The cause for celebration was two-fold. The first was showing off demos from its inaugural class of 20 girls, who represented all five boroughs and some disarmingly ambitious ideas. (We're still scratching our head at Cora Frederick's plan to use data mining and machine learning to classify tumors.) The second was to announce an audacious new goal: to train one million girls in computer science by 2020, starting with a national expansion outside New York City next year.

The nonprofit organization, founded by former deputy public advocate Reshma Saujani and run by former Jumo managing director Kristen Titus, offers teenage girls an eight-week, full-time education in robotics, web design, and mobile development, with mentorship from engineers and executives at Twitter, Google, ZocDoc, Gilt Groupe, and more. In fact, Ms. Saujani noted last night, CEO Dick Costolo volunteered Twitter's first philanthropic donation to Girls Who Code, although she politely declined to specify the dollar amount.

On stage, Ms. Saujani pointed out that of the 8 million girls in high school right now, only 3,769 took the AP Computer Science exam. What's more, only 0.3 percent of female high school students decide to major or minor in computer science. But after this summer's session concluded, all 20 girls committed to studying computer science--a small, but integral step toward filling the 1.4 million tech jobs that expected to open up by the year 2020. "That pipeline begins in high school," she told the crowd gathered between the blank screens and buzzing monitors that make-up the floor of the stock exchange after hours.

Girls Who Code sponsors Jack Dorsey and Chris Hughes, who also supported Ms. Saujani's 2010 bid for a Congressional seat, weren't able to make it to the party. But plenty of founders and technologists flocked to the feel-good event, including Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, and General Assembly cofounder Matthew Brimer, just in from a conference in Dublin (one of the few cities without its own GA, judging by the startup's rapid expansion). Also in attendance were Foursquare's lead iPhone engineer Anoop Ranganath, Raptor Ventures VC William Peng, former ICM prodigy Kate Lee, New York City's chief digital officer Rachel Haot, Ms. Saujani's husband and LocalResponse founder Nihal Mehta, and Alex Taub, head of biz dev at Dwolla.

On stage, Twitter engineer Sara Haider and Twitter program manager Olivia Watkins, who closely mentored the girls, praised the program's many virtues. But nowhere was the upside more evident than in a speech from 15-year-old Julia Geist from Brooklyn, who recounted her transformation from the shy kid who liked physics into what Ms. Saujani called a "change agent" for her family of five siblings.

"I learned about Girls Who Code from my librarian, who noticed that I spent all of my days and much of my lunch time on the computer at the library," Ms. Geist told the beaming crowd. "I quickly learned everything from how to build mobile apps to becoming a master of user experience to building video games in Javascript." Ms. Geist is currently working on three separate freelance web development projects and teaching her dad how to code. "He is now working to become an IT professional to replace his substitute custodian job. My sisters are next on the list. Some say I’m a natural coder, but I say I’m lucky to have been a part of Girls Who Code."

For anyone inspired to donate after hearing Ms. Geist, or other equally as moving teenage technologists, there were Square devices on hand to swipe donations right from the NYSE.

Even without a horde of face-palming stock traders, the floor of the exchange is still an intoxicating milieu. Proximity to all those literal levers to the public markets were irresistible--and stern instructions from the guard not to push any elevator buttons didn't help. Mr. Newmark himself seemed tempted toward a little mischief, although he cautioned that anything untoward should only be performed with the benefit of a mask. "Did you see the Batman movie?" he explained, covering his mouth like the villainous Bain. Mr. Newmark was in the midst of this twice or thrice annual trips to New York. "I tend to stay near the K-Mart downtown and that’s where I shop," he said, admitting to a little anxiety about leaving his customer service post. "I’ve been offline for, what, two hours now? People will be nervous."

Luckily, we faired better than TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Tsotsis, who got kicked out the NYSE for an offhand joke involving spilled liquids and Facebook stock manipulation.

The juxtaposition of tech and Wall Street was as symbiotic as we've ever seen it. A Credit Suisse exec eagerly passed Ms. Saujani his congratulations and business card. While waiting in the lobby, we chatted up a Goldman analyst (who has her own startup, natch). Surely, the release of Greg Smith's tell-all must be a startup recruiter's dream? Not so much, she said with a shrug, describing life inside the House of Lloyd yesterday as "pretty normal."

Towards the end of the presentations, Ms. Saujani pulled an Oprah, distributing presents from President Barack Obama to all the girls who joined her on stage. "We have signed letters for each of you! It’s better than One Direction and Justin Bieber, right? I think so too!" she said with pride. "I dunno, Bieber would've been good?" a fellow audience member quipped next to us. "Pandemonium in the stock exchange!"

Thanks to the startup scene's growth spurt, New York City has not been short on well-intentioned initiatives to right the ratio and close the gap for tech talent. Girls Who Code seems to get many of the basics right: The organization reaches out underserved students, who defy the pattern-recognition that plagues the tech industry and its financiers. It also addresses the problem early, and offers sustained training with a practical bent toward employment.

"I wish I had majored in computer science," Ms. Saujani told Betabeat in a trading booth after the speeches. "I wish I could go home and build a mobile app on immigration and undocumented students--build an app on 'Stop and Frisk.' But I’m also taking lessons from the girls and I don’t think it’s too late for me to learn how to code either." Girls Who Code, she said, is an example of the type of initiatives she wants to spearhead in her campaign to become Public Advocate in 2013. "I was talking at some of the community colleges, like if you can teach 15-year-old girls how to code, you can teach adults how to code. And there are so many jobs that are open," she said, noting the 50,000 new jobs added in mobile development.

During the program, Ms. Saujani added, visits to Gilt Groupe and ZocDoc piqued the girls' interest. "I think a lot of them thought initally, I want to be a doctor and didn’t realize the connection between healthcare and technology, and medicine and technology."

On our way out, we asked Ms. Guest, who received her first job offer after the Girls Who Code graduation at Google's Chelsea outpost, where she'd like to work. While Google, Gilt Groupe, and Twitter feel "like a second home," she said, "My dream is to start my own company." Oh man, just wait 'til Peter Thiel hears about her!

The cast of How to Marry a Millionaire admires the Times' brass. (Wikimedia Commons)

The old Grey Lady sure has outdone herself. Today the New York Times treated us to "Bachelorville's Big Fish," about the Valley's population of wealthy, eligible bachelors who, it is universally acknowledged, must be in want of a wife. Even better: It's complete with a slideshow by the oh-my-God-are-you-serious name of "Dating Profiles of High-Tech, High-Worth Bachelors." We're sure that many of these gentlemen are lovely, but really?

Rather than get our knickers in a twist re: gold-digging and its inherent objectionability, we've decided to take a different tack and respond to each "dating profile" with a popular song. To wit: 

Ben Rattray, cofounder and CEO, Change.org

"At 31, Mr. Rattray still drives a 1996 Toyota Camry and shares a cramped Noe Valley apartment in San Francisco with three college buddies."

That is a man who is hanging out the passenger side of his best friend's ride, trying to holler at me. And to that we say, "No Scrubs," by TLC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqtRrMKBdho

Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle

"At 67, Mr. Ellison might not fit everyone’s definition of 'eligible.'"

He probably thinks this entire slideshow is about him. Ergo: "You're So Vain," by Carly Simon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQZmCJUSC6g

Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com

"'I don’t use the term "dating," ' he explained in a recent e-mail. 'My current philosophy is to not look at things as black and white,' he said, 'but instead to just enjoy hanging out with different people.'"

This is definitely someone that you will tell, as you break up with him, that if he liked it, then he should have put a ring on it. "Single Ladies," by Ms. Beyonce Knowles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m1EFMoRFvY

Salar Kamangar, SVP, YouTube 

"When a network dating show recently approached Mr. Kamangar to appear as a contestant, it didn’t get far. Mr. Kamangar is as private as he is eligible."

You know, shyness is nice, but shyness can stop you from doing things in life you like to. "Ask," by the Smiths.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N_Dwpkzmuw

Matt Cohler, Facebook employee No. 7 and general partner at Benchmark Capital

"Last year, he and his longtime girlfriend broke up, and he now finds himself looking for company in the brownstone that he recently bought in downtown Manhattan, which he has decorated with works by Richard Avedon and Vienna Secession-period furniture."

Sounds like someone could use a little more time, and no one wants to be a rebound gal. Also: he apparently turned to tech when he "struck out trying to make it as a saxophonist." So we're going to go with one of our pop favorites, "Careless Whisper," by George Michael.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izGwDsrQ1eQ&ob=av2n

Pete Cashmore, CEO, Mashable

 "An anonymous Twitter account called @hotpetecashmore is dotted with tweets like 'Am I the only one feeling hot, hot, hot tonight? — Pete.'"

Given that we cannot possibly argue with Mr. Cashmore's good looks, we'll just go ahead and tip our hat. "Hot Hot Hot," Buster Poindexter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrhf_zgtmAg

Matt Mullenweg, founder, WordPress and Automattic

"Still only 28, the boyish blond with the snowboarder stubble [Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg] is now worth an estimated $40 million."

We're feeling it, Mr. Mullenweg. "Is This Love," by Bob Marley and the Wailers. Only until the next time our CMS does something wacky, though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EztmEF24fdo

Jack Dorsey, cofounder, Twitter and Square

“I’ve learned a lot from ballet,” he was quoted as saying. “I appreciate the coordination and the discipline. Making something simple is very difficult.”

As much as that man works, he'll need a time machine to carve out the proper space for a relationship. "Dancing with Myself," by Billy Idol. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG1NrQYXjLU

And last but certainly not least:

Aaron Levie, cofounder, Box

"Last September, [Box cofounder Aaron Levie] played ringmaster at the company’s first conference, BoxWorks, showing up in orange sneakers and firing up a crowd of hundreds with motivational pronouncements before handing out free Motorola XOOM tablets for everyone, Oprah-style, and giving over the stage to Third Eye Blind."

We wish the New York Times had stepped back from this particular ledge, and we want something else. Our ruling: "Semi-Charmed Life," Third Eye Blind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWX_p2GgHzY

via ma.tt

On his blog yesterday WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg (who is not personally responsible for Betabeat being down just now, but sorry about that) noted something unusual about Y Combinator's newest venture partners, namely their lack of venture experience.

Rather than listing the investment experience or the number of boards that Posterous founder Garry Tan and Appjet founder Aaron Iba have sat on, YC touts their coding credentials. The post calls them both “rare individuals who can both design and program” and “best hackers among the YC alumni.”

Some time in and around The Social Network hitting the cultural ether, headlines started declaring this the age of the nerd. But it seems the nomenclature has gotten more specific. Between startups like Codecademy (Mayor Bloomberg's a fan!) and Code Academy (two different things! we swear!) and New York City's drive to grow its engineering base with a $2 billion tech campus on Roosevelt Island and Software Engineering Academy conveniently located in Union Square, it seems there's a language barrier one needs to cross to stay relevant in the startup ecosystem. And it appears that's now bleeding over into the sector that funds those companies.

"Take note of this moment," writes Mr. Mullenweg, of the YC hires.

"The hackers and engineers of Y Combinator are doing what hackers and engineers do to any industry, they’re efficiently and ruthlessly disrupting the traditional model of venture capital and are going to destroy far more more wealth for their contemporaries than they create for themselves, as broadband did to entertainment, Craigslist did to newspapers, and Amazon did to traditional retailers. This is what outsiders, by definition, do.

The dark humor in this is that the same people who delight and celebrate investing in disrupting other industries are blind or in denial about it happening to their own."

So, investors, better start actually following those Codecademy lessons instead of letting them pile up in your inbox like the rest of us.

No hyphen on mousemade? Okay, lovers, we'll trust you on this one.

If you haven't heard of COLOURlovers, you're probably not a design fiend. Judging by its traffic growth over the past seven years, however, it's built a pretty loyal following among its one million right-brained registered members. The Y Combinator grad also counts community-building experts, like Matt Mullenweg from Wordpress and Alexis Ohanian from Reddit, as angel investors. They joined Founder Collective, Charles River Ventures, 500 Startups and others in a $1 million seed round last March.

Today on the company's blog, "Chief Lover" Darius A. Monsef IV (who goes by the name Bubs and founded the site while still working at Microsoft) announced the private beta launch of an Etsy-like exchange called CreativeMarket that will enable its users to share and sell their "mousemade goods" like patterns, shapes, photos, fonts, and gradients. Although the team works remotely, co-founder Aaron Epstein, the brains behind ColorSchemer.com which eventually merged with COLOURlovers, lives right here in New York. "We've been trying to get as many New York people as possible," Mr. Epstein told Betabeat.

Back in December, we spoke to Bubs about the API for CreativeMarket that he and Mr. Epstein were planning to roll out, why he decided to leave Microsoft, how Twitter plays into this, and getting Martha Stewart to blog his wedding cake.

Tell me about the site.

COLOURlovers right now is a creative community. We’ve been inspiring people to share their ideas around color and pattern design for a few years. Really at the core of what we do is making design simple and accessible and that’s really by the tools that we built to simplify content creation even for  non-designers. Unfortunately, sometimes the tools are just complex and the idea of starting from a blank canvas is hard for people to get over. What we’re rolling out is evolving that to be part of not just inspiration, but execution. So helping designers by giving them access to beautiful content and more professional tools.

That's where the CreativeMarket comes in?

We’re adding the marketplace component so that for members that are designing these amazing patterns and shapes, there’s a martket to sell those. The market already exists on other stock content sites. But the bigger vision we have there is that that marketplace can exist within existing designing tools and future designing tools. Right now the process for a designer is you’re using Photoshop and then you need a new font and then you’re off in Google looking for fonts and it’s taking you out of your creative space and it’s kind of a painful process.

Are we talking exclusively about graphic designers here?

There are design tools for every kind of designer. There are pattern tools for a textile designer, there’s CAD for architects. At this point, there’s kind of design software for any kind of designer. So we want to build a marketplace that will connect with designers wherever they are currently designing and give them access to beautiful content to help make their work better.

Like an API?

Yes. We will have a destination property for the marketplace where we'll try to curate the best experience we can, but we’ll also build it as an API layer so that within design software, there will also be an extension for you to access the marketplace. What we would be doing there is enabling in-app purchases for creative content. Basically what Apple has done with iTunes to buy music, we’ll make the same kind of thing happen for creative content. So if you’re a designer and you’re in a certain app, you know where your content is and you can easily get access to it.

So what’s for sale in the marketplace?

The thing we’re adding first is the commercial aspect of members being able to sell the patterns and shapes they’ve created on COLOURlovers. But we really want to make the barrier to entry lower, so anybody can create the content for this marketplace. It starts with patterns and shapes. Probably the next thing we’ll add are things like fonts, brushes, layer styles, elments that you would use for graphic design. As the API rolls out, other developers can specifiy that people that use their apps use these templates and open a mini-marketplace for their users to do that—driven by our platform.

Right now people just go on to share what they’ve built, but they haven’t been able to sell it?

Right. We have a million registered users, but it’s largely an inspiration site. But we built a tool called Themeleon that makes designing your Twitter profile really easy to click-and-drag and 10 million profiles have been designed with that since we’ve had it up.

Are you making any money off of that?

Not on that specific partnership. But it’s an in-kind partnership with Twitter in terms of providing value. We have other tools like that. The next step will be, you might have designed a really awesome combination of colors and patterns into a Twitter profile, you should be able to sell that as a theme and sell that in a theme marketplace. We’ve been trying to set that up by making beautiful tools and getting this amazing user base that we’re now going to empower by letting them sell what they create.

Have you had any revenue before this rollout?

Yes, we generate revenue, from ads and partnerships. But for a long time we generated revenue from our software sales. Aaron built a software called ColourSchemer, a professional color matching software and we have a pattern software, Seamless Studio, which is a vector editor.

You were still at Microsoft when you launched the site?

I was at Microsoft until two years ago, but COLOURlovers the site has existed for seven years. I was just playing with color inspiration at the time. I made it so that members could use a color and basically rate it as "hot or not." I shared it with some friends and they wanted the palettes added. I think in hindsight that’s why the site thrived versus just sort of following off as a goofy thing because the community continued to just share content and share their ideas. So for the first four or five years of its life it was just this side project that grew on its own. And then when I was at Microsoft, I decided it wasn’t he right fit and there was a big opportunity because COLOURlovers was growing.

How did you and Aaron hook up?

Aaron and I had known each other for a few years as competitors in the color space and it just made sense that he’s got a real strong expertise in creating apps and designing awesome platforms and I had this community. We should just merge our companies together and I’ll leave Microsoft and do this fulltime. That happened about two years ago, then we did Y Combinator out in San Francisco. Aaron had just moved to New York and had to abandon his wife and their empty apartment to come live with me for three months.

But there’s still a New York connection?

One of the things we realized recently is that a lot of our partners end up being in New York. We just launched a partnership recently with Martha Stewart. Right now if you’re looking at any color page or pattern, where the colors are listed, traditionally for web colors there’s an RGB match, but now we’re matching to the closest Martha Stewart paint color. Not every color has a match, because there are 280 paint colors and 16 million colors on your computer. But what's important to a lot of paint companies is helping somebody discover something they enjoy and then connecting that to the paint color.

Did you meet Martha?

I met her in the hallway going to a meeting, but we’ve basically been building a relationship with her for the last couple of years. We tweeted something of theirs, that got us an intro, they I guess blogged my wedding cake on their site? So we’ve had a good relationship. A lot of the design world is in New York, so it’s convenient to have parts of our team there.

How much would it cost to get someone to Zaarly us this cake?