50 Female Entrepreneurs Everyone Should Know
Denise Stephan is on the Marketing team at Crunchbase.
March 22, 2019
For Women’s History Month, we are highlighting 50 female entrepreneurs to watch in 2019. These women are solving problems and producing innovative solutions, for all members of society.
We’ve carefully curated this list from a Crunchbase Pro search, where we looked at female founders who have raised funding in the last year, as of March 19, 2019. All these women are particularly impressive, and they are listed in order based on funding raised.
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Some of these women are just starting off their entrepreneur journey, while others have raised over $800 million in funding. Many of these female founders champion women in their solutions or are addressing problems for commonly overlooked members of the community. All are paving the way for more women in tech.
Here are 50 female entrepreneurs to celebrate this month and beyond:
1. Cindy Mi
CEO & Co-Founder of VIPKID
Based in Beijing, VIPKID connects teachers in North America with children around the world for real-time English immersion learning online. Founded in 2013 and formally launched in 2014, VIPKid is China’s leading online education startup with over 500,000 paying students and 60,000 teachers in the US and Canada.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $825 million
- Investors include: Learn Capital, Sequoia Capital China, Tencent Holdings, YF Capital, Northern Light Venture Capital, Matrix Partners China, Coatue Management
2. Anne Wojcicki
CEO & Co-Founder of 23andMe
Wojcicki co-founded 23andMe with Linda Avey in 2006. 23andMe is a human genome research company that helps customers understand what their DNA says about their health, traits, and ancestry. In 2018, they raised $300 million from GlaxoSmithKline.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $786 million
- Investors include: GlaxoSmithKline, Sequoia, Google
3. Cristina Junqueira
VP of Branding & Business Development & Co-Founder of NuBank
Nubank issues, administrates, processes, and transfers payments related to post-paid credit cards and equity investment in other entities. Based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, NuBank is a unicorn company.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $707.6 million
- Investors include: Tencent Holdings, Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital, Fortress Investment Group, DST Global, Goldman Sachs, Tiger Global Management
4. Annie Tao
VP of Operations & Co-Founder of Horizon Robotics
Based in Beijing, Horizon Robotics is dedicated to providing integrated and open embedded Artificial Intelligence solutions of high performance, low power, and low cost.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $700 million
- Investors include: SK Hynix, SK China, Intel Capital
5. Neeti Mehta
Senior Vice President Brand Strategy & Culture Architect & Co-Founder of Automation Anywhere
Automation Anywhere offers an advanced, enterprise-grade, cognitive Robotic Press Automation platform. Their intelligent process robots work to change the way businesses operate, delivering complex businesses and IT work across many processes like HR administration, procure-to-pay, and claims processing.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $550 million
- Investors include: Workday Ventures, NEA, Goldman Sachs, Softbank Vision Fund
6. Julia Collins
CEO & Co-Founder of Zume Pizza
Founded in 2015, Zume Pizza cooks pizza while it’s being delivered, sourcing 100% of its ingredients from local farmers. In November of 2018, Zume Pizza raised a $375 million Series C from Softbank Vision Fund.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $423 million
- Investors include: SignalFire, AME Cloud Ventures, Softbank Vision Fund
7. Michelle Zatlyn
COO & Co-Founder of CloudFare
Founded in 2009, Cloudflare is a web performance and security company that provides online services to protect and accelerate websites online. Cloudflare started as a simple application to find the source of email spam. From there, it grew into a service that protects websites from all manner of attacks, while simultaneously optimizing performance.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $331.1 million
- Investors include: Venrock, Fidelity Investments, Franklin Templeton Investments, Pelion Venture Partners, NEA, Union Square Ventures
8. Sheila Gujrathi, M.D
COO & Co-Founder of Gossamer Bio
Gossamer Bio is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of novel and differentiated therapeutic products. Founded in 2015, Gossamer Bio raised $230 million from Hillhouse Capital Group in 2018.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $330 million
- Investors include: Omega Funds, Hillhouse Capital Group, ARCH Venture Partners
9. Mariam Naficy
CEO & Founder of Minted
Minted uses technology to allow consumers to discover creative talent, making Minted a place where artists can learn, gain exposure, and build their business. LinkedIn named Minted as one of 2014’s 10 Most In-Demand Startups among job seekers. Additionally, Naficy was named one of the 25 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company in 2013.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $297.1 million
- Investors include: T. Rowe Price, Norwest Venture Partners, TCV, Ridge Ventures, Permira, Benchmarkr
10. Tina Sharkey
CEO & Co-Founder of Brandless
Brandless’ mission is to make high-quality products at simple and fair prices. The e-commerce company manufactures and sells food, beauty, and personal care products, adding value for the consumer by selling merchandise without a “brand tax.” Brandless raised a $240 million Series C from SoftBank Vision Fund in July of 2018.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $292.5 million
- Investors include: Slow Ventures, Cowboy Ventures, NEA, Softbank Vision Fund
11. Anne Boden
CEO & Founder of Starling Bank
Anne Boden founded Starling FS in 2014, which eventually became Starling Bank in 2016. Based in London, Starling Bank provides a mobile banking application and a debit card that enables users to manage their finances.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: £233 million
- Investors include: Harald McPike, Meridan Global Investors
12. Payal Kadakia
Executive Chairman & Co-Founder of Classpass
ClassPass is a subscription marketplace that lets users find and book fitness classes. After four years as CEO, Kadakia stepped down in March 2017 and currently serves as the executive chairman of the company. In 2016, she landed spots on both Forbes’ Women Entrepreneurs to Watch list and Fortune’s 40 under 40.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $239 million
- Investors include: Acequia Capital, Hank Vigil, General Catalyst, GV, Temasek Holdings
13. Emily Weiss
CEO & Founder of Glossier
Direct-to-consumer beauty products retailer Glossier raised $100 million in a Series D round led by Sequoia Capital in March of 2019. The financing reportedly sets a $1.2 billion valuation for the New York-based company.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $186.4 million
- Investors include: Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, IVP, Thrive Capital
14. Shan-Lyn Ma
CEO & Co-Founder of Zola
Zola is a wedding planning and reinvented registry experience founded in 2013. Based in New York, Zola is capitalizing on the wedding industry in the United States, valued at $90 billion, with $19 billion of that spent on wedding gifts.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $140.8 million
- Investors include: Thrive Capital, Canvas Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Goldman Sachs Investment Partners
15. Sandy Jen
CTO & Co-Founder of Honor
Honor, a home care company, is a pioneering national network of home care providers. Founded in 2015, Honor is now one of the fastest-growing, non-medical home care companies in the U.S., currently providing care to families in California, Texas, and New Mexico.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $115 million
- Investors include: Naspers, a16z, Thrive Capital
16. Jessica Richman
CEO & Co-Founder of uBiome
uBiome is a biotech company that has developed key technology to sequence the human microbiome. Richman founded uBiome as a citizen science project in 2012.
Funding information:
17. Steph Korey
CEO & Co-Founder of Away
Away is a direct-to-consumer modern travel and lifestyle brand that offers high-quality luggage at an affordable price point. Founded in 2015, Fast Company reported that the company will add 249 jobs over the next five years.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $107.5 million
- Investors include: Forerunner Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Accel
18. Josefin Landgard
COO & Co-Founder of KRY
KRY is the market leader and only CE-certified, app-based service for meeting doctors through video meetings in Sweden. They deliver streamlined healthcare at the patient’s own convenience while reducing the pressure on traditional healthcare providers so that they can provide better care for those patients most in need of it.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: €79.1 million
- Investors include: Index Ventures, Creandum, Accel
19. Edith Harbaugh
CEO & Co-Founder of LaunchDarkly
LaunchDarkly is a Feature Management Platform that serves over 100 billion feature flags daily to help software teams build better software, faster. They recently raised their $44 million Series C in March of 2019.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $76.3 million
- Investors include: Redpoint, Uncork Capital, DFJ, Bessemer Venture Partners
20. Karime German
Internal Ops Manager & Co-Founder of Grin Scooters
Based in Mexico City, Grin Scooters is a software company that operates a network of operational shared electric scooters. Currently, Grin operates in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Sao Paulo, and Bogota, but it has plans to expand to other cities throughout Latin America.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $72.7 million
- Investors include: monashees, Base10 Partners, Y Combinator, Trinity Ventures
21. Heidi Zak
Co-CEO of ThirdLove
ThirdLove is a fast-growing intimates brand that doesn’t rely on standard industry measurements. Founded in 2013, Heidi Zak left Google to build a new kind of bra company to help women reinvent how they shop for bras.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $68.6 million
- Investors include: NEA, L Catteron, Allen & Company
22. Ritu Narayan
CEO & Co-Founder of Zum
Founded in 2015, Zum raised a $40 million Series C in February 2019. Zum provides safe, efficient, and reliable child transportation for school districts and busy families. The company currently provides services in the San Francisco Bay Area, all of Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $67 million
- Investors include: Sequoia Capital, Spark Capital, BMW i Ventures
23. Nora Khaldi
CSO & Founder of Nuritas
Based in Dublin, Nuritas combines artificial intelligence and genomics to discover and unlock natural bioactive peptides. Nuritas is working to help manage and improve human health.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: €53.9 million
- Investors include: VisVirers New Protein, NDRC, Cultivian Sandbox Ventures
24. Aba Schubert
CEO & Co-Founder of Dorae
DORAE is a global blockchain-enabled physical commodities cloud that works to secure the flow of information accompanying raw materials. Founded in 2015, they raised a $50 million Series B in January of 2019.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $50 million
- Investors include: Aethel Partners
25. Georgina Gooley
Co-Founder of Billie
Billie is a shaving subscription service designed specifically for women. The female-first shaving company delivers razors and body care products at a lesser price than competitors. They have also depicted body hair in their ads and images to empower their customers to decide for themselves whether they want to shave it or let it grow.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $35 million
- Investors include: Goldman Sachs, Silverton Partners, Lakehouse Ventures, Female Founders Fund
26. Anda Gansca
CEO & Co-Founder of Knotch
Knotch is an independent content intelligence platform that helps measure the impact of content. Their end-to-end content intelligence platforms help marketers plan, measure, optimize and benchmark their content efforts across all owned and paid strategies.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $34.3 million
- Investors include:Michael Birch, NEA, Xochi Birch
27. Tracy Lawrence
CEO & Co-Founder of Chewse
Founded in 2011, Chewse provides companies with curated selections of family-style meals from local restaurants. Their last round was a $19 million Series C led by the Foundry Group.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $33.9 million
- Investors include: Foundry Group, Telegraph Hill Capital
28. Arum Kang
CEO & Co-Founder of Coffee Meets Bagel
Founded in 2012, Coffee Meets Bagel is a dating app for people who are looking for meaningful relationships. CMB raised a $12 million Series B in May of last year.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $31 million
- Investors include: Atami Capital, DCM Ventures
29. Christine Spang
CTO & Co-Founder of Nylas
Founded in 2013, Nylas is building a new platform for email-powered apps, starting with simple REST APIs and infrastructure for developers.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $30 million
- Investors include: Formation 8, Spark Capital, 8VC
30. Mariya Nurislamova
CEO & Co-Founder of Scentbird
Scentbird enables its users to choose and try a sample of designer fragrances on a monthly basis before buying them. They raised their Series A in May of last year in a round led by Goodwater Capital.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $28.4 million
- Investors include: Goodwater Capital, Y Combinator, FundersClub
31. Nicky Goulimis
CEO & Co-Founder of Nova Credit
Nova Credit is a cross-border credit reporting agency. Nova is working to create a global platform for financial identity so immigrants don’t have to start from scratch when they move to a new country.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $19.4 million
- Investors include: Index Ventures, General Catalyst, Y Combinator
32. Lisa Skeete Tatum
CEO & Co-Founder of Landit
Based in New York, Landit is a personalized career pathing platform that helps women and diverse groups succeed in the workplace. Landit creates personalized solutions that enable enterprises to attract, develop, and retain high potential diverse talent.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $17.6 million
- Investors include: WeWork, NEA, Workday Ventures
33. Maha Achour
CEO & Co-Founder of Metawave
Founded in 2017, Metawave is a wireless technology company that builds intelligent and high-performance automotive radars by leveraging metamaterials and AI.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $17 million
- Investors include: Motus Ventures, Thyra Global Management, Khosla Ventures, Denso
34. Michelle Cordeiro Grant
CEO & Founder of WearLively
Founded in 2015, WearLively is a bra and underwear company that blurs the aesthetic lines of lingerie, active, and swimwear. Cordeiro Grant previously was the Vice President of Merchandising at Thrillist and worked at Victoria’s Secret as a Director, Senior Merchant.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $15 million
- Investors include: Gelmart International, GGV Capital
35. Yunha Kim
CEO & Founder of Simple Habit
With over 1,500 meditations and audio therapy sessions, Simple Habit is a mental wellness platform that helps busy people reduce daily stress. Founded in 2016, Simple Habit is headquartered in San Francisco.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $12.6 million
- Investors include: Foundation Capital, NEA, Y Combinator
36. Shreya Misha
CEO & Co-Founder of Flyrobe
Based in Mumbai, India, Flyrobe is an on-demand apparel rental platform that provides premium designer wear for special occasions.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $10.7 million
- Investors include: Sequoia Capital India, IDG Ventures
37. Allison Robinson
CEO & Founder of The Mom Project
Founded in 2016, The Mom Project is a career destination for moms. With a community of over 75,000 professionals and more than 1,000 companies, The Mom Project is committed to building a better workplace for mothers and the businesses they support.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $10.6 million
- Investors include: Initialized Capital, Grotech Ventures, Atlanta Seed Company
38. Jessica Mah
CEO & Co-Founder of inDinero
Based in San Francisco, inDinero creates software solutions to help small businesses track and manage their finances. It aims to provide its users with instant insights into the finances of their companies, leading them to save on unnecessary expenses and to earn more money for their companies.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $9.9 million
- Investors include: 500 Startups, Y Combinator, SPH CAPITAL, Streamlined Ventures, Signatures Capital
39. Morgan DeBaun
CEO & Co-Founder of Blavity
Blavity is a venture-backed technology and media company aimed at building beautiful products and experiences for black millennials. Founded in July 2014, has quickly grown to become one of the fastest-growing digital media outlets on the web, reaching more than seven million millennials a month.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $9.4 million
- Investors include: 500 Startups, GV
40. Marah Lidey
Co-CEO & Co-Founder of Shine
Shine sends a daily text that addresses negative thought patterns. Anyone can sign up for Shine text and they send users actionable tips and content on confidence, daily happiness, mental health, or productivity.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $8.3 million
- Investors include: Flybridge Capital Partners, Eniac Ventures, Betaworks, Comcast Ventures
41. Benedetta Arese Lucini
CEO & Co-Founder of Oval Money
Based in London, Oval Money is an app for financial coaching and planning. Oval helps users save quickly and effectively, by teaching them to monitor spending habits and by making savings automatic. The app also leverages a community experience to make saving more dynamic.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $7 million
- Investors include: b-ventures, Intesa Sanpolo, Gruppo Bertoldi
42. Afton Vechery
CEO & Co-Founder of Modern Fertility
Modern Fertility is a women’s health company focused on making fertility information more accessible to women everywhere. They offer the first comprehensive test you can take at home to check in on your fertility.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $7 million
- Investors include: First Round Capital, Maveron, Union Square Ventures
43. Yeva Hyusyan
CEO & Co-Founder of SoloLearn
SoloLearn lets you learn and practice a skill of your choice anywhere, for free. Based in Pleasanton, California, SoloLearn lets students learn, create, and share programming content with peers around the globe.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $6.9 million
- Investors include: Naspers, Learn Capital, Granatus Ventures
44. Reshma Saujani
CEO & Founder of Girls Who Code
Founded in 2011, Saujani founded Girls Who Code to equip and inspire young women with the skills and resources to pursue opportunities for a computer science education. GWC pairs instruction in robotics, web design, and mobile development with high-touch mentorship for young women.
Funding information:
45. Rosanna Myers
CEO & Co-Founder of Carbon Robotics
Carbon Robotics was named one of the top 50 “most influential public and private companies in the global robotics industry” by the Robotics Business Review in 2016. Founded in 2014, Carbon Robotics is working to bring advanced robotics to the masses.
Funding information:
46. Anita Finnegan
CEO & Founder of Nova Leah
Nova Leah develops cybersecurity risk assessment solutions for connected medical devices. Based in Ireland, Anita Finnegan founded Nova Leah in 2015 and is an expert in Medical Device Cybersecurity.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: €2.8 million
- Investors include: Kernel Capital, COSIMO Ventures
47. Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins
CEO & Co-Founder of Promise
Promise is working on a solution to reduce the jail population by providing a cost-effective alternative to incarceration by extending the capabilities of community supervision. Promise provides arrestees with tailored plans that include court-mandated conditions and connection to services such as drug treatment, housing, mental health treatment, job training, and others.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $3.1 million
- Investors include: First Round Capital, Y Combinator, 8VC, Kapor Capital, Roc Nation
48. Kelly Peng
CEO & Co-Founder of Kura Technologies
Kura Technologies is an augmented reality company focused on building the next generation AR optics/display module. Their platform is designed to be integrated with software companies to provide enterprise and consumer solutions.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $1.5 million
- Investors include: HTC, Lucy Lv, CrunchFund
49. Jasmine Crowe
CEO & Founder of Goodr
Founded in 2017, Atlanta-based Goodr is a sustainable surplus food management platform that leverages technology to reduce food waste and combat hunger. Goodr’s blockchain-enabled platform provides an IRS audit-friendly donation record to improve businesses’ bottom line, reduce greenhouse emissions, and use food waste to reduce hunger.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $186.4 million
- Investors include: Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, IVP, Thrive Capital
50. Lisa Falzone
CEO & Co-Founder of Athena Security
Athena’s mission is to help prevent crime through its artificial intelligence platform. It helps prevent crimes by recognizing threatening actions and then taking the appropriate steps to alert the right parties before a criminal’s actions can escalate.
Funding information:
- Total funding amount: $100K
- Investors include: XFactor Ventures
Female entrepreneurs are seeing more VC dollars
With 2018 setting an all-time high for investment dollars into female-founded startups, female entrepreneurs are receiving more attention and money than ever before. As Crunchbase News reported earlier this year, “Nearly $40 billion was invested in companies with at least one female founder, representing 17 percent of invested dollars in the year.”
And the women who are receiving funding perform 63% better than investments with all-male founding teams, according to a study by First Round Capital.
While these women entrepreneurs are working to close the Venture Capital gap, there still remains much work to do to establish industry ties and crack the male-dominated venture capital world.
Find more incredible women in our Female Founder Series.