Women are creating some amazing companies these days — taking exciting, new ideas to market and snapping up VC funding in the process. A look at some of the women crushing it in the startup world inspired TechCrunch to proclaim, “2018 may be a tipping point for women” entrepreneurs.
That means there’s a wealth of up-and-coming women to watch in the space over the next few years. Here are five to follow in 2019 — entrepreneurs who are blowing it out of the water and will only continue to impress.
Anne Boden, founder and CEO, Starling Bank
After years as an executive in the banking sector, Boden founded Starling Bank, which offers online-only bank accounts that can be managed via smartphones. It started lending in the U.K. in 2016 and has plans to expand throughout Europe. The company raised two venture rounds of £10 million each in 2018, one of them in November, bringing the total it has raised to $96.8 million.
Falon Fatemi, founder and CEO, Node
After becoming Google’s youngest worker at age 19, Fatemi worked at YouTube for a while then branched out on her own to found a startup in 2014. Node, which makes an AI-powered application that helps people leverage their professional networks, has raised a total of $23.3 million, including a $5 million venture round in April from Recruit Strategic Partners and Jeffrey Katzenberg’s WndrCo.
Therese Tucker, founder and CEO, BlackLine
Tucker started BlackLine, a cloud accounting software company, in 2001 and bootstrapped it until 2013, when she reported $37 million in sales. At that point, PE firm Silver Lake purchased a majority stake worth $220 million. By 2016, the company’s revenue had skyrocketed to $123 million, and Tucker became the first female founder/CEO to take a VC-backed Los Angeles startup to an IPO.
Laura Deming, partner, Longevity Fund
Deming is only 24 years old, but the New Zealander launched her second venture capital fund, The Longevity Fund, last year with $22 million in funding and just launched an accelerator this year. This was all after she dropped out of college at age 16 to participate in Peter Thiel’s prestigious Thiel Fellowship program. Her new accelerator is designed to help startups that are focused on late-onset medical conditions.
Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, co-founder, Promise
As a former head of San Jose-based South Bay Labor Council, Ellis-Lamkins knew she could use her business sense to help others. Her company, Promise, collaborates with governments to provide the opportunity for those awaiting trial to return to their jobs and families if they can’t afford bail. Promise participated in Y Combinator, which provided seed funding of $120,000 in January, and then raised $3 million from investors including Jay-Z’s Roc Nation in March.
These women are only the tip of a very large iceberg of amazing and accomplished startup founders around the country and the world. VCs and other funders are increasingly receptive to funding women, and women are increasingly becoming leaders not only in founding startups, but in funding them as well.