According to Become.co, women-owned businesses grow at about 5% each year. While this doesn’t sound like much, it’s actually double the usual rate of growth for other firms and sectors. An estimated of $1.9 trillion in revenue is produced by women-led companies each year – so you can imagine the impact that these women are making on the lives of others around the world.
To celebrate the power of female-led business, one thing you can do is get to know the faces behind these companies. After all, seeing the strength and determination that female business founders possess can do well to inspire you to reach for your goals as best as you can.
Ready to be inspired? Here are 25 female entrepreneurs to keep an eye out for.
Female entrepreneurs, you need to know
1. Jasmin Crowe
Jasmin Crowe is the founder of Goodr, a startup that focuses on sustainable food management. With her company, she’s been able to help players in the food and beverage industry to manage and lessen food waste while combating world hunger. She’s funded about $1.1 million in funding for her groundbreaking idea.
2. Julia Collins
Julia Collins founded Zume Pizza, a pizza delivery service that not only cooks the pizza while you deliver it but even sources all of its ingredients from local farmers. Her company is changing the pizza delivery industry while also helping farmers. Because of her innovation, she’s been able to raise up to $423 million in funding.
3. Shan-Lyn Ma
The wedding startup Zola is helping to reinvent wedding planning and registry, and that’s all thanks to its founder Shan-Lyn Ma. After seeing first-hand the potential of capitalizing on America’s growing wedding industry, she introduced a solution that would help both wedding planners, organizers, and couples-to-be. Her startup was able to get $140.8 million in funding.
4. Lisa Skeete Tatum
After seeing that women and members of minority groups needed better career growth opportunities, Lisa Skeete Tatum founded Landit, a platform that helps companies create personalized career paths to attract better candidates, keep valuable talent on board, and develop employees’ skills and personal development. Some of her startup’s investors include WeWork to help her raise $17.6 million for funding.
5. Ritu Narayan
Ritu Narayan is the CEO and founder of Zum, a company dedicated to helping make child transportation safer, more efficient and more accessible to school districts and families alike. Her company has since expanded to service all of Los Angeles, and parts of San Diego, Orange County, and San Francisco Bay Area.
6. Reshma Saujani
After seeing that opportunities for women in programming were limited, Reshma Saujani founded Girls Who Code, an organization who’s making it easier for girls to pursue computer science education and careers. Her organization is able to equip girls with skills in mobile app development, robotics, and more. Some of her investors include big names like Walmart, Uber, and Lyft.
7. Payal Kadakia
If you’ve heard of Classpass, then you need to know their woman founder, Payal Kadakia. Her company offers a subscription-based app that lets users find, enroll, and reserve spots in popular fitness classes near them. With her innovative startup idea and contribution to fitness, she’s been named one of Forbes’ 40 Under 40.
8. Neeti Mehta
Neeti Mehta co-founded one of the most widely successful robotic press automation platforms to date, getting the attention and support from names like Goldman Sachs, Softbank Vision Fund, and Workday Ventures. Her company’s intelligent process robots have been helping companies and firms automate their processes in HR, IT, claims procession, and more.
9. Shreya Misha
Unless you lived in India, you might not be familiar with Shreya Misha. But she is in fact founder of popular rent-on-demand fashion platform, Flyrobe. Her platform allows consumers to rent premium designer wear for special events like weddings, parties, and more – all with a few clicks. During her funding round, she’s been able to raise $10.7 million with the support of investors like IDG Ventures.
10. Marah Lidey
Marah Lidey founded a startup with a simple yet profound mission: anyone who opted in to receive texts from Shine received daily messages that helped them beat negative thinking or dangerous thought patterns. Her idea has been funded by names like Flybridge Capital Partners, Eniac Ventures, and Betaworks, raising up to $8.3 million.
11. Sheila Gujrathi, MD
After getting her medical degree, Sheila Gujrathi went on to found Gossamer Bio, a biopharmaceutical company that’s focused on developing, researching, and discovering new and alternative therapeutic products for mass markets. Her company has raised $330 million, backed by institutions like Hillhouse Capital Group and Omega Funds.
12. Cristina Junqueira
Cristina Junqueira founded NuBank, who helps process, issue, transfer, and administrate payments related to post-paid credit cards and equity investment to institutions like banks. Her company has been awarded $707.6 million in funding, and is expected to grow even more.
13. Michelle Cordeiro Grant
Michelle Cordeiro Grant is the founder of WearLively. WearLively is changing the fashion industry with a specific focus on making the lines between lingerie, active wear, and swimwear blurred with their unique bras and underwear products. She’s been able to get $15 million in funding and expects to grow her company operations.
14. Morgan DeBaun
Morgan DeBraun is the founder of popular media and tech group, Blavity Inc., whose content and services deliver beautiful products and experiences for black millennials. Blavity is currently one of the fastest-growing media outlets in the digital space, with a monthly readership of about 7 million millennials.
15. Jessica Mah
Jessica Mah founded inDinero, raising about $9.9 million in funding. inDinero is based in San Francisco with a focus on helping small businesses optimize their finances and budgets. Her software solution allows small businesses to glean important insights about their money to allow them to save expensive fees and maximize sales and capital.
16. Kelly Peng
Kelly Peng founded Kura Technologies, a company that helps design and develop augmented reality (AR) tools like optics or display modules for other brands. With their technology, companies can integrate the services of other AR software to provide better enterprise and consumer offers and solutions.
17. Mariya Nurislamova
Mariya Nurislamova’s startup, ScentBird, was created to help customers experience monthly trials of designer fragrances and perfumes before deciding to purchase them at full price. Her very niche idea supports fragrance companies and consumers alike by helping manufacturers reach more customers and helping customers make more informed decisions.
18. Christine Spang
Christine Spang is the brains behind Nylas, a computer company that builds brand-new platforms designed for email-powered applications and software. She’s seen been able to get a whopping $30 million for her tech innovation, with investors like Formation 8, 8VC, and Spark Capital coming in.
19. Janet Mock
Janet Mock is an actress, writer, and director – the first transgender woman of color to write and direct for a popular TV series, Pose. With the success of her TV show, she was able to sign a multiyear development deal with Netflix to produce more niche shows for underrepresented groups and voices.
20 Ashlee Ammons and Kerri Schrader
Ashlee Ammons and Kerri Shrader are mother-daughter co-founders of Mixtroz who, after terrible experiences at separate networking events, founded their platform to help make event management better for all attendees. Their innovation successfully closed $1 million in funding during one of their rounds, and they’re set to grow their company to keep grouping and matching like-minded people to appropriate networking events.
21 Shelly Bell
Shelly Bell founded Black Girl Ventures in order to give equal opportunities in startup funding for black and brown women communities. Her venture funding companies comes at a great time, where though startups led by black and brown individuals are the fastest-growing sector, they still receive less than 1% of all venture capitalist funds. Today, she’s funded 32 startups and raised over $70,000, while receiving grants and donations from fellow organizations.
22 Neha Narkhede
Neha Narkhede is one of the founders of Confluent, a business service that has become integral to all businesses with a digital footprint. Her company’s product allows her business customers to integrate data across different apps and platforms, allowing customers to see all the data and information together in real time. She’s raised over $125 million in a recent funding round.
23 Tiffany Dufu
Tiffany Dufu founded The Cru, a networking platform that makes it easier for women to connect and support one another. Her app gets information about a user then pairs her up with 9 other women – her “Cru” – where the group now is able to communicate, network, and support each other through things like career changes, divorce, and other personal issues. Morgan Stanley came on to the company as a founding partner.
24 Andrea and Robin McBride
Andrea and Robin McBridge are sister co-founders of McBride Sisters Wine. After claiming their space in the wine industry, notorious for being dominated by white males, they proceeded to invent the industry by introducing new vintage wines, and wines in soda cans. Their goal is to encourage more women to get into the wine industry.
25 Patricia Santos and Brandy Hoffman
Patricia Santos and Brandy Hoffman co-founded beauty startup Volition, designed to help users submit an idea for a skincare or beauty product, where a network of chemical engineers and cosmetic labs experiment to see if the concept can be transformed into a mass-market product. They’ve since received 4,000 submissions and successfully launched 26 new, innovative beauty products both on their website and beauty powerhouse Sephora.
What can you learn from these female entrepreneurs?
It wasn’t too long ago when women weren’t superpowers in business – and it may be a while until we see equal representation. But until then, we can take inspiration from these powerful women entrepreneurs who have built large brands and companies, how they show up to their businesses, and make waves in every industry imagineable.