The Power of Community: Helping Female Founders Build, Test, Invest, & Launch
Diem Opens Investment to Its Community, Early Exposure to Entrepreneurs Increases Female Founders, Female Invest Breaks Records, SRTX Rallies Community for Homegrown Innovation
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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On Friday night, Harvard Undergraduate Women in Entrepreneurship’s Cross-University Female Entrepreneurial Mixer was a huge success! We brought together 175+ women from Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, BU, BC, Wellesley, Babson, Smith, Brown, and Yale—some traveling 2+ hours just to be part of this space!
The turnout speaks volumes: female students and aspiring entrepreneurs are seeking spaces to connect, collaborate, and break barriers together.
This community is for every female student in entrepreneurship—from those just discovering the startup world to those raising capital and scaling ventures.
This is just the beginning—our 2025 programming is set to take this movement even further! Want to bring the WWV Labs movement to your community? DM me!
Emily Gittins, Co-Founder & CEO of Archive (San Francisco, CA), raised $30M in Series B funding led by Energize Capital.
Exposure to entrepreneurship matters: A massive study of 750,000+ teens found that girls with entrepreneurial parents were up to 59.3% more likely to start businesses by age 35.
Kristen Gallogly, Co-Founder of Tandem (San Francisco, CA), raised $6.1M in seed funding led by Collide Capital.
PetNet, led by Josephine Walton, and Sweet Streets, founded by Elizabeth Peterson, are two of eight student-led startups competing for $50K at the John P. Ellbogen Entrepreneurship Competition.
Carina Boo, Co-Founder of Warmly, (San Francisco, CA), raised $6M in Series A+ funding led by RTP Global.
UC Startup Weekend awarded Send Noods, co-founded by Paige Hedger, Sammi Jones, and Varsha Lingam, the $2,500 first-place prize for their allergy-friendly late-night noodle delivery service.
Helen Egger MD and Rebecca Egger, Co-Founder & CEO of Little Otter (San Francisco, CA), raised $9.5M in funding led by Pivotal Ventures.
Isabella Maceda-Ali, Co-Founder of TaxGPT (San Francisco, CA), raised $4.6M in seed funding led by Rebel Fund.
Cult Mia, founded by Nina Briance, raised £4.5M in seed funding from Fuel Ventures and H&M Group Ventures to scale its luxury fashion marketplace, following a year of 191% revenue growth and 146% customer growth.
Despite generating 35% higher ROI than all-male teams, female founders secured only 1.8% of UK equity investment in 2024, highlighting the funding gap women still face in venture capital.
Sumarie Greybe (FIA), Co-Founder of Naked Insurance (South Africa), raised $38M in Series B-2 funding led by BlueOrchard.
Barcelona-based KOA Biotech, founded by Sira Mogas, raised €2M in funding to scale its breakthrough biosensor technology, which detects waterborne infections in fish farms 10x faster than current methods.
February 10 | 🌃 Female Founders & Funders Networking (NYC)
February 11 | 🥂 Women in Miami Tech February Happy Hour (NYC)
February 19 | 🌃 Women in Robotics NYC – (re)Introductory Meetup (NYC)
February 21 | 🤝 Austin Female Founders + Friends (Austin)
February 22 | 🏛️ Harvard Business School Women in Business Conference (Boston)
February 26 | ☕ Women's Breakfast Club at the AlgoRanch (Denver)
March 6 | 💰 Women Innovation Summit: Pitch Competition (Toronto)
March 6 | 👩💻 Women in Tech: Data Science and AI Trailblazers (San Diego)
March 21 | 👩💻 Go Beyond 2% - Women's Leadership Conference (San Francisco)
Hosting an event for women in entrepreneurship?
Share the details with WWV Labs Her Hustle’s community by filling out this form!
Female Invest just shattered a world record with 70,000+ signups for their financial literacy webinar, surpassing Bill Clinton’s previous record.
Theanna.io has officially launched! Founded by Nomiki Petrolla, this first-of-its-kind platform is dedicated to helping female tech founders scale from $0 to $1M ARR!
Diem, co-founded by Emma Bates, just closed its Seed+ round and is inviting its community to invest on the same terms as VCs—proving that the future of the internet should be built and owned by those shaping it!
Ashley Chang’s startup, Sundays, just hit $1M ARR—all while bootstrapped! Her journey proves that female founders don’t need VC dollars to scale—just strong business fundamentals and a clear path to profitability.
Shruti Kakar is driving impact at the UC Davis Student Startup Center as Tech & Outreach Manager—leading outreach, managing tech resources, and now launching JobHive, a platform connecting job seekers with local businesses, through the PLASMA incubator!
Shuo Wang scaled Deel to a $12.6B valuation in just 6 years, making it the fastest startup to hit $100M ARR.
SRTX, the Canadian brand behind the world’s toughest tights, is fighting back as U.S. tariffs on Canadian-made goods and investor hesitation force layoffs—now, founder Katherine Homuth is rallying consumers to demand that major retailers stock homegrown innovation instead of foreign imports.
Name: Khushi Shah
School: Northeastern University ‘27
Major: Computer Science & Business (Concentrations in Entrepreneurship & Corporate Innovation)
Startup: drizzl
Sector: Smart Technology
Description of Startup: Drizzl is a smart irrigation system that leverages communication between underground sensors and a corresponding app to optimize water usage while minimize consumer costs. Patent-pending and expanding rapidly in the USA & Brazil, Drizzl’s technology and impact have been recognized by organizations including NASA, Google, Forbes Ignite, and US Navy. Drizzl allows users to collectively reduce the American daily irrigation water usage by 4.5-13.5 billion liters and save 10%-25% on individual annual water bills.
Biggest Startup Achievement: Last year, I competed with Drizzl on the +1 Eco Odyssey Reality TV show - by far one of the coolest opportunities I have had. Meeting fellow eco-entrepreneurs from around the world opened up the most amazing network & really reminded me why I started Drizzl six years ago - to create a sustainable & financially impactful solution that truly improves people's lives.
Biggest Startup Learning Moment: Graduating high school early and taking a gap year instead of my senior year to focus on Drizzl full-time was a game changer. During this time, I experienced the real behind-the-scenes aspects of entrepreneurship beyond the glorified 5% we see online. Ultimately, it instilled perseverance, self-discipline, and reaffirmed my passion for entrepreneurship for years to come.
Advice for Female Students Interested in Entrepreneurship: Your age, gender, or circumstances don't determine your potential. The world needs your ideas - make them impossible to ignore.
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 750+ fellows from Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Columbia, UPenn, UC Berkeley, and other top universities today!
🚀 NYC founders—NYU Tandon Future Labs’ free, no-equity pre-seed accelerator has helped 8 of 11 startups secure term sheets in just 7 months! Applications are open for 2 more weeks—mentorship, interns, and coworking in Brooklyn included! Apply here.
📱 VOYA Technologies is hiring! Multiple Social Media Manager roles are open, with opportunities to lead marketing, brand partnerships, and PR—compensation up to $2,650/month. Apply here.
📈 Genesis Fund is hiring Boston-based student interns for Analyst & Associate roles—gain hands-on VC experience, work with early-stage founders, and dive into deal sourcing!
🛍️ College students, want a zero-cost, zero-effort sustainable shopping pop-up on your campus? InstantReplay, founded by Grace Anne McCooey, is bringing exclusive brand deals and eco-friendly fashion to schools nationwide—request a pop-up here.
🧠 Soma, a female-founded neurotech startup revolutionizing brain health with its AI-powered, noninvasive tracking—is now recruiting participants to test its early product! If you experience brain fog, migraines, or concussions, test their early product by signing up here.
👩💻 CS students & recent grads—Headstarter just launched a 17-week software engineering residency where you'll build 14 AI/ML & full-stack projects, get feedback from engineers at Meta & Google, and join a 400+ resident talent pool already landing jobs at top Silicon Valley startups! Apply here.
🚀 Jetson, the most downloaded entrepreneurship app, just launched a virtual business competition—open to everyone (yes, even if you don’t have a business idea)! Compete for cash prizes now through 2/14—join via the Jetson app + search for “Harvard University.”
📚 Cosmos, an AI-powered platform matching students with the perfect study buddies, is refining its product and looking for feedback! Fill out this short survey to help shape the future of collaborative learning and join their pre-launch list!
👩💻 Yana Welinder has referred 150+ female founders to Y Combinator, proving that women are ready to build the future—if you’re an early-stage founder, you have 4 days left to apply for the X25 batch!
🚀 From Y Combinator (Feb 11 deadline) to Neo Accelerator ($600K uncap) and Burning Heroes Pitch Competition, here are 11 opportunities to secure funding, mentorship, and accelerator spots.
📖 Entrepreneur and financial advocate Dani Bicknell just dropped The Restorative Rebel—a must-read for women redefining success beyond burnout culture. Ditch the hustle trap and take back control.
🛂 If you're an international student founder aiming to work in the U.S. on your startup or join a startup team, Alcorn Immigration Law offers personalized guidance to secure the right visas and green cards to help bring your entrepreneurial dreams to life—reach out to Sophie and mention you were referred by Daniela Andrade, WWV Labs!
📊 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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I hope you enjoyed this newsletter, Hustlers!
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Love,
Daniela