ApiumhubIn recent years we have seen a trend of an increasing number of talented women coming into the tech and investment industry. This article is about their success and noticeable results. Over the last weeks, we have screened potential nominees and ready to name them. So who are the most inspirational women in technology & VCs in Europe? Find a list below. Please note that the list is created taking into account entrepreneurship skills as well as innovative, creative ideas and companies with social impact.
The list of 15 Inspirational women to know about in 2017
1. Priya Lakhani OBE
The first one of the list of top inspiration women in tech and VC is Priya. She founded Century Tech, which provides software to schools that let them track the performance of individual students, from how they’re doing at home work to where they need to improve. This is founder Priya Lakhani’s second venture (third, if you count her first business of selling sweets to schoolfriends at the age of 11). She founded an Indian sauce company, Masala & Masala, before moving on to Century Tech in 2014.
2. Jenny Griffiths
Second one on the list of inspirational women is Jenny, who founded Snap Tech. It started as Snap Fashion, a shopping site that lets you find items predominantly by color and shape. The company’s now expanded to general visual search, offering tools which publishers and retailers can add to their own sites. Founder Jenny Griffiths landed on the idea while studying computer science at the University of Bristol. She went on to take on various software engineer roles at bigger firms like defense firm Thales, before jacking it in and becoming a full-time entrepreneur.
3. Cherry Freeman
Cherry’s startups are in top lists as well as her entrepreneurial personality. Being a co-founder and director of LoveCrafts, a marketplace for craft products, focused on knitting and crochet. The company raised £26 million in funding earlier this year. The company raised £26 million in funding earlier this year. Cherry has a background in operations and consultancy – she was previously an adviser at ILK Partners.
4. Anu Duggal
Anu Duggal is a founding partner of Female Founders Fund (FCubed) that was launched in 2013 as a seed fund investing in startups with female founding members. The aim of FCubed is to promote the growth of female entrepreneurs in tech and to improve a demographic side that has been stably low. Generally, Anu represents an entrepreneurial soul that can be proved by her successes. For example, India’s first wine bar, The Tasting Room or e-commerce company, Exlusively.In. Led by Anu, FCubed has already invested in more than 20 companies like WayUp, Eloquii and Minibar.
5. Susan Lyne
Susan Lyne is a President and Managing Partner at BBG Ventures, based in New York its an early stage fund focused on consumer internet and mobile startups with at least one female founder. Previously, she has had a long career in media, commerce & consumer products where she has held leadership positions. Her career has begun in the magazine industry, where she founded and led Premiere Magazine. Then, she spent almost a decade at Disney, successfully rising to President of Entertainment at ABC. Susan has also CEO experiences at Martha Stewart Living Omnomedia & Gilt.com.
6. Kirsteen Green
The next in the list of inspirational women is Kirsteen Green, a founder of Forerunner Ventures. With over 15 years of investment experience, spanning public and private companies, Kirsten combines an experience and thesis driven approach, with a consumer centric view, to identify visionary entrepreneurs and compelling brand platforms. Through her work at Forerunner, she has actively supported dozens of innovative companies, investing in some of the most promising companies in the current evolution of commerce. She serves on the board of directors for Bonobos, Dollar Shave Club, Draper James, Glossier, InTurn, M Gemi, Outdoor Voices, Retention Science, Rockets of Awesome.
7. Ida Tin
Ida Tin was born in Copenhagen and is a Co-founder and CEO of a popular woman tracking app – Clue. Ida is a lifelong entrepreneur who has also led motorcycle tours around the world and published a book, called Direktøs, about the experience. In 2015, Clue raised a $7 million Series A funding round from Union Square Ventures and Mosaic Ventures to develop the app further and later on, in 2016, $20M Series B.
8. Katherine Ryder
Journalist turned entrepreneur Katherine Ryder is the founder of Maven, a digital health clinic for women. To prepare for launching her own business venture, Katherine joined the early stage investment team at Index Ventures for two years. Her health startup Maven is one of the first portfolio companies of The Female Founders Fund, a VC firm that only funds companies with at least one female founder.
9. Carlota Pi Amoros
Carlota Pi is a co-founder and CMO of Barcelona’s start-up – HolaLuz that was founded thanks to her passion for energy, a especialty she chose during her studies in Industrial Engineering. Five years ago she launched the start-up, created together with Oriol Vila and Ferran Nogué. Through it, they try to change the way in which people are related to energy and currently have more than 60,000 customers.
10. Laura Behrens Wu
Laura is a co-founder and CEO of Shippo, as API solution for business, where the platform acts as a mediator between merchants and couriers. Simply saying they offer discounted shipping rates for eCommerce companies and a streamlines solution across all different shipping providers, like FedEx, UPS. Their clients base consists already of more than 10,000 companies. Not that long time ago, Shippo closed their Series A round of investment. Laura Behrens Wu has been recently recognized by Forbes’ ’30 under 30 Enterprise Tech List’ for being capable of creating innovative software and for working closely with many of the biggest Fortune 500 companies.
11. Amanda Signorelli
Amanda is a CEO of Techweek, a multi-day conference, held in multiple cities, that brings tech startups together to network and learn. The mission of Techweek and Amanda in particularly is to ensure more women excel in tech. She believes there are cities all around the world where entrepreneurs are working on innovative technologies, building revolutionary products, and launching the next wave of startups.
12. Ann Crady Weiss
Ann was born and raised in Palo Alto and is an American entrepreneur, an early stage investor and practicing advocate. Currently, she is CEO and co-founder of Hatch Baby, which is bringing new parenthood into the IOT age. They are creating a series of smart products and services designed to make the transition to new parenthood more beautiful and joyful. Ann previously founded and ran Maya’s Mom, a social networking site that was acquired by Johnson & Johnson.
13. Ann Miura-Ko
Ann Miura-Ko is a partner at Floodgate. She has been called “the most powerful woman in startups by Forbes and is a lecturer in entrepreneurship at Stanford. Being a native in Palo Alto she steeped in tech startups being just a teenager. Her first big experience has begun at Floodgate, which focuses on seed investments, as a cofounding partner. Later on, she invested in Lyft, Ayasdi, Xamarin, Refinery29, Chloe and Isabel, Maker Media, Wanelo, TaskRabbit, and Modcloth. She is passionate about science and engineering education and hosts a computer science camp at her house for three weeks every summer. What could be greater?
14. Rebecca Lynn
Rebecca Lynn is a partner at Canvas Ventures. in 2015 she was listed in Forbes in 100 top tech investors. Mainly she is focused on early-stage venture investments in Fintech, Digital Health, SaaS, AI and Mobile. For example, under Rebecca’s leed Canvas invested in CrowdFlower, HealthLoop, Vida Health, Zola, Luminar, FutureAdvisor etc.
15. Caterina Fake
For sure you know Flickr, an image/video hosting website, and Caterina Fake is a co-founder of it. Moreover, Caterina is a co-founder of Hunch, a search engine that was acquired by eBay in 2011. Later on, she has become a Chairman of the Board of Etsy, where she is an active angel investor, board member and advisor.
16. Clara Shih
And the last one of the list of inspirational women is Clara Shih – CEO and founder of Hearsay Systems – a leader in the advisor-client engagement solutions for the financial services industry. Clara is a many-sided woman. She built a business application on Facebook, known as “Faceforce”, wrote a bestseller ‘The Facebook Era’, was elected to Starbucks board of directors. What is memorable is that Clara has received many awards, for example as Young Global Leader.
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