Power in Progress
Kristie D'Ambrosio-Correll makes history as first woman to found car company; Helena Polyblank raises $60M for Mendel; Grace Wang lands $20M at $215M valuation for OpusClip; Linh Pham wins $75K at HBS
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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Happy Monday! This past Saturday, April 5th, after months in the making, my team and I finally hosted our second annual Female Founder Circle on Harvard’s campus—and it was nothing short of incredible. The day was filled with powerful energy, brilliant speakers, and game-changing insights.
We brought together 40 of the top female student founders in the country and gifted them curated bags full of sponsored goodies (because yes, founders deserve to feel celebrated!).
Here’s a little sneak peek from the photo recap—more coming soon on LinkedIn!
If you’re interested in hosting events like this and building a local female entrepreneurship community, I’d love to connect. WWV Labs is continuing to expand its community-led efforts across college campuses, and we’re always looking for passionate partners!
Helena Polyblank (Mexico City, MX) – Co-founder of Mendel, a fintech startup transforming corporate spend management for Latin American enterprises, raised $60M led by Base10 Partners, with participation from PayPal Ventures and Endeavor Catalyst.
Page Soulé Schult (Los Angeles, CA) – Co-founder and CEO of Topanga, a startup helping commercial kitchens cut waste through reusable packaging tech, raised an $8M Series A led by Blue Bear Capital to scale their RFID-powered ReusePass platform.
Grace Wang (San Francisco, CA) – Co-founder of OpusClip, a GenAI-powered video editing platform simplifying content creation for 10M+ users, raised $20M at a $215M valuation in a round led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2.
Michelle You (London, UK) – Co-founder and CEO of Supercritical, a carbon removal marketplace helping companies reach net zero, raised a $17.4M Series A led by Shell and Toyota Ventures to scale its high-quality, science-backed CDR platform.
Lalitha Rajagopalan (Dubai, UAE) – Co-founder of ORO Labs, a tokenized gold protocol transforming idle gold into yield-generating assets, raised $1.5M in pre-seed funding led by 468 Capital, with participation from Fasset and angel investors.
April 6 | 🌎 Women in Cleantech: Hike and Network (LA)
April 9 | 🍽️ LA Female Founders Lunch (LA)
April 9 | 🔗 Miami Women in Web3 & Tech | Networking Mixer | Miami Tech Week (Miami)
April 11 | 🎬 Show Her the Money Screening & Panel (Boston)
April 17 | 👩⚕️ Navigating AI in Women's Healthcare: Insights from VC & Founders (NYC)
April 18 | 🤝 Austin Female Founders & Friends (Austin)
April 23 | 💰 Fintech Is Femme Leadership Summit (NYC)
April 23 | 🤝 DTL Women's Series: Women in VC at Rice University (Houston)
April 23 | 🌎 Female Founders & Funders Gathering @ SF Climate Week (SF)
April 25 | 🌎 Meet & Make: An interactive gender x climate workshop by IDEO.org (SF)
April 25 | 🚀 Go-To-Market in the Age of AI: Fireside Chat with Katy Nelson, Partner at a16z (Boston)
April 26 | 🔗 HBC25: Blockchain in Action (Boston)
Hosting an event for women in entrepreneurship?
Share the details with WWV Labs Her Hustle’s community by filling out this form!
Kristie D'Ambrosio-Correll just made history as the first woman to found an automobile company—Dacora Motors—launching a U.S.-built luxury electric vehicle and redefining who drives the future of automotive.
Cindy Gallop and Marcia Dawood just partnered with Inspire Access to unlock Donor Advised Funds for bold, female-led ventures like MakeLoveNotPorn—calling out the $250B+ in untapped capital that could be fueling the next wave of women-built, world-changing startups.
Lexi, founded by Linh Pham, an MDE student at Harvard, won the $75K Grand Prize in the Social Enterprise Track at the HBS New Venture Competition for its AI-powered medical interpreter tackling language barriers for over 30 million patients in the U.S.
Zülal Akarsu and her all-women team won the Technical Excellence Award at the Women in AI Hackathon for building EmbrAI, a federated learning tool using 20K+ embryo images to support IVF clinics.
Women-led fintech startups raised $3.4B in 2024—despite receiving just 3.4% of sector VC funding—proving the women building the future of finance are outperforming and overdue for serious capital.
Leslie Feinzaig says AI is rewriting the startup playbook—enabling women founders to scale faster, raise less, and own more, signaling a seismic shift in who gets to build and win in tech.
Name: Zainabou Thiam
School: Babson College’28
Major: Business Administration
Startup: Sunu Body
Sector: Beauty, CPG
Description of Startup: An African-inspired e-commerce self-care brand, ethically sourcing products from Senegal and partnering with women artisans across the continent. Through fair trade and financial empowerment, we celebrate and share the authentic beauty rituals and wisdom of Africa.
Biggest Startup Achievement: Receiving the Small Business of the Game Award from the Boston Celtics was an incredible moment! We showcased our business on the court in front of a full TD Garden crowd, participated in a jersey swap, and gave out gift cards. It was an unforgettable experience that put our brand on the map.
Biggest Startup Learning Moment: Our inventory is shipped overseas from a country with inefficient logistics systems, making it challenging to import goods in a timely and cost-effective manner. These challenges have caused months-long delays and occasional theft. However, as we learn, we continue to improve and develop our logistics processes.
Advice for Female Students Interested in Entrepreneurship: Stop delaying your next steps out of fear of failure. The truth is, you’re going to fail eventually—everyone does. The key is to fail fast and fail now, because once you fail, you create the space for growth and success.
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!
🚀 Applications are now open for the .406 Ventures Student Fellows Program—an elite launchpad for student founders offering hands-on VC training, top-tier mentorship, and access to a 130+ alum network. (P.S. I just graduated from the program—email me at danielaandrade@college.harvard.edu if you want to chat before applying!)
🗽Hatch House, a new NYC-based hacker house launching in June 2025, is now accepting applications for its first cohort of founders—with a 50/50 gender split and an April 7 deadline to apply.
👩💼 Foundess is hiring a part-time Community Lead to help run retreats, hacker houses, and high-impact founder events—ideal for someone NYC- or SF-based with a strong startup network; applications are open now.
🚀 10 top VC firms—including Harlem Capital, Upfront Ventures, and Collaborative Fund—are hiring across NYC, SF, LA, London & remote, making now the moment to land your dream role in venture.
📸 swsh, the viral photo-sharing app backed by major festivals like EDC and Rolling Loud, is hiring paid remote spring/summer interns—perfect for Greek life students ready to 100x campus growth while scoring VIP perks and startup cred.
💸 Over $2M in funding opportunities is open for Black, LGBTQ+, and women-owned startups—from $6K Just Thrive grants to $100K 776 Fellowships—plus VC checks from FoundersEdge for early-stage AI x UX startups.
📸 swsh is launching a paid gap year fellowship for 2 standout undergrads passionate about consumer tech—an exclusive chance to help grow the viral photo-sharing app behind EDC and Rolling Loud.
📊 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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📈 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