Leah Culver, 25, of Pownce is one of Fast Company's "Most Influential Women in Web 2.0."

Culver started out as an art major at the University of Minnesota, but found her calling in a required programming class. "Before that I didn't even know what programming was,” she admits. She built Pownce, a file sharing soc net, from scratch using a programming language called Python.

"As a programmer the route to your own company is easy -- you build a site and get people excited about it," says Culver.

Pownce hasn't needed venture capital -- Culver has relied on funds from family and friends.

November 12, 2008 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments