Unstoppable: Meet the 2% of Female Founders Breaking the VC Ceiling
Spotlight on female founders who raised the largest funding rounds in 2024 and the 10 most active FemTech investors!
It's been a wild week, ladies! I know many of you are powering through midterms right now, but trust me—you've got this! 💪✨ Sending you all strong, healing energy your way! And don’t forget to take a moment for self-care—YOU come first!
Just remembering that I landed back in Boston Monday night after an epic weekend in SF for SF #TechWeek, and wow, things are moving FAST! It's that time of year when everything kicks into high gear.
If you're curious about my reflections on SF #TechWeek, check out my latest substack post:
And if you want to dive into the lessons I picked up from the most authentic Womxn in Entrepreneurship panel of my life at #TechWeek, head over to my LinkedIn post here! 🚀🌟
We’re all about the new and the next, and we’re here to help you dive into it. We’re going to highlight all the fierce women building startups from their dorm rooms, balancing classes, and even #droppingout to turn their bold visions into reality.
Are you ready to dive into the next big thing, brought to you by unstoppable women?
Her Hustle is powered by WWV Labs, a talent-matching and skill-building platform created to connect top female students and recent grads with high-growth startups.
Female Student Founder Spotlight
Name: Naomi Rajput
School: Northeastern University, Class of 2026
Major: Behavioral Neuroscience
Startup: Eden
Startup Sector: Health Tech
Description of Startup: Eden addresses administrative inefficiencies in healthcare that lead to staff burnout, high turnover, and costly errors. The average cost of a bad hire is $60,000, but with our solution we aim to just charge a fragment of this cost and empower medical staff to become better. Our AI-powered platform automates redundant administrative tasks like patient intake, insurance verification, and record management helping the front office staff focus on high value tasks like the patient care experience and hospitality instead of nominal tasks like patient scheduling, phone calls, cross practice correspondence, etc.
Biggest Startup Achievement: Boston Inn 25 under 25 recipient; Women Who Empower $10,000; Empowering a Healthy Tomorrow and Overall Category as Third Place; eMerge Americas 500k Pitch Competition Participant
Biggest Startup Learning Moment: Understanding the tangible value of our solution has been a game changer for our product positioning and establishing real value with clients. For example, a single bad hire costs a medical practice an average of $60,000, but with our solution, we reduce that cost by more than half. Communicating this financial impact has been key to our success.
Advice for Female Students Interested in Entrepreneurship: If you want something in life, then why don't you go and get it? It is more so a question, but I like to lead with this, there are enough people saying no - you cannot be saying no to yourself. Also, find a great FEMALE mentor to can be your champion and put you in front of important people and rooms.
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Female Venture News
According to PitchBook data, funding to female-founded companies overall (including mixed-gender teams) has declined in the first half of 2024 compared to the first half of 2023 (TechCrunch)
Despite the disappointing data presented in this article, there are some bright spots in the findings, such as:
Investments from VC firms into female-led companies that are in the "growth stage" (past the startup phase and expanding) are set to reach the highest amount ever recorded this year.
Companies started by all-female teams received more funding this year compared to the same time last year. In the second quarter (Q2) of this year, they raised $1.1 billion, which is more than the $900 million they raised in Q2 of 2023. This is the highest amount all-female teams raised in a single quarter since Q2 of 2022, when they received $1.5 billion.
Also at the end of this article, Kate Bodrova, co-founder of EdTech startup Amazy, shared some empowering and encouraging advice:
“Founders (no matter their gender) should stay heads down focusing on growth as well as building a team resume that demonstrates the company is in capable hands.
Focus on providing your value through performance.
Funding will follow.”
Focusing on female-led growth and performance, Crunchbase highlighted five female founders and CEOs who raised the largest funding rounds in 2024.
These impressive 5 female founders have raised nearly $2 billion in capital between them:
Molly He, CEO & Co-Founder of Element Biosciences: $680m to date
Katherine Kostereva, CEO & Founder of Creatio: $268m to date
Kristen Fortney, CEO & Co-Founder of BioAge Labs: $294m to date
Christina Cacioppo, CEO & Co-Founder of Vanta: $350m to date
Ritu Narayan, CEO & Founder of Zum: over $400m to date
Trending on LinkedIn
Daniela Andrade, Co-Founder of WWV Labs: FemTech dealmaking is making a comeback!
According to PitchBook, investments in companies focused on women's and reproductive health are recovering strongly. After a time when investors were hesitant due to legal challenges and a weak fundraising environment, funding for FemTech startups has not only rebounded, but has already exceeded the total amount invested in 2023!
So far in 2024, $980 million has been invested across 64 separate FemTech deals.
This is a significant increase from 2023's total of $840 million, which was spread over 94 deals!
Read the rest of the post to discover the 10 most active investors in the FemTech sector!
Li Yin, Founder of AdalFlow: Solo female founders make up less than 1% of all YC founders.
“After looking through 200 YC founders, I found only three were solo female founders. This doesn’t necessarily mean they all applied solo either.
That makes it 1.5% of all YC founders.
If YC's acceptance rate is 1%, then my chance of being accepted as a solo female founder was merely 0.015%.
If I had done my research earlier, I would have never wasted my time applying to Y Combinator. At some point, this made me feel like I wasn't good enough.
But now, I am certain of my own worth.”
Sallie Krawcheck, Founder of Ellevest: What is The Glass Cliff?
“‘If it’s broken, let a woman fix it.’
That’s the attitude a lot of companies seem to have when they suddenly hire a woman to turn around a business that’s almost impossible to fix.
Read more about the glass ceiling’s irritating younger cousin here.”
Women in Entrepreneurship University Events
Boston
Girls Into VC x Harvard Undergraduate Women in Entrepreneurship 2024 Summit @ Harvard University on Sunday, Nov. 3rd, 2024 → Apply here: Applications due 11:59 pm EST on Friday, Oct. 25th
Fintech Feminists Book Tour @ Harvard University on Thursday, Nov. 14th, 2024 → Register here.
Hosting an event for women in entrepreneurship?
Share the details with Her Hustle’s community by filling out this form!
Resources
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!
We are gauging interest to see how many female students subscribed to our newsletter would be interested in connecting with a female founder, female investor, or male ally founder/investor during drop-in office hour sessions through WWV Labs. If you’re interested in this opportunity, please fill out this interest form!
In today’s competitive job market, it’s essential to have a polished resume. Check out Harvard’s resume template for some tips!
Being a startup founder is hard, and dealing with legal issues is even harder. Sign up for Onward Justice’s legal platform to post your questions for free and connect with lawyers ready to help (for a fee)!
Let’s Connect
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I hope you enjoyed this newsletter, Hustlers!
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Love,
Daniela