Ms. Kunst.

Minority Report is a guest column by Sarah Kunst, who does business development and product at fashion app Kaleidoscope. She’s a black, non-engineer female in tech, but plans to IPO anyway.

Fortune magazine's annual Brainstorm Tech summit is the Lincoln of conferences (the motor company is also a sponsor so kudos to them for nailing their demographic). Not the too-rich-for-its-own-good Bentley like Davos or the flashy Porsche that is TED. Rather, Brainstorm Tech brought together a lot of guys from Ivy League schools who work for companies with giant market caps and little buzz. They're there to listen, network, and cut deals in one of the many hospitality tents at the Aspen Institute.

The listening part was easy as the speakers were relevant and quippy. Peter Thiel and Eric Schmidt went all Hunger Games for the crowd, trading blows on stage during dinner in what felt more like a sporting match than a debate about the future of technology. (You'll have to excuse me if you already heard about their exploits, it takes a girl awhile to adjust back down to sea level.)

Back on stage, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson offered Marissa Mayer's some advice on her new role at Yahoo? "Stay awhile." And Zocdoc founder Cyrus Massoumi fan boy'd the use of two-way video screens to keep in touch with remote offices. The PYTs of tech were on hand as well, with the likes of Ben Lerer of Thrillist, Brit Morin, the Bay Area's own crafty Martha Stewart, and Twitter darling Aaron Levine of Box, hosting parties and panels.

The real networking happens after hours, of course. That's when dance-offs are held and "Here let's open this bottle of wine from my vineyard" drinks are shared, transforming panelists turn into drinking buddies, friends, and business partners all before last call. It's a pretty standard use of the wee hours, but in Aspen late nights can take a turn for the vertical.

For the second year, a couple guys spearheaded a tradition best approached with the same mentality as child birth: Do it once, swear never again, forget about the pain, repeat. They were climbing a mountain and I accepted an invitation to join them. Bottles of wine and a lone celebratory cigarette were procured at twice the going rate from some locals and we were off. A motley crew of two CMOs, a CEO and one girl who's memorized the lyrics to "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better" makes for a lot of big talk...and little to no hiking experience.

The hours that followed were grueling. Our mountaineering skills hadn't included checking to see if there was moonlight to climb by, so the two hour ascent up loose dirt and rocky switchbacks was done in pitch black. We fell into a rhythm, our hyperactive leader running point while those with normal thyroid functions moved at a pace more befitting the dawning realization that this was not a walk in Central Park. At one point, I turned to make sure a fellow hiker had survived a fall and immediately joined him, hanging by my topknot and another hiker's fast reflexes. We were both quickly righted, passed the bottle around for a fortifying nip and in unison, began to climb again. Somehow, drunk at 4am, with zero visibility and in near silence, we had formed a team.

Reaching the summit was a bit of a trick. We found that instead of the snow capped, barren summit of the ski peak variety we were basically just looking for a rock. A really big rock surrounded by other rocks on the side of a sheer drop to certain death, roped off by a neon string that would have a hard time breaking the fall of an ant. But we were at the top of the climb, together. Backs were slapped, pictures taken and as the first rays of dawn appeared in the sky we began to make our way back down. Appropriately for a band of start-upers, the phrase used most on the descent was "How did we do that? If I had known it was that hard I wouldn't have made it!" Drunk on optimism and wine, we had tackled a trail dubbed "aerobic and difficult," by people who are most certainly doing it in the daylight . . . and hiking gear.

The cheesy startup parallels are many: It's all about the people, not knowing how hard it is can be an asset, switchbacks are the new pivots, don't fall off a mountain. (The last one's relevant no matter what profession you're in). However, the real takeaway is that people building the future are people who do awesome, kind of crazy stuff on and off the clock. If you're not surrounded by them, close your laptop and go look for them IRL. No livestream or Twitter feed puts you in meatspace proximity to the smartest, bravest people in tech. Conferences are often called out as a waste of time, but finding likeminded cohorts at 6am on a mountain top--metaphorical or otherwise--is worth a flight to Aspen or $10 New York Tech Meetup ticket. Sharing experiences trumps sharing hashtags. #climbamountain.

Stacy London of What Not to Wear has a new startup called Style For Hire. (Source: Phil Plait via Wikipedia)

SHUTTER. Luminance is not your average photography conference. Instead of focusing on the latest gear, this two-day program will bring together experts at the forefront of the technology we use to create, manipulate and share our images. Among the speakers are Behance founder Scott Belsky, Hipstamatic cofounder Lucas Allen Buick, Google's Chris Chabot, Pulitzer prize winning photographer Barbara Davidson, Tumblr CEO president John Maloney, Facebook Photos engineer Srinivas Narayanan and the School of Visual Art's David Ross. All speakers will present a 20-minute TED-style lecture.

TOE, HEEL, TOE, HEEL. What Not to Wear's Stacy London is the cofounder of a just-launched site that aims to connect personal stylists with the stylistically clueless. Style For Hire stylists will perform a "closet audit," provide personal shopping services or create new outfits out of clothes a customer already has—that's called closet shopping. Now women who aren't lucky enough to be on the show can still have their closets—and lack of fashion sense—torn apart, but without the benefit of a judgmental, national audience.

FREE LUNCH. Rickshaw Dumplings, Mexicue and Wafels & Dinges are giving away food tomorrow to all Fondu users. Download the the micro-reviewing platform for restaurants, create an account and head to West 4th and Greene Street from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. to get your grub on. Sorry to all you Android or yet-to-adopt-a-smartphone users out there—Fondu is only available on iOS.

INCUBATE. The Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, a program that provides startup with access to seed capital, mentors and coworking space, is taking applications until April 29th. Brooklyn Beta's summer camp for designer-developer teams is also taking applications through May 31. The 12-week program fosters connections between talented  people, invests $25,000 in participating companies and has advisors from top companies like Kickstarter, Airbnb, Union Square Ventures, Etsy and many others.

HACK 'ROUND THE CLOCK. ZocDoc HQ  will be the launching point for April 24th's 10gen 24-hour hackathon. The event, which begins at 568 Broadway at 6 p.m., will focus on working with MongoDB. Hack away until breakfast the next day at 9 a.m. and then hack your way to the post-awards afterparty at Von Bar.

DEVBOOTCAMP. DevBootcamp is a 10-week program that brings non-programmers up to basic programming level via an intensive curriculum. It's in San Francisco, but the organizers invite national and international students to apply. Participants include an aerospace engineer, a kid "straight out of highschool," a math teacher and finance grads, making for a veritable DevBreakfastClub. "The spring cohort finished two weeks ago, 7 out of the 16 looking for jobs have so far had job offers," DevBootcamp's Lachy Groom wrote in an email. "Almost everyone has had an exceptional amount of interviews (I think the average might be 8 each). We're expecting a very high job rate within the next few weeks."

NETWORK. Entrepreneur Week, an event that brings established entrepreneurs, industry leaders and investors together to foster opportunities and relationships, began on Monday and will continue through tomorrow. Tickets are still available for some of the week-ending talks and events. Check 'em out here.

BLOG WAVE. Tidal, a company that provides tools to bloggers and publishers to help them share and be shared on similar blogs, just announced its 250,000 post milestone and three new partnerships. Tidal is loading up the Sony Music Popmarket Backstage site with reviews, photos, users and content creators eager to promote and share. Neighborhoodies, a T-shirt and hoodie company, is moving from textiles to terabytes as Tidal breathes life into their site with style posts, restaurant write ups and travel tips all focused on NYC. Finally, Seatgeek, a third party tickets site, is getting the Tidal treatment as well, as members talk about tour dates and their favorite and most anticipated shows.

NET-WORKS. Things just got a little bit faster on Staten Island. AT&T recently announced the expansion of their 4G LTE network which means mobile internet could be up to 10 times faster on those devices.

LUNCH MONEY. Education startup 2tor has obtained a $10 million line of credit from Comerica Bank.

COLLIDE. Kaleidoscope, a new way to shop for street fashion by browsing a mix of submitted and professional photos, is now on iOS.

MOMMA. Shapeways, a platform for creating and sharing 3D designs, is holding a Mother's Day make-a-thon. Participants can turn any flat two-dimensional design into a three-dimensional plastic or metal work of art. For Mother's Day, it certainly beats a stale store-bought card. Order by April 22 for metal and April 29 for plastic to get those gifts in time for dia de los madres.

JOBS. Bitly needs a new sales research associate. Acclivity is looking for a UI/UX designer and Python back end developer. Send a snazzy email. What's Watched has an opening for a sales director with three years of experience. Email Burr. News.me would like new senior iOS  and Python engineers. Torsh needs a technical cofounder and chief architect to develop web and mobile apps.

The map of participating NASA Space App Challenge locations

3..2..1..BLASTOFF. It's official: NYC is now one of the spots for NASA's Space Apps Challenge, a two-day development event happening in cities on six continents and aboard the International Space Station. StartupBus NYC and the NY Tech Council are both helping with the coordination of the event, which focuses on how technology can address problems with minimal resources in creative and innovative ways. Register here.

SPLISH SPLASH. Don't you hate it when all your friends get into a band you've already been sick of for weeks? You tried to spread the good sonic vibrations early on but to no avail—the world simply wasn't quite ready for that new fangled rock 'n' roll music. But that's not a problem anymore. Splash.FM, a new social music platform, will make sure you get the credit for discovering a band before they were cool. Splash.FM has been in private beta since Jan. 16 and is preparing to go live publicaly on April 17th. Like on Spotify, users can follow friends, search for and stream songs and make recommendations for friends—called "splashing." Beyond that users will be be able to see what songs are trending among their friends and assign "splash scores" to rate other's music discovery skills. It's an official hipster socreboard! Splash.FM plans to eventually allow artists and labels into their analytics to see how when, how often and where their songs are being played. Take that, Spotify!

HACKER'S RETREAT. Hacker School, an intense three-month, full-time program for people serious about improving their coding skills is now accepting applications. The New York-based school provides space and touts a nice balance of structure, focus, time and community of like-minded techies eager to develop into coding wizards (and witches). Although admission is gratis, NYC living certainly is no—that's why Etsy is providing ten Hacker Grants to ten female students to the tune of $5,000 each. The first day of class is June 4th.

HIGH PROFILE. Microsoft BizSpark is sponsoring The Next Web Conference where 19 startups will go live in front of a global audience of investors and jorunalist with the goals of attracting capital and building buzz for their product in the press. The competition is divided into two tracks: alpha competitors will launch their business for the very first time while established, beta participants, will seek to make headlines with major announcements. The judging panel will be chaired by Amazon's Werner Vogels with Alex Ohanian of Reddit, Mark Randall from Adobe, Joe Gebbia of AirBnB and Chad Hurley from YouTube and Delicious. We're most excited to see the debuts of DeadSocial, a service for sending messages post-mortem and Snowciety, a mobile app that provides athletic data and friends' locations on the slopes.

PIMP MY DESK. Turnstone, the workspace solutions company that distributes everything from bike hooks to cable drops, is giving away five office makeovers to companies with 99 employees or less. For $25,000 worth of design services and furniture, companies must submit a video to convince voters that new space will make all the difference. Judges will pick the top 25 videos and then public voting will pick the top five winners. Finalists will be notified by May 1st.

TECHANTHROPY. The Future Energy Investor Feedback Forum is tonight at NYU's Stern Business School. The event begins at 6:30 at 44 W. 4 Street in the Kaufman Management Center where eight startups will pitch judges to solve the global problems of energy demand, supply and environmental stewardship. Future Energy will conclude with drinks nearby at 8:30 General admission tickets are sold out but last minute tix may still be available via the wait list.

TRAVEL AND TELL. Wanderfly, the travel recommendation site, just launched 600 ever-evolving travel guides. The Wanderfly 2.0 has only been live for about a month but has already scaled very quickly as travelers constantly update and improve the "lenses" by submitting their own content. Some cities have multiple lenses—partying versus sight seeing, for example. Check out one of NYC's right here.

SHOPCHELLA. Kaleidoscope, the app and widget that lets shoppers browse editorial and street-style photos, is partnering with the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival to bring five to 10 men's fashion festival looks to Details magazine as soon as the first week of the festival is over. Details announced that this is the first time any magazine has worked with Kaleidoscope. Indian headdresses and short denim shorts-shorts coming to a Details readers everywhere.

HI-HO, HI-HO. TheLadders, a matchmaking service for professionals and employers, is hiring for a bunch of positions including software and lead software engineer, front end-architect and lead SQL database engineer. Benefits include comprehensive healthcare and unlimited vacation.  Early stage VC firm Greycroft Partners is hiring a pre-MBA Associate for a two-year commitment in their NYC office. Applicants should have strong analytical skills, be team oriented and have attention to detail. The selected candidate will evaluate potential investments in early stage companies and assist in the prep of fundraising documents. Send your resume to resumes@greycroftpartners.com. Two Silicon Alley jobs fairs are coming up: the third annual NYC Startup Job Fair and the Uncubed Tech Talent Fair, plus networking fest NY Tech Day is coming up on April 19.

Aspirational!

Earlier this week, Inporia co-founder Ryan Junee launched Kaleidoscope, a more monetizable take on those suddenly ubiquitous fashion apps, in the Android market. (Relax, fangirls, the Apple version if coming soon.)

Kaleidoscope, which also works as a website widget embeddable with a few lines of JavaScript, lets users browse a stream of both Anna-approved editorial images and street style photos. If you like what you see, click on any image and it breaks it down by item and offers direct links to sites like Nordstrom's, Bergdorff, Net-a-Porter or Shop Bop, where users can buy the exact items featured in the photo or similar ones across a range of price points, both higher (what recession?) and lower.

It's being described as "Pinterest meets ShopStyle," and indeed, Kaleidoscope uses the ShopStyle API to source potential purchasing options. But there's also an element of "human expertise," Mr. Junee told Betabeat, with a team of fashion interns making sure the "shop that look" function links to the best selection of similar items. Mr. Junee said he's also working on automating that function.

Of course, Mr. Junee, who sold Omnisio (the video editing startup he helped launch out of Y Combinator) to Google and worked as the product manager for YouTube, thinks proprietary technology will be Kaleidoscope's key differentiator. Right now, the app scans e-commerce sites twice a day to make sure items are still in stock. But longterm, his core tech team is working on training its algorithm to learn your tastes. Until then, the app lets you browse photos, search for a particular item (say, striped cardigan), save, and share the photos that come pre-uploaded in the app. Prohibiting user uploads controls photo quality, but Kaleidoscope is looking to partner with fashion bloggers who can offer the same high standard.

Mr. Junee is keeping his tech team out in San Francisco, where he has a strong engineering network, but tapped Sarah Kunst, the company's director of business development to set up an office here. (You're welcome for drawing attention to Ms. Kunst's poachable charms, btw.) Rather than commission on sales, the company is looking to make money off brand advertising and sponsored placement. To that end, he spends half his time in New York. "There's zero fashion scene in San Francisco," he noted.

Kaleidoscope's parent company, Inporia, has already raised $1.25 million in seed funding from Ron Conway's SV Angel and Dave McClure's 500 Startups (where Mr. Junee serves as an advisor), and along a handful of other angels.

"I guess it's a simple idea," Mr. Junee said of the app, "Everyone says, 'Why doesn't that exist already?' Usually that means you're onto the right thing."