funding from Ben Parr, founder of the DominateFund and formerly of Mashable.

In addition to its consumer-facing platform, Glassbreakers is also working on an enterprise version — an internal women’s mentorship platform for companies. Capital One and a handful of big-name tech companies have expressed interest. “We hadn’t pitched a single person, and we had seven companies come to us looking for the software solution,” said Mosenthal. While right now Glassbreakers is only for women in the technology space, it plans to expand to other industries in the future.

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