Pitch Perfect: The Female Student Founders Winning Big
Congrats to student founders Anantika Mannby, Miki S-Y, Ayah Abdeldayem, and Naomi Rajput for taking home over $56,000 in pitch competition prizes this week!
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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Good morning and happy May! The East Coast has been serving sunshine, and with summer on the horizon and the semester wrapping up, Her Hustle is officially back. Thanks for your patience while I navigated a whirlwind senior spring—here’s what I’ve been up to:
I hosted Katy Nelson, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, at Harvard for a deep dive into the future of Go-To-Market strategy—one of the most urgent convos in tech right now.
At the Harvard Blockchain Conference, I moderated the Women in Web3 panel featuring powerhouse founders Pooja Shah (Fern), Stephanie Howard (Endstate), Michelle Lapidot (Remora), and Winnie Qiu (Avinasi Labs).
I also had the chance to host Rutger Bregman, 2x New York Times bestselling author, for a powerful conversation on moral ambition and redefining success.
And I was incredibly honored to receive the Harvard Innovation Labs’ Community Elevation Award for empowering women founders nationwide and giving them the spotlight they deserve through LinkedIn.
Spring has been packed with events, and I’m excited to keep it going with Columbia’s Female Founder Friday event tomorrow and NY Tech Week. See you in NYC!
Marie Bedu, Co-Founder of RockFi, raised a $19.5M Series A to scale her Paris-based wealthtech platform aiming for $1B AUM by 2026, blending AI and human expertise to modernize private banking.
Shannon Miller, Founder and CEO of Mainspring, raised $258M in a Series F round led by General Catalyst to scale her clean energy hardware startup.
Henley Vazquez, Co-Founder of Fora, raised $40M Series C to scale the travel tech startup’s advisor-powered booking platform, backed by Thrive, Insight, Forerunner, and Heartcore.
Michelle Cordeiro Grant, Co-Founder and CEO of GORGIE, raised $24.5M Series A to expand her clean energy drink brand to 1,900 Target stores nationwide, bringing total funding to $37M since launch.
Rebecca Hu-Thrams, Co-Founder and CEO of Glacier, raised $16M Series A to scale her AI-powered recycling robots across major U.S. cities.
Rema Matevosyan, Co-Founder and CEO of Near Space Labs, raised a $20M Series B to scale her stratospheric imaging startup, expanding coverage to 80% of the U.S. with industry-leading 7cm resolution data.
Kathryn Polkoff, Co-Founder and CEO of Hoofprint Biome, raised a $15M Series A to scale her enzyme-based feed additive that cuts cattle methane emissions.
Dr. Samantha Anderson, Co-Founder and CEO of DePoly, raised $23M in seed funding to launch a breakthrough plastics recycling plant in Switzerland.
May 1 | 🎉 Harvard Ventures FOUNDERS & FRIENDS (NYC)
May 2 | 🎉 CORE x HUWiE x WWV Labs x Fierce Foundry: Female Founder Friday (NYC)
May 2 | ☕ BuildHer Brunch NYC (NYC)
May 6 | ☕ Female Founders & Funders Breakfast (Foundess x Girls Into VC x Foley & Lardner) (Boston)
May 8 | 🍽️ LA Female Founders Lunch (LA)
May 16 | 🤝 Austin Female Founders & Friends (Austin)
May 17 | 👩💻 MIT Women's Health AI Hackathon (Boston)
June 2 | ☕ Female Founders Breakfast w/Women Tech Meetup & NYC FinTech Women - #NYTechWeek
June 2 | 👩💻 Women in Tech - #NYTechWeek
June 2 | 💁♀️ Hot Girls are Cocky: Panel for Female Founders #NYTechWeek
June 2 | 🍽️ Female Creators and Investors Dinner #NYTechWeek
This NY Tech Week, from June 2–8, I’ll be joining a16z as a Tech Week Ambassador — come join me at Tech Week events and check out the calendar here!
Lupita Almuhana, founder of Stressie, took first place and won $50K at the Health Optimisation Summit’s top pitch competition.
Lucy Guo, 30, just became the youngest self-made female billionaire in America with stakes in Scale AI ($25B valuation target) and Passes ($40M raised).
Evelyn Yaskin and her team took third place and won $1,000 at the EasyA x Polkadot Hackathon with MergeFund, a blockchain-powered GitHub extension redefining how open-source projects are funded.
USC freshman Anantika Mannby won first place and a record-breaking $25,000 prize at USC’s Venture Showcase for her GenAI startup Treffa.
USC freshman Miki S-Y took home $20,000 in funding at the USC Venture Showcase for her startup Veyra Health, winning both the Social Impact category and “Most Backable Startup.”
Eunice Lai is building Series as CMO while still a full-time student at CMU, offering a real look into the highs and lows of student startup team life.
Cindy Belardo, CEO of SunnyPeriod, won a $150K Massachusetts Manufacturing Accelerate Program grant to scale her $3M-backed femtech startup.
Ayah Abdeldayem, a junior at the University of Kentucky, led AFO Cyber LLC to win 1st place and $5,000 at their first-ever pitch competition—the 2025 PNC Wildcat Pitch.
Roxana Grunenwald, Yale '26 and founder of H*QUOTIENT, brought together global members for a neurotech hackathon in Boston.
Naomi Rajput won first place and $2,000 at the global pitch competition at AMSA’s 75th Annual Conference in DC for her health startup Eden.
Anantika Mannby also won 1st place and $4,000 at TroyLabs Demo Day for her startup Treffa—securing back-to-back pitch wins in one week.
Name: Shamsi Mumtahina Momo
School: Brandeis University’27
Major: Computer Science
Startup: AdjunctX
Sector: EdTech
Description of Startup: We turn industry leaders into educators so that student can learn about what's it like in the real world, build their social capital and get ahead in their careers.
Biggest Startup Achievement: Our first pilot engaged 90 students and 3 visiting lecturer(VL), resulting in remarkable milestones: a student’s capstone project funded by Oxfam, a VL selected as a Visiting Impact Entrepreneur at Stanford GSB, and another appointed as an Adjunct Lecturer at a top university in Bangladesh.
Biggest Startup Learning Moment: The biggest learning moment was realizing the value of adding features by actively listening to users and incorporating ideas I hadn’t considered before. The key is understanding and connecting with consumers. Continuously refining features based on their needs leads to more meaningful and successful products.
Advice for Female Students Interested in Entrepreneurship: Get involved with campus clubs, attend hackathons and networking event. Start by building a simple product—learn from the process, adopt feedback, and iterate. These will build your confidence and set the foundation for your entrepreneurial journey.
Know a bada$$ female student founder?
Nominate her or yourself to be featured in Her Hustle’s newsletter by completing this form!
💁♀️ 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!
🚀 20 new VC roles dropped, including a16z, Two Sigma, and Female Founders Fund—ideal for women ready to break into venture.
📊 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
👩💻 Skip the $5K courses—this curated list of 9 YouTube channels will teach you everything you need to know about product management, from Stanford lectures to YC founder playbooks, all for free.
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💁♀️ 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.
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I hope you enjoyed this newsletter, Hustlers!
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Love,
Daniela