From Hackathons to Funding Rounds: Women Founders Turning Ideas into Millions
$203.95M Raised Across 13 Female-Led Startups, Ulu Ventures, the Largest Latina-led VC Fund in the U.S., Closed a $208 million Fourth Fund, GenMD: AI Healthcare Navigator Built in 24 Hours at DevFest
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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Kylee McVaney, Co-Founder & CEO of Nextworld® (Denver, CO), a no-code enterprise software platform, raised $65M in Series F funding led by McVaney Investment Partnership.
Alicia Waineo, Co-Founder of ANA, Inc (Henderson, NV), sustainable mobile power solutions, raised $50M in funding from S2G Investments.
Elaine Zelby, Founder of Tofu (SF), an AI-driven B2B marketing platform, raised $12M in Series A funding led by SignalFire.
Dr. Liberty Eberly, co-founder of innovaTel, led her telepsychiatry company to a major exit with its acquisition by Iris TeleHealth.
Anna Berger & Cara Kessler, Co-Founders of Trayd: Construction Payroll (NYC), raised $4.5M in seed funding led by Suffolk Technologies.
Charanya “CK” Kannan, Co-Founder & CEO of Pinkfish (SF), an AI-driven automation platform, raised $7.6M in pre-seed funding led by Norwest Venture Partners.
Tumisho Thobejane, founder of Fooddable and a Vaal University of Technology student, won $1,000 at the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards for her startup, which turns surplus fast food into meals using a cashless token system.
Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks, Co-Founder of OVUM. Technology (Australia), an AI-powered women’s health platform, raised $1.7M in funding led by Giant Leap.
Laura Moreno, CPA, Co-Founder of Fifteenth (SF), an AI-powered tax solution, raised $8.25M in seed funding led by A* and General Catalyst.
Kylie Troy-West, Co-Founder of Factor House (Melbourne, Australia), a real-time data management platform, raised $5M in seed funding led by Blackbird Ventures.
Maia Lidbeck, Co-Founder & COO of Agteria Biotech (Sweden), raised $6.3M in seed funding led by Industrifonden and AgriZeroNZ.
Lynn Raynault, Co-Founder & CEO of Questal (NYC), a financial wellness platform, raised $3.2M in seed funding from Wall Street executives.
Ulu Ventures, the largest Latina-led VC fund in the U.S., just closed a $208M fourth fund—bringing its total assets under management to over $400M.
Olga Kundzich, Co-Founder of Moderne (Miami), a developer collaboration platform, raised $30M in Series B funding led by Acrew Capital.
Chanie Mayer-Rubin, co-founder of Proud Moments ABA, led the company from seven locations in New York to over 70 clinics across 12 states—now marking a major milestone with its acquisition by Nautic Partners to expand autism care nationwide.
Lindsay Brady, Co-Founder of Era Finance (NYC), an AI-driven personal finance assistant, raised $6.2M in seed funding led by MaC Venture Capital and Third Kind Venture Capital.
Anna Chif & Fiona Lake Waslander, Co-Founders of Coral (Montreal), a digital menopause care platform, raised $2.9M USD in seed funding led by Brightspark.
Malin Schmidt, Founder of Kodiak Hub (Stockholm, Sweden), an AI-powered supplier relationship management solution, raised $6M in funding from Oxx.
February 19 | 🌃 Women in Robotics NYC – (re)Introductory Meetup (NYC)
February 21 | 🍽️ Female Founder's Lunch (LA)
February 21 | 🤝 Austin Female Founders + Friends (Austin)
February 22 | 👩💻 Harvard Women Engineers Code (WECode) 2025 Conference (Boston)
February 22 | 🏛️ Harvard Business School Women in Business Conference (Boston)
February 22 | 🧘♀️ Mini-Recharge for Women in Software (Seattle)
February 24 | 💰 Women in Venture & Private Equity | RCVC x Inovia Capital (Toronto)
February 25 | 💡 WWV Labs Startup Culture: The Myths vs. The Reality (Virtual)
February 25 | 🥳 Harvard $1M Moonshot Launch Party (Cambridge)
February 26 | ☕ Women's Breakfast Club at the AlgoRanch (Denver)
February 26 | 👩💻 Women Tech Meetup w/ Lawformer & SG (SF)
March 4 | 💰 Brex Social Club: Women’s History Month with Fintech Mavericks (NYC)
March 6 | 👩💻 Women in Tech: Data Science and AI Trailblazers (San Diego)
March 6 | 💰 Women Innovation Summit: Pitch Competition (Toronto)
March 6 | 🌟 Redefine Possible | International Women’s Day Summit (SF)
March 7 | ☕ Coffee Meet Up: AI in Women’s Fertility Wellness (SF)
March 7 | ✨ BFN Be Her Summit (Toronto)
March 21 | 👩💻 Go Beyond 2% - Women's Leadership Conference (SF)
March 27 | 👩💻 C10 Labs and Springboard Enterprises Presents: International Women's Month AI Hackathon (Boston)
March 29 | 🤝 Women’s Interdisciplinary Society of Entrepreneurship Summit (Boston)
April 23 | 💰 Fintech Is Femme Leadership Summit (NYC)
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Diem Dang and her team built GenMD, an AI-powered healthcare navigator, in just 24 hours at Columbia’s DevFest—creating a Chrome extension that streamlines finding insurance-covered medical services through AI-driven automation.
Pear Chotbunwong, Co-founder of Manyasiri, is navigating the challenge of building a startup on an F-1 visa—now racing to hit 10,000 followers by May to strengthen her case for an O-1 visa and keep her company in the U.S.
Swarna Shiv's Unsmudgeable just hit $50K in its equity crowdfunding round—on track for $250K—to scale its smudge-proof eyewear tech in a $585B market, proving that organic community-driven funding can fuel industry disruption.
Vienna Sparks' MabLab has been named a Top Startup to Watch in 2025 by the Boston Business Journal, solidifying its place as a healthcare innovator reshaping the industry with cutting-edge technology.
Sheikha Al-Otaibi, co-founder of Interlix Staffing, pivoted away from part-time staffing—demonstrating that saying no to misaligned clients is sometimes the key to long-term business success.
Michelle Lawson, founder of CS Girlies and AI researcher at MIT, judged Columbia's DevFest 2025, where Gen Z innovators blew her away with their creativity, execution, and problem-solving in cutting-edge hackathon projects.
Ida Tin didn’t just build Clue into a $200M menstrual health app with 12M users—she coined the term "FemTech" and helped shape a now $60B industry, proving that women’s health is anything but niche.
Name: Ayah Abdeldayem
School: University of Kentucky ‘26
Major: Computer Science
Startup: AFO Cyber LLC
Sector: Cybersecurity
Description of Startup: AFO Cyber is a subscription-based service where people can send us emails, phone numbers, or pictures of physical mail they suspect are scams. Real people (our team and future reviewers) will analyze submissions and send back reports with the likelihood of it being a scam and advice on what to do next.
Biggest Startup Achievement: Getting our LLC established, and all the legal documentations signed and registered! Also, sending in our application for YC!!
Biggest Startup Learning Moment: My biggest startup learning moment was learning how to manage a team to make sure that all the required things to keep our startup going get done on time and efficiently. I've also learned so much about business that I didn't know before, such as LLC's, registered agents, equity, writing a privacy policy, and pitching a business plan!
Advice for Female Students Interested in Entrepreneurship: Just keep building the startup that you see a successful future with. There is gonna be so many people that want to shut you down just as being a women founder but you just need to keep the mindset going and prove everyone wrong regardless of setbacks.
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💁♀️ 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 800+ fellows from Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Columbia, UPenn, UC Berkeley, and other top universities today!
👩💻 Calling all women in tech—WECode 2025 is giving you the chance to showcase your project to recruiters, sponsors, and industry leaders at its Project Exhibition! Apply here by February 20th for a shot at exclusive visibility and networking.
🏠 FoundHer House just launched in San Francisco—offering a live-in community for ambitious female founders to build, grow, and connect. Apply here!
👩💻 Female founders raising a seed round—Accelerate Her is offering a no-equity six-week venture accelerator designed to equip 12 women-led startups with fundraising mastery, performance optimization, and direct investor connections—apply here by February 20th!
💰VC-bound? Nine summer fellowships and analyst programs are now open—including Equal Ventures, Kapor Capital, and Bessemer Venture Partners—offering hands-on experience in venture capital. Deadlines are approaching fast, so apply now!
🏙️ NYC founders and investors—Bulletpitch just opened its Tribeca HQ as a free co-working space to connect, collaborate, and build community, with a goal of bringing 1,000+ venture leaders together this year.
📚 Missed the Y Combinator deadline? No worries—YC's best startup lessons are available for free, covering everything from finding a co-founder to fundraising. Get the full list of must-read resources here!
📊 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
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Love,
Daniela
this is so so valuable! Thanks for sharing :)