Projects
A collection of projects, companies, and activities…
Putting her years of experience with Google’s Hiring Committee to good use, as well as her many interviews with top technical firms, Gayle Laakmann founded CareerCup in 2005. CareerCup offers several practical tools to help candidates prepare for technical interviews with Microsoft, Google, Amazon and other top employers. Aside from the constantly updated CareerCup book (which Gayle and others co-wrote), it also offers one-on-one coaching, a video of an interview and an active online forum of interview questions. In four short years, the company has successfully evolved as the leading technical interview coaching services today.
Noticing that so many young professionals faced the so-called “Seattle Freeze” — a term referring to Seattlites being friendly but never welcoming – Gayle Laakmann founded “Seattle Anti-Freeze” in 2007. Together with her business partner Scott, they plan and organize social, athletic and community service activities for young professionals in Seattle. With the various events that they put up throughout the year, they encourage and provide great opportunities for young people to socialize and develop new relationships, as well as appreciate the values of volunteerism. In two years, Seattle Anti-Freeze has grown to 3500 members and was featured on the front page of Life & Arts section of the Seattle PI.
In her first semester at Wharton Business School, Gayle Laakmann has joined the Technology Investment Team of Wharton Ventures as an Associate. Wharton Ventures is a student-run VC fund at the Wharton school, where students from different areas of expertise, do research projects for VC firms, perform due diligence for potential deals and make investments.
Before leaving for Wharton Business School, Gayle Laakmann was the VP of Engineering at KeenScreen Inc., the company that launched emptyspaceads.com. EmptySpaceAds is a small startup in online advertising that offers an exciting and innovative solution by serving unforgettable ads with its patent-pending technology.
Gayle Laakmann created PictureMash as a “just for fun” project. This great website helps you organize and manage your pictures better with its many features. It can group your pictures logically – and automatically with its Smart Folder feature, merge your albums from other photo hosting sites, lets you add tags and related links, and even lets you create one feed for all your friends!