Funding, Family, Fertility
Nest Health $12.5M+, Abby Care $35M, Therna $10M, and more — plus Cofertility reshaping fertility planning, Canva hits $42B, and new gigs from Ditto AI to Pear VC accelerators
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Hello ladies!
For the first time in four years, I’m not packing for my Harvard dorm — I graduated. Surreal.
The “real world” hit fast: building companies, posting daily on LinkedIn, traveling, savoring my 20s, gearing up for my Fulbright, and facing something I’ve avoided but can’t ignore: fertility planning, specifically egg freezing.
As young women, we often make huge health decisions with limited information and community — birth control is the classic example. I don’t want to make this next decision alone. That’s why I’m exploring egg freezing with Cofertility, a female-founded company I first heard about from Co-Founder Halle Tecco at a women’s health breakfast in London.
Research shows that freezing eggs earlier can significantly improve the chances of a healthy pregnancy later. Cofertility makes this process more accessible and affordable through two unique options: the Split Program, which lets you freeze your eggs and store them for 10 years at no cost when you donate half to another family, and the Keep Program, which allows you to keep all your eggs while accessing discounted rates for freezing and storage.
Family planning rarely comes up at founder events, yet it is so central to gender equality and providing more control over our timelines. I always want to make space for us to talk openly about these issues — especially those that matter most to career-focused women. If you’re curious about egg freezing like me or want to better understand your options, start here.
Dr. Rebekah Gee (CEO) and Rebecca Kavoussi (COO), Co-Founders of Nest Health, a New Orleans-based in-home family care provider for Medicaid households, raised $12.5M+ in Series A funding co-led by 8VC and Blue Venture Fund.
Havi Nguyen, Founder & CEO of Abby Care, a San Francisco-based caregiving certification platform supporting families and professionalizing home care, recently raised $35M in funding led by Sequoia.
Nazli Azimi, Co-Founder & CEO of Therna Biosciences, an RNA medicines development company combining deep RNA biology with generative AI, raised $10M in seed funding led by AIX Ventures.
Valentina Jordan, Co-Founder & CEO of Nauta, an AI-powered logistics orchestration platform for importers, raised $7M in seed funding led by Construct Capital and Predictive.
Françoise Parker (CEO) and Stephanie Hendricks (CDO), Co-Founders of AiGent, an energy tech startup using AI to orchestrate distributed power plants and deliver grid reliability, raised $6M in seed funding led by Zero Infinity Partners.
Jing Feng, Co-Founder & COO of Bluefish, a New York-based AI marketing platform helping Fortune 500 brands optimize and influence AI-generated responses, raised $20M in Series A funding led by NEA.
Kelly Cai, Co-Founder & COO of Barti, a San Francisco-based AI-powered electronic health record platform built for eye care practices, raised $12M in Series A funding led by Five Elms Capital.
Stephanie Painter and Hayley Painter, Co-Founders & Co-CEOs of Painterland Sisters, a Pennsylvania-based organic dairy brand bringing Icelandic-style skyr yogurt to shelves nationwide, raised a 7-figure seed round to expand into 5,000 Whole Foods locations across all 50 states.
Nelly Nurmalasari, Co-Founder of Pintarnya, a Jakarta-based employment and financial services platform for blue-collar workers, raised $16.7M in Series A funding led by Square Peg.
Andreea Bodnari, Founder & CEO of ALIGNMT AI, a New York-based AI compliance platform for healthcare, raised $6.5M in seed funding led by AIX Ventures.
Sumreen Rattan, Co-Founder & COO of Moment Energy, a British Columbia-based clean energy startup repurposing retired EV batteries into modular storage systems, raised $5M in funding from Pacific Economic Development Canada.
Masha Petrova, Co-Founder & CEO of Nullspace, a deep tech company developing electromagnetic simulation software for aerospace, defense, and quantum computing, raised $2.5M in seed funding led by Fathom Fund.
👩💻 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!
❤️🔥 Ditto AI is hiring Growth Interns at Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, USC, and more ($500/month + up to $50K bonus) to help launch its AI-powered dating platform on campuses.
🤖 Cluely is hiring a full-time Prompt Engineer — no experience required, just raw intelligence and curiosity to build with AI.
💡 Draper Associates is hiring a Fall Intern to work with their team on blockchain, data, and the future of money.
🔥 Halo is hiring Growth Engineers and more to build real-world AI that sees, hears, and responds instantly.
📄 Pulse is hiring a Machine Learning Engineer Intern (Summer 2026) in SF to work on computer vision, NLP, and data infrastructure powering Fortune 50 companies and top startups.
🎧 David AI is hiring a Chief of Staff in SF to help scale its high-quality audio datasets platform and partner directly with the CEO on growth and strategy.
🧃 Juicebox is hiring Founding Recruiter, Software Engineers, SDRs, Account Executives, and more to scale its AI-powered recruiting platform from their SF HQ.
🍴 City Storage Systems is hiring an Executive Recruiter in LA (1–5 yrs experience) to help scale its portfolio including CloudKitchens, Otter, Picnic, ProFoods, and Lab37.
⚙️ July is hiring 2 Engineers in NYC to build its CRM and payments platform powering top creator agencies.
💊 Inflect Capital is hiring MBA/MD/PhD Fellows (apply by Sept 15) to source early-stage healthcare startups, work with physicians, and learn venture investing from the inside.
🍐 Pear VC is accepting applications for PearX W26 (apply by Sept 13) — a 12-week pre-seed accelerator that has backed Viz.ai, Affinity, Nova Credit, Glide, and more.
💁♀️ Are you a young professional, college student, or graduate school student who wants to work at a startup or SMB? Apply to WWV Labs to get matched with freelance, fractional, and full-time opportunities at top startups & SMBs.
New RippleMatch CEO Audrey Patenaude said AI is reshaping entry-level hiring: junior hires fluent in AI can now produce the output of more senior employees, yet most hiring processes still miss key signals like adaptability, initiative, and AI fluency.
Ruth Morales Zimmerman spotlighted 20+ funds and networks backing women founders, from Female Founders Fund and BBG Ventures to SoGal, Backstage Capital, and Inspired Capital.
Canva, the most valuable female-founded startup in the world (Melanie Perkins), hit a $42B valuation, letting employees cash out up to $3M each in a secondary sale — a huge milestone for a company once rejected by 100 investors, now with 185M users and both co-founders pledging 80% of their stake to charity.
Justine Moore (a16z) shared a “State of Play” guide on AI creative tools, breaking down the best models for images, video, audio, 3D, and character workflows.
Mallory Contois posted 10 small moves to jumpstart your career this week, like thanking a mentor, updating LinkedIn, or tackling one scary email.
Eunice Lai shared how saying yes to a 1am startup task landed her a CMO role that grew into a breakout opportunity, urging students to chase every chance — no matter how far-fetched — instead of waiting for the “safe” path.
Sana’s CEO shared go-to interview questions — “if you were CEO, what would you do differently?”, “what are you irrationally passionate about outside of work?”, and “what do people get wrong about you on first impression?”
a16z shared a hiring guide stressing that recruiting is a founder’s core job from day one — advising startups to build multi-pronged sourcing pipelines, move fast in hiring, and set clear role expectations early.
Priya Murali and Vaish R. announced they’re building an AI startup tackling commercial fraud — detecting synthetic business owners, recycled data, and fraud networks at scale.
August 30 | 👟 Miss EmpowHer: It Girl Walk (Atlanta)
August 30 | ☕ Just Girl Stuff: Coffee + Conversations (Atlanta)
August 30 | 🤝 Women’s Networking Lunch (Waterloo)
September 3 | 🎨 Designers Who Vibe Code (NYC)
September 5 | 🚶♀️ TechWalk with Tech Ladies (NYC)
September 6 | 🚀 AI Agents Hackathon (NYC)
September 9 | 📲 Roundtable: Social Media & User Acquisition (NYC)
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I hope you enjoyed this newsletter, Hustlers!
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Love,
Daniela & The WWV Labs Team