To clarify what I meant by asking in her stead, I meant if I were at a meetup or mixer and was talking to some founders, not applying for a job in her stead (which would be really strange).
1.) If they were a well established company they'd just refer me to their jobs site and probably barely remember afterwards so it was almost starting from scratch.
2.) If they were a small company still getting started they would remember me because I said "intern" and they thought that might mean "free".
I feel like you're going to get a lot of these kinda reactions if you're just mentioning her, because there's not much to say about her if she doesn't have some solid experience you can mention. If she's really into start ups and is a good conversationist, I'd just bring her to mixers if you can. Don't mingle with her though, you two should split up and she should strike up conversation on her own, if she's with you all night she may get treated as arm candy.
Other than that she can comb the Who's Hiring thread for smaller companies that are just getting started and that she'd be interested in, research them, and email them saying she found them on Hacker News, and why she thought she as neat. Her lack of experience will be hard to get around, but showing genuine interest in start ups outside of employment is always helpful.