Creating equal opportunities for women in the business world has been a painfully slow process. However, with women led tech companies gradually on the rise, things are looking far from bleak for female entrepreneurship.
So, if you thought women in tech would remain in the shadows, you might want to think again.
Women Led Tech Companies
In honour of International Women’s Day and celebrating womanhood, we’ve picked out some (in no particular order) of the leading women led tech companies today that are taking the tech industry by storm.
We are taking this opportunity (and feature) to highlight women in tech, women entrepreneurs and women in businesses.
To the Women!
Cake
Healthcare professional, business leader, and MIT alum, Suelin Chen, is Cake‘s female founder, the leading online end-of-life planning platform. While the name may seem a little unconventional for such a morbid topic, Suelin believes that end-of-life planning entails honouring one’s life and celebrating the milestones along the way.
Cake goes way beyond the stringent, black and white diagnoses with a passion for helping people navigate loss, grief, and death. In addition, millions of people benefit from the thousands of monthly articles they post on their website that address sensitive topics in a more empathetic manner.
These articles range from what to say to a grieving friend or loved one from different religions and cultures to dealing with the loss of a close family member or pet. Cake even releases frequent blog posts about bucket lists, funeral etiquettes, and funeral planning.
And that’s not all. They’re partnered with some of the world’s top financial institutions making life insurance and end-of-life planning a smoother experience. This also includes a planning tool that allows you to upload important documents, store them and share them and other end-of-life requests with loved ones.
All in all, this platform is a great initiative that allows individuals to live their lives to the fullest and unburden their family and friends from having to make difficult decisions for them someday.
Kinside
Up next, we’ve got tech business Kinside, co-founded by Shadiah Sigala. This online platform is a childcare management tool perfect for working parents. It allows them to find trusted caretakers for their little ones while managing their otherwise jam-packed schedules.
Kinside is in collaboration with well-known daycares and preschools across the United States that connects parents to reliable childcare services. Moreover, what makes Kinside different from so many others is that they even cater to any unique needs your child may have. And we’re sure most parents would appreciate this since there’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to children.
To kick start your membership, you need to specify your preferences. These include choosing between open infant spots or searching for preschools within walking distance. And that’s all! The website does the rest by aligning your search request with your specified location, budget, childcare beliefs, and requirements.
Leaving your child with a stranger can be challenging. You’re likely to have a million doubts running through your head, and rightfully so. However, you can rest easy that Kinside conducts thorough background checks and evaluates caretakers’ years of license and visitation history to ensure they’re fit for the role.
The platform isn’t just great for parents. It’s equally useful for employers looking to support their employees by finding them customizable childcare solutions.
So, if you’re an overworked parent, finding it challenging to juggle your home and career side by side, or an employer wanting to make your employee’s life easier, you might want to look into this childcare, female-founded tech company.
Timeless
Another women led tech business we have in line is Timeless, founded and led by Emma Yang. This mobile application is the first of its kind. It’s powered by Artificial Intelligence facial recognition technology that empowers patients suffering from Alzheimer’s, an irreversible, progressive brain disorder, to live a better life.
As the disease gradually progresses, memory and critical thinking skills eventually diminish. This causes it challenging to carry out the simplest of tasks. The app allows Alzheimer’s patients to keep up with important dates and events and helps them stay connected and engaged with loved ones by recognizing them through facial recognition technology. However, all these features are expected to be managed and updated by caregivers.
Timeless provides patients with regular updates, and frequent posts contributed by friends and family. These are usually pictures labelled with names and relationships to the patient and serve as a constant reminder of who those people are.
Moreover, Timeless also notifies patients with their daily tasks and activities, usually two at a time to keep it simple so that patients can manage their lives effectively. Moreover, the contact log tab contains pictures of family members and friends instead of numbers so they can stay connected without going through the hassle of remembering phone numbers.
This tech company quickly garnered quite a lot of attention, and due to the overwhelming response they’ve received, they’re now available in Spanish, simplified, and traditional Chinese.
Female-founder Yang is also constantly working on upgrades and updates of the application to ensure smooth running. So if you happen to know someone with Alzheimer’s, make sure to suggest this app to them.
Zidisha
Established in 2009 by female-founder Julia Kurnia, Zidisha is one of the first peer-to-peer microlending online services that connects lenders and borrowers across the globe regardless of international borders. They currently operate in Kenya, Zambia, Nigeria, Ghana, and Indonesia.
Zidisha aims to facilitate transactions by allowing small amounts of money to be lent to low-income entrepreneurs in developing countries. However, unlike other microlending services out there, Zidisha connects individual lenders directly to the recipients. This is an excellent initiative since if local intermediate establishments were to be involved, the entrepreneurs would end up paying roughly 40 % of the sum in interest.
Although the concept of microlending has been around for decades, Julia brought her own twist into her tech company. Instead of recipients repaying the original donor, they pay it forward by personally selecting the next borrower they’d like to help. This is essentially the idea behind Zidisha’s ‘Pay It Forward’ program. Original donors aren’t repaid; instead, they’re able to watch how their money helps someone in need and how the money’s impact multiplies over and over again.
If you’re an entrepreneur who wishes to receive funding for your startup, you need to provide Zidisha with contact information such as an accurate residential address, contact, and national identity number before your application can be processed. Further, you’ll also be required to provide contact information of colleagues and workmates who can provide recommendations and confirm whether the given data is correct.
All payment transactions are conducted through M-PESA, a Kenyan money transfer service that allows transactions through a mobile device. If you’re in Zambia, you’ll receive funds through a mobile payment service MTN Mobile Money. And lastly, if you are anywhere in Ghana or Nigeria, Paystack and Flutterwave work similarly to the transaction services mentioned above
Canva
Taking the lead in the graphic design and digital world, we’ve got Canva co-founded by CEO Melanie Perkins. Canva is a graphic designing platform that allows users to create business cards, flyers, class plans, presentations, templates, and much more, all under one roof.
And the best part is that it’s free!
You can edit your pictures by uploading them onto Canva and integrate them into your templates. Another great thing about this leading tech company is that you need to be a pro at editing. Even if you’re a newbie, you can create just as good digital content.
Canva is home to over 50,000 professionally designed templates that you can choose from and customize with just a few clicks. In addition, they’ve included several newbie-friendly features, including basic cropping and the option to add textured backgrounds that are extremely easy to navigate.
However, if you’re still unsure where to start, they also offer free tutorials on their Design School, covering a broad range of topics. For example, a ‘Getting Started with Canva’ tutorial gives users a brief overview of the website and everything you can do on it. Another course is the ‘Canva Pro,’ which highlights all the premium features of the Pro version that you can use to step up your design game.
Give a quick visit to their website. You’ll also see quite a few educational articles and blogs on marketing strategies, how to edit your videos, and even how to gain inspiration and break away from the same boring designs.
So, even if photo editing and designing isn’t your strongest suite, Canva can help you become a pro within minutes.
Eventbrite
Adding to the list of women led tech businesses, Eventbrite is a digital self-service ticketing platform that allows you to organize local events. It was founded in 2006 by Julia Hartz and has since grown significantly and is now a global initiative.
Eventbrite allows users to create professional listings for the attendees of their events by designing well-thought-out event pages to convert one-time visitors into attendees and possibly returning clients. Along with customizable event pages, you can also create email templates to send out for promotions and invites.
And that’s not all. You can even launch social ads targeted email blasts and hold virtual webinars and live streams to keep your audience engaged and build your community.
All this, of course, can’t be done without gaining insight into real-time data and analytics, which allow you to identify where sales originate from. This will enable you to focus your budget, effort, and time on data-driven decisions.
Moreover, you can also generate statistical reports which keep you updated with the number of attendees at your event, ticket sales, and much more.
Eventbrite offers users three packages, Essentials, Professional, and Premium. They differ in the tools, fee per ticket, and size of the event.
Hosting an event anytime soon? Now you know just who you need to call!
HelloClue
Co-founded by Ida Tin and used by over 12 million around the globe, HelloClue has ranked in the top 10 health and fitness app in Apple’s App Store. Backed by sound scientific research and evidence-based education, HelloClue is a menstrual cycle tracking app. With the topic still largely taboo, HelloClue is proactively changing how society learns and talks about menstrual and reproductive health globally.
HelloClue aims to make education about health, periods, and sex as accessible to individuals worldwide as possible. With the app currently available in 15 languages, the numbers keep rising. They’ve now built a diverse community of users from different ages, races, socioeconomic statuses, ethnicities, and more.
Back in 2016, female-founder Ida came up with the term ‘FemTech,’ which is now primarily used to define technologies designed and used to support and actively participate in the progression of women’s healthcare. These technologies broadly address fertility concerns, reproductive health care, women’s sexual wellness products, track period and fertility, pregnancy and nursing care, and much more.
HelloClue is a globally trusted establishment that provides reliable and scientifically researched information, data-driven tools, and emotional support for everyone who goes through a menstrual cycle.
The platform also includes an encyclopedia that covers articles on a number of different categories ranging from everything to do with the menstrual cycle to fertility, sex, and the LGBTQIA+ community.
They’re constantly upgrading their app for the most accurate period and PMS predictions, including frequent analytical reports based on the latest science. But, believe it or not, HelloClue also helps you better understand your body and its functions by using more than the 30 tracking options offered to learn patterns about cramps and sleep cycles.
Bumble
With a net worth of $ 1 billion, Bumble, the dating app, was founded in 2014 by founder Whitney Wolfe Herd. Ironically though, she was previously one of the co-founders of Tinder but soon came up with her own platform where women are the ones who make the first move.
Female-founder Wolfe saw a problem in the gender dynamics of dating and wished to flip the coin. Which is why she came up with Bumble. Where instead of smart, strong, independent women sitting around waiting for men to strike the conversation, they’d take the reign and make the first move.
What makes this tech company different from the rest is that Bumble supports all types of relationships because, after all, real connections can be made between everyone and anyone. In addition, when setting up your profile, Bumble gives you the option to specify your gender – male, female, non-binary, or anything you identify yourself as. You also get to select which gender you’re interested in.
Although Bumble is known mainly as a dating app, it also happens to be a great platform to find friends and even widen your professional circle. Wolfe commonly refers to Bumble as more than just an app, rather it’s a movement. A movement where everyone is respected, where kindness, honesty, equality is encouraged. And above all, real and healthy connections are promoted.
If you’re looking for a soulmate, whether in the form of a significant other or a friend, Bumble’s a great place to start your search. You can browse through the ‘Learn How To Stand Out’ tab to find ways to have your profile stand out from the rest.
Starling Bank
The next women led tech business we’ve got in store for you is Starling Bank, an award-winning, digital, mobile-only banking service. It was founded in the UK by Anne Boden in 2014 and has since been a smarter and fairer alternative to conventional banks.
With their green, no waste initiative in full zeal and zest, Starling Bank has set out to mobilize everything you’d do normally do in a branch. This means you can apply for a personal, joint, or Euro account within minutes and get instant payment alerts. Moreover, you can create saving plans, split bills and even receive multi-currency payments from anywhere at accurate rates with complete transparency.
They also have a kid-friendly program known as Kite, which helps kids understand how money and banking work. Then, you can simply link it to your account and assist them in managing their pocket money with their very own card.
Starling Bank also recently introduced their Loan Scheme, which helps covid stricken businesses get back on their feet. You can simply browse through their eligibility criteria to make sure you’re eligible, upload the relevant documents, and kick start the journey back to business.
If waiting in long queues seems too much of a hassle, consider switching to Starling Bank if you’re in the UK. It’s free, easy, and above all, extremely convenient.
Task Rabbit
Next up, we’ve got Task Rabbit, run by Ania Smith. It’s an online marketplace that essentially helps you get in touch with skilled labourers who can help you with different tasks and errands around your home that you might not have time to get around to. Currently serving 7 countries, including the United States and the UK, this tech company has become a lead platform.
If you need help around the house, you can connect with background-checked and reliable workers who can help you with any job. You can browse through reviews, ratings, and prices to choose and connect with the person you deem the best fit. Task Rabbit also gives you the option to save a Tasker to your favourites tab, so they’re only a click away next time you need something done. To get started, all you need to do is specify the job and your location, choose your Tasker, and voila!
Moreover, you can also sign up as Tasker and work as you please. With a secure payment system, you can take up local jobs that fit your skills and schedule while working at your own rates. What’s even better is that Task Rabbit doesn’t keep anything of what you’ve earned.
To start as a Tasker, all you need to do is sign up, build a profile, verify your eligibility, and pay a $ 25 registration fee. Once that’s done, you can set your schedule and location and take up jobs as you please.
Motivo
Founded by Rachel McCrickard, Motivo became the first online platform that virtually connects mental health therapists to clinical supervisors for supervision. This has helped create a more accessible and efficient path for licensure for therapists.
Female-founder Rachel came up with the idea of Motivo after having to drive two hours to the closest supervisor. After a year of driving for hours and a few more later, Motivo came about.
Because clinical supervision is the foundation of every therapist’s career, it’s crucial to have access to the right supervisor. Unfortunately, compromising on this and opting for the nearest supervisor can possibly even jeopardize your career.
The process begins by you browsing through almost 1,000 supervisors on Motivo and finding the perfect fit for you based on your specified location and license type. Next, you can schedule an introductory call, free of cost, and assess whether the prospective supervisor is someone you’d want to continue with. Once you’re satisfied with your pick, you can start your supervision sessions immediately and pay for them as each session passes.
And of course, you can even sign up on Motivo if you’re a supervisor looking to build your virtual supervision practice. Once your application has been processed, you can get started immediately.
Bless this woman led tech company!
HoneyBook
Lastly, we’ve got HoneyBook, co-founded by Naama Alon. This woman led tech company is a business software that has combined invoices, proposals, contracts, payment reminders, and project management all under the same roof.
HoneyBook aims to support startups and small businesses by helping them streamline their business approach. This includes captivating leads, processing payments more efficiently, and carrying out other administrative tasks in half the time it’d take otherwise.
With papers and spreadsheets eliminated from the equation completely, with HoneyBook, you can manage your business all in one place. In addition, the app allows you to form your own command center that helps you keep track of all your projects and keep all your work documents organized in one place.
Getting lost in a tsunami of unread emails is a problem of yesterday. With their streamlined communication features, you’re sure to never miss an important work email again!
Running a business can be pretty challenging, but with HoneyBook just a click away, your life’s sorted!
Small Steps Add Up
So those were some of the leading women led tech businesses in the world today. However, please bear in mind that this list is nowhere near exhaustive.
More often than not, the success of tech startups is thought of as merely a tale of accidental success. However, that’s not the case.
And it’s no secret that female founders have it a lot harder than the rest. Their years of hard work, dedication, and diligence can’t be just swept under the carpet. But, even as female founders continue to shake the world, there’s still a long way to go.
This International Women’s Day, we hope that women leading tech companies will be the norm one day and not an exception.
Are there any women led tech companies we’ve missed, but you’d have liked to see on the list? Which one’s your favourite initiative out of all of these?
Let us know in the comments below!