By In honor of International Women's day, we are highlighting female startup founders that inspire us. The data out there is scary at times as all-women teams received just $1.9 billion of the $85 billion total invested by venture capitalists last year, according to data on the from M&A, private equity, and VC database PitchBook. That’s equal to about 2.2% of 2017’s total pot. Meanwhile, all-male teams received about $66.9 billion—roughly 79%. Now that we got that depressing news out!
Many people say the funding levels are this low as there aren't that many female founders, however, we are on a mission to make sure those female founders get found, get funded and go on to inspire many others. Today's a day meant to celebrate women’s equality, and the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. Lets highlight some people that really inspire us.
We have to start with Janet as we've recently had the pleasure to listen to her infectious spirit, drive and love for building a startup. Janet is a true sales person at heart. It is not often that you hear a female truly love every aspect of a sales profession. This is not the case for Janet, she loves selling, loves building and loves closing deals. We'd bet that this tenacity has helped her build a fast growing hot Boston startup, Spotted.
This CEO is a very special and unique person. We've had the pleasure to meet and chat with Mathilde about her vision and why behind starting Front. Which by the way, is one of the fastest growing startups out of San Francisco. Mathilde's love for building a company people enjoy working at, is contagious. If you get a chance to follow her on Medium or listen to her speak, I'd highly recommend it. If Front isn't on your list of startups to watch, it should be :)
Being in business school with Kaitki was an honor, to say the least. Her vision, intelligence and analytical skillset is one to be admired. For those of you who aren't familiar with Parallel Wireless, it is ran by a seasoned East Coast, CEO, Steve Papa. During business school Kaitki subtly told me about his idea she had for a company and she was going to pitch to some potential investors. What I didn't realize at the time but am not surprised is that her idea has gone onto be one of the fastest growing and valuable east coast startup.
We likely are missing a ton of other great female startup founders, Women 2.0 does a nice job of highlighting more here. Also, feel free to check out Top 20 female entrepreneurs to watch in 2018. As women in the startup world, we need to support each other, help each other and lift each other up - here's to 2018 being the year of #movement and a here's to making a bunch of #impact.
