Gawker
As relieved as we were to hear that Mary Lou Jepsen, the founder of cheap-laptop display startup Pixel Qi, had recovered from an eye infection acquired in Peru, we were a bit heartbroken to hear that she'd stopped wearing the eye patch she'd sported during a recent video interview. All the more so when we heard where she lived: On a floating house moored at Issaquah Dock, one of the houseboat colonies of Sausalito, across the Golden Gate from San Francisco. Arrr, mateys! Mary Lou has boarded our hearts and taken our imagination captive.
Jepsen rocks for so many reasons: She believes that capitalism is a more effective way to do good than an ego-fluffing nonprofit. She's working on actual hardware, solving real-world problems that matter to billions of people, not catering to the whims of a San Francisco/Brooklyn in crowd with a Web 2.0 startup. And she's refreshingly forthright. We never were much for Talk Like a Pirate Day, but come September, we now plan to dress up as Mary Lou Jepsen.
