Credit: AI Trends
Every year we talk about how this will be the Year of the Woman because of the incredible advances women are making. There’s no doubt that 2019 will go down in history as the first time we saw a record number of diverse women serving in the US Congress and announcing their candidacy for President of the United States. But you know what isn’t budging for the 12.3 million women US entrepreneurs who founded companies? Access to capital.
For a second year in a row, only 2.2% of investor funding went to women-led startups. #NotAcceptable. Despite all the media coverage and all the commitments by investors to diversify their portfolios, many continue to miss or ignore opportunities to invest in the next billion dollar startups that happen to be led by women. In our tech-driven economy, we’re still tackling incredible obstacles that could be resolved by backing the right creative and innovative minds. This continues to be the driving force behind our Women Startup Challenges: to disrupt a culture and economy that’s made it exceedingly difficult for women founders to access capital.
“The tech world needs the perspective of more women founders if we’re going to tackle some of the biggest challenges impacting us,” said Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist and Craig Newmark Philanthropies. “This means that a lot more than 2.2% of investor money needs to go to women-led startups, and we have an opportunity and an obligation to start setting the record straight, considering how studies show that tech companies led by women have a 35% ROI.”
Newmark is right, we do need to set the record straight. From ‘Food Systems’ to the ‘Future of Family,’ here are 50 women-led startups who are pushing the frontiers of innovation.
- 4D Healthware (Founder: Star Cunningham) – A virtual health management platform for providers and patients that gives physicians the power to improve the health of patients with chronic illnesses. @4Dhealthware
- Affectiva (Cofounders: Rana el Kaliouby and Rosalind Picard) – An emotion measurement technology company that has developed software to recognize human emotions based on facial cues or physiological responses. @Affectiva
- Astral AR (Cofounder: Leah La Salla) – A drone piloting system that uses IoT and helps law enforcement stop bullets, and detect guns and bombs through walls. @Astral_AR
- Biobot Analytics (Cofounders: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli) – Transforms sewers into public health observatories by collecting and analyzing the wastewater containing information about the health of communities. Their first product measures opioids and other drug metabolites in sewage to estimate consumption in cities in an effort to establish harm reduction. @BiobotAnalytics
- Blendoor, (Founder: Stephanie Lampkin) – A blind recruiting app for job recruiters that hides the candidate’s name and photo to circumvent unconscious bias and facilitate diversity. Its goal is to highlight the information that’s most relevant to a candidate being a “good fit,” independent of race, gender, (dis)ability, military history, or sexual orientation. @Blendoor
- Bloomer Tech (Cofounders: Alicia Chong Rodriguez, Aceil Halaby and Monica Abarca ) – Tech is seamlessly embedded into women’s bras to read metrics such as the electrocardiogram, pulse rate, respiratory rate, heart rhythm and more. Meaningful data related to cardiovascular disease is collected, analyzed and made accessible to users, doctors and medical professionals for real-time personalized healthcare, management and early detection. @BloomerTech
- BlueCargo (Cofounders: Alexandra Griffon and Laura Theveniau) Bringing efficiency to the global maritime supply chain through data collection to optimize terminals. @BlueCargo
- Cake (Founder: Suelin Chen) – The mint.com for end-of-life planning. They provide an application to help people discover, store, and share their end-of-life preferences. @JoinCakeApp
- Callisto (Founder: Jess Ladd) – A nonprofit that creates technology to detect repeat perpetrators of professional sexual coercion and sexual assault. @Callisto
- ClickMedix (Founder: Ting Shih) – Assists healthcare providers and organizations in reaching more patients through telemedicine by reducing wait times and increasing access for patients in underserved areas while also helping these healthcare providers save money. @ClickMedix
Read the source article in Forbes.
Credit: AI Trends By: John Desmond
