Mobius Venture Capital general partner Heidi Roizen wants to
help people lose weight, launching a musical compilation called "SkinnySongs" to motivate them to get fit. Roizen said she normally exercises to music by pop artists like Pink and Carrie Underwood. But after putting on too many pounds, she decided in May that she needed extra motivation and began looking for songs that would inspire her to stick with a weight loss regime.

"I figured, there is great, empowering music about all sorts of topics -- there must be for this too. But I searched for it, and just couldn't find any," she mused.

So Roizen decided she would write her own songs. She worked with professional music producers David Malloy and George Daly to line up performers to record cuts with such titles as "Objects in the Mirror Will Get Thinner Than They Now Appear," "The Incredible Shrinking Women," "You Da Boss," "I'm a Hottie Now," "You Can't Buy Thin" and "Skinny Jeans."

Roizen, founder of software publisher T/Maker Co. in the early 1980s and later an exec with Apple Computer Inc., is no stranger to self-promotion, and for several years there was seldom a mention of her that didn't cite Roizen as having formerly dated Bill Gates. Now she's harnessing that talent to plug her album.

Roizen credits the recording to helping her drop 30 pounds, and she is aiming at a large market of 50 million Americans annually who try to lose weight. She's selling the recording on Amazon.com and SnoCap, and it will be available on iTunes on Dec. 15. - Clifford Carlsen

See Dec. 12 press release from Yahoo! Finance
See Roizen's personal Web site