When measuring funding for startups with female founders and CEOs, a consistent finding is that girls remain underrepresented. Last yr, for example, just 3% of funding in the U.S. went to startups with all-female founders.
Women-led corporations were similarly underrepresented in the funding pool, taking in lower than 5% of investments, in keeping with Crunchbase’s initial tallies. The totals drop a bit more when narrowing all the way down to corporations where each the CEO and the founder or co-founder are women.
However, there are some well-known startups that meet these criteria. To illustrate this, we used Crunchbase data to rank the five best-funded corporations this yr that have a female CEO and founder.
The founders of the startups featured below collectively operate in sectors ranging from biotech to transportation, and their corporations have raised greater than $1.9 billion.
Molly HeCEO and Co-Founder, Elements Biology
Founded: 2017
Headquarters: San Diego
Financing: To date, greater than $680 million has been raised, including $277 million in Series D funding in July.
Business: We focus on advanced DNA sequencing and multiomics technology for biological research. Known for the AVITI DNA sequencer and the AVITI24 cytoplasm sequencing and profiling platform, which shall be launched soon. It competes with Illuminatecurrent leader in the field of sequencing.
Background: Previously he was a enterprise capital partner at Foresite Capitalfocused on healthcare. She was previously senior director of research at Illumina. She holds a Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles in protein biophysics.
Katherine KosterevaCEO and Founder, Creative
Founded: 2014
Headquarters: Boston
Financing: $268 million up to now, including $200 million in funding in June at a valuation of $1.2 billion.
Business: Develops a no-code platform that permits CRM and enterprise workflow automation using AI-powered co-creation capabilities.
Background: Kostereva, a Ukrainian entrepreneur, initially founded the company herself, previously called Bpm’online, before changing its name to Creatio five years ago.
Kristen FortneyCEO and Co-Founder, BioAge Laboratories
Founded: 2015
Headquarters: Richmond, California
Financing: It has raised $294 million up to now, including $170 million in a Series D in February. It filed for an IPO as a pre-revenue company last week.
Business: Develops anti-aging therapies to increase healthy life and treat metabolic diseases, including obesity.
Background: Fortney has a Ph.D. in medical biophysics from University of Torontoand then a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University where she focused on the genetics of exceptional human longevity.
Christina CacioppoCEO and Co-Founder, This is commendable
Founded: 2018
Headquarters: San Francisco
Financing: To date, it has raised over $350 million in known funding, including $150 million in Series C funding in July.
Business: Develops a software platform for compliance automation and risk management. Exceeded $100 million in annual recurring revenue in its last fiscal yr.
Background: Before launching Vanta, Cacioppo was the product manager for Dropboxoffered Dropbox Paper and worked on the investment team at Union Square Projects. He has degrees in economics and management science and engineering from Stanford.
Ritu NarayanaCEO and Founder, For
Founded: 2015
Headquarters: Redwood City, California
Financing: To date, it has raised over $400 million in grants and equity, including $140 million in Series E funding in January.
Business: An application and software platform for tracking and managing student transportation, with a focus on primary, secondary and middle school students.
Background: Before founding Zum Narayan, he was a product manager at eBay AND Oracle.She graduated from college Stanford University Business School and obtained a degree in computer science at Delhi Institute of Technology.