Cold DMs, Community Plays, & Creator Paydays
Actionable tips for building authentic community, Dame acquires Chakrubs to grow its women-led sexual wellness empire, and Verci is paying NYC creators (2K+ followers) to co-work, party, and collab
This is WWV Labs’ weekly newsletter: Her Hustle, a place to learn all about the new and the next in female entrepreneurship, and we’re here to help you dive into it. We highlight all the fierce women who are building startups—from those launching from dorm rooms and balancing classes to recent grads and experienced professionals turning their bold visions into reality.
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The buzzword of the summer? Community.
It’s everywhere—everyone’s building niche communities: wellness, identity, VC, founders. And I love to see it. A year ago, Harvard Women in Entrepreneurship was one of the first orgs hosting cross-campus founder events for female students in NYC. We started with 15 members. Now, Harvard WiE and WWV Labs have grown into a 1,000+ member network across 15+ schools, with $20K+ raised for women-led startups and events featuring top operators in VC.
But with popularity comes dilution. “Community” is trending—and not always in a good way. Lately, I’ve seen a drop in quality: surface-level partnerships, poorly organized panels, and collabs that leave student orgs doing all the work.
So how do you protect your time and your community?
In a LinkedIn post that gained traction this week, I shared 3 hard-earned lessons every founder, community builder, or operator should know when it comes to collaboration:
Vet for mission alignment
Don’t take vague pitches seriously
Only say yes to people with a track record of doing the work
If you’re growing a team, planning events, or navigating the messy middle of building something meaningful—this one’s for you. Read the full post here!
Lisa Yan, Founder of Argus Systems, raised $3M in seed funding co-led by Norwest and Maple VC to build data and evaluation infrastructure for robotics and physical AI.
Katarina Ilic, Co-Founder of Volteras, raised $11.1M in Series A funding led by Union Square Ventures to build an AI-powered energy data platform connecting EVs, chargers, and energy systems.
Christina Smolke and Kristy Hawkins, Co-Founders of Antheia, raised $56M in Series C funding to expand U.S. manufacturing and launch new biosynthetic pharmaceutical ingredients using their synthetic biology platform.
Silvia Frutos, Co-Founder of SpliceBio, raised $135M in Series B funding co-led by EQT Life Sciences and Sanofi Ventures to advance their lead gene therapy program for Stargardt disease.
Jamie Smith, Co-Founder and CEO of Innovative Pet Lab, raised $1.1M in pre-seed funding led by Nordic Group and joined by Leap Venture Studio to scale their at-home diagnostic testing kits for pets.
Karolina Löfqvist and Jasmine Tagesson, Co-Founders of hormona, raised €7.8M in seed funding led by Voima Ventures and SuperNode Global VC to build an AI-powered at-home hormone testing and tracking platform for women’s health.
Cecilia Ziniti, former GC of Cruise and Alexa, closed a $10M Series A for GC AI—her legaltech platform that's grown 3x in 2025.
Karin Klein, Founding Partner of Bloomberg Beta, helped raised $75M for the firm’s fifth fund focused on business technology and AI.
Melisa Tokmak, Founder and CEO of Netic, raised $20M in funding from Greylock, Founders Fund, and others to scale her AI-powered revenue automation platform.
Juliana Hilliard, Co-Founder of Parallel Bio, raised $21M to scale her AI-powered organoid platform to slash drug development timelines.
Danae Shell, Co-Founder and CEO of Valla, raised a $2.7M seed round to scale her AI-powered legal platform.
Alexandra Fine and Vanessa Cuccia, Founders of Dame and Chakrubs respectively, announced Dame’s acquisition of Chakrubs to expand its women-led sexual wellness portfolio—integrating crystal-based intimacy products into Dame’s pleasure-forward platform.
Kate Blake, Co-Founder and CTO of ThreatSpike, closed a $14M Series A to scale their unified cybersecurity platform to 90+ countries.
Caroline Grey, Co-Founder of Treefera, raised a $30M Series B to scale their AI-powered supply chain platform across North America, APAC, and Europe.
Martha Dreiling, Co-Founder of Reserv, raised a $25M Series B to scale her AI-native insurtech platform.
June 30 | 🧬 Summer BioSocial in Women’s Health (SF)
June 30 | 🤝 Chicago Female Founders & Friends (Chicago)
July 9 | 👩💻 ReDo Women’s Entrepreneurship Summit (Chicago)
July 15 | 👩💻 Women Tech Meetup: TechCrunch All Stage (Boston)
July 18 | 🤝 Austin Female Founders & Friends (Austin)
Hosting an event for women in entrepreneurship?
Share the details with WWV Labs Her Hustle’s community by filling out this form!
Molly He, Co-Founder of Element Biosciences, raised over $600M—including a $277M Series D—to bring high-accuracy, benchtop DNA sequencing to small labs globally.
Pritika Mehta, YC alum and Founder of Butternut AI, reminds us that founding a startup is the hardest (and riskiest) path to wealth in tech, so know your why before you dive in.
Daniela Andrade breaks down how she scaled Harvard’s Women in Entrepreneurship community from 15 to 1,000+ members across campuses—plus her no-BS playbook for vetting collaborations that actually build, not drain, your community.
Harvard student and 1M+ content creator Elise Pham shares how mastering the art of cold-emailing—not experience—landed her top internships at places like Microsoft and Harvard Medical School.
Fatimah Hussain, a serial founder and EECS student at Berkeley, broke down how she built a nearly 80K social following in 2 years—crediting daily consistency and smart storytelling as the only two things you really need to grow your brand.
Nabihah Ahmad turned down a post-grad tech job to co-found SSQRD, a mission-driven fashion-tech startup—with 414K+ followers, a Columbia-built team, and deep roots in the garment worker legacy she's here to transform.
Sitch Co-Founder Nandini Mullaji raised $5M to scale her AI matchmaker that's turning 91% of setups into real-life dates—doubling users monthly and shaking up the dating game with a pay-only-if-it-works model.
Northwestern CS + AI student Julia Li dropped cold outreach gold—after sending 500+ DMs in 3 days, she’s sharing the exact messaging formula that actually gets replies.
💁♀️ Are you a female student or recent graduate who wants to work at a startup? Apply to WWV Labs Fellowship Program to find ad hoc projects, term-time internships, summer internships, or full-time employment opportunities at startups!
Join our community of 850+ fellows from Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Columbia, UPenn, UC Berkeley, and other top universities today!
👩💻 Daniela Andrade dropped a curated list of 15+ recently funded, female-founded startups actively hiring for women seeking roles at high growth, female-founded startups!
🚨 Calling all female founders in Boston: HUMN, a new community for female builders is launching pop-up hacker houses and hands-on events — apply now to join their Slack!
💸 Believe.app just launched the largest builder grant of its kind — the $1M Believe Builders Fund is now awarding equity-free microgrants to ambitious founders and communities— apply now to fund your next big idea!
🚀 No internship? No problem. Season Zero (June 9–Aug 15) is a hands-on program for Gen Z builders breaking into fashion tech, with mentorship, demo day, and two tracks for founders and career switchers. Join the Discord here.
🚀 SwiftSku (YC W21), led by Daniel Mazur, is hiring a high-agency Head of Marketing & Growth — perfect for ex-founders who thrive in chaos and know how to scale from zero.
🤝 Interning in the Bay? Don’t miss Internapalooza on Aug 4 — the ultimate SF meetup for STEM interns, hosted by Cory Levy (comment under his post here to join), with past speakers like Julia Hartz (Eventbrite) and Sam Altman (OpenAI)!
🚀 NYC-based startup Enttor is hiring full-time Growth and Marketing leads — with a $2,000 referral bonus on the line — to help build the future of marketing intelligence under CEO and Co-Founder Zinnie Zhang!
💸 Everywhere Ventures — one of the world’s most active pre-seed funds — is hiring a data-driven Analyst to work directly with founders, ops, and venture deals in a fast-paced, founder-first environment! Apply here.
🚀 Pillar VC (backed by a $175M Fund IV) is hiring a Boston-based Chief of Staff to work directly with partners on deal flow, founder support, and deeptech VC ops — no prior VC experience required! Apply here.
📱 NYC-based creators and micro-influencers with 2K+ followers can now get paid to co-work, party, and collab with Verci through their new creator program — perks include exclusive events, brand deals, and discounted membership!
💸 Thinking about breaking into VC? Here are 37+ VC fellowships and scout programs—from Sequoia to Girls Into VC—curated by Gen Z VC voice Natalie Neptune to help you launch your investing journey.
🚀 Hampton is hiring for a high-energy sales role — drop a comment on Jake Sacks’ post to get fast-tracked for a call with Sam himself.
📊 Accountalent, the leading tax and accounting firms for over 5,000 startups, has offered to file 2024 taxes for any undergraduate female-founded and managed startup corporation totally free of charge. This includes filing the Federal and State corporate tax returns, DE Franchise tax return, Form 1099s, consulting on tax matters, etc. It also includes preparing 2024 financial statements.
Joe Faris, CPA, founder of Accountalent has conducted Office Hours for many years at Harvard, MIT and UChicago and has worked with hundreds of female founders, including many foreign founders. Feel free to email him or make an appointment on his online calendar to redeem this perk or if you have any tax questions:
Joe Faris, CPA, jfaris@accountalent.com, Online Calendar: https://calendly.com/joefaris
🧘♀️ Fempower Health just dropped The Health of Women Playbook—a data-packed resource decoding women’s health trends and insights to help founders, operators, and investors build smarter in femtech.
🚀 Share this newsletter with a friend and start growing your network.
💁♀️ Connect with me on LinkedIn for daily insights on women in entrepreneurship.
📈 Partner with WWV Labs if you are a startup interested in hiring top female talent.
🌟 Promote yourself to 10,236+ subscribers by sponsoring this newsletter.
I hope you enjoyed this newsletter, Hustlers!
Feel free to share your feedback on this newsletter with me by filling out this form!
Love,
Daniela