#11 - Spotlighting Women Led Ventures
A bi-weekly newsletter containing curated entrepreneurial focused content for students, founders and friends.
The Recap
We are extremely excited to commemorate International Women’s Day with the release of a StartOP newsletter focused on female founded startups! This week we are touching on a variety of industries including ecommerce, education, artificial intelligence, health tech and more. It has been an incredible experience to collaborate with the female founders in the Boston community to put together this article. Make sure to check out job and internship opportunities at many of these companies at the end of the newsletter! If you’re not already, subscribe below to be the first to get future StartOP newsletters!
Featured Ventures
Founders: Vanessa (MacAulay) Bruce and Anna Palmer
Dough was founded with the goal of “directing spending dollars back to women-owned companies to create economic equity.” It has been exciting to see Dough transform into a thriving platform helping support the growth of women founded ventures. Dough now features products from over 500 sellers in a wide variety of spaces including apparel, home & office, health & wellness, food & beverage (they even sell Drink Simple, a past featured venture), and much more. Unique to Dough’s platform is also the ability to see a company’s founders next to a given product while shopping and see items from communities the sellers identify with (veteran, LGBQTIA+, women of color, etc.). This process plays a significant role in helping foster a strong community while helping tell the story that exists behind a product. Dough is continuing to expand their product offerings and is always looking to help more female founders grow their businesses.
Founders: Maxine Anderson, Ryan Laverty and Michael Ioffe
Arist started as project to help students in Yemen with limited internet connectivity get access to knowledge. Arist's founders quickly realized the potential for text message based learning, and gained a lot of interest from learning leaders across many industries. Arist now helps organizations like Amazon and the State of California rapidly teach and train their employees using text message based courses, which are extremely effective and accessible. Supported by research from Stanford and UPenn, text message based education has significant potential to change the way people learn, with a 95% course completion rate as compared to 5% for video based courses. Arist went through Y Combinator as part of the S20 batch and raised their seed round from leading venture firms including Craft Ventures, Soma Capital, and more. Alongside launching the next version of their platform, Arist is hiring fast and signing on new Fortune 500 clients every week.
Seed Stage Ventures
88 Acres is an artisan food startup crafting healthy snacks that are free of the most common food allergens by using whole seeds and simple ingredients. With products including seed butters, protein bars, and Seed’Nola (seed based granola), 88 Acres offers a wide variety of healthy snacks and is continuing to further expand their product offerings.
Bloomer Tech is an early stage startup that has developed a revolutionary bra that discreetly provides heart health data for women throughout their everyday activities. They raised 3 million during their seed stage in March 2020 and may be looking for their next raise soon.
ReviveMed is bringing Artificial Intelligence to the forefront of medical research surrounding metabolic diseases. Through using their AI technology they are processing tens of thousands of data points, helping to discover new treatments and learn more about metabolic diseases currently lacking treatments.
Biobot Analytics collects data about viruses, bacteria and metabolites from the sewage systems across different towns and cities in order to assess the health of these areas. Having raised a $4.2 million round from The Engine in April 2020, Biobot is growing rapidly and impacting more communities every day.
Pre-Seed Ventures
MomMe is an early-stage company that recognizes the difficulties of childbirth and aims to help postpartum moms recover both physically and emotionally. Their goal is to provide a suite of smart connected health wearables to help improve moms’ recoveries.
Sesame has designed a “digital dorm” platform that enables students to feel like they are back at school during the current virtual environment. Sesame can be added to your computer as a simple chrome extension and is already being used by students in high school and university.
Let’s Get Set has a simple goal to help new parents achieve financial stability. They provide a series of taxed based tools that give the average household they help $4,500 in tax refunds.
Viv’s goal is to create all natural and affordable period products that help women throughout their menstrual cycle. Viv has already developed a line of earth-friendly products that are proven to help women throughout their periods.
Holdette eases women’s transition out of college by designing professional workwear with real pockets and by cultivating a supportive community. From their function-forward apparel to Back Pocket, their community program offering various development events, Holdette is there to support your professional journey.
Internships
Arist - Bizdev/Operations Internship (Paid)
Arist - Software Engineering Intern (Paid)
ReviveMed - Open to Reach Outs
Viv - Open to Reach Outs
Jobs & Opportunities
Arist - Creative Marketer
Arist - Enterprise Account Executive
Arist - Customer Success Manager
Arist - Software Engineer (Full Stack)
ReviveMed - Computational Biologist
ReviveMed - Deep Learning Data Scientist
ReviveMed - Open to Reach Outs
Viv - Open to Reach Outs
BioBot Analytics - Financial Controller (Operations)
BioBot Analytics - Government Contract and Compliance Manager
BioBot Analytics - Head of Public Sector Sales
BioBot Analytics - Head of Engineering and Data
BioBot Analytics - Senior Data Engineer
Accelerators
Y Combinator is accepting applications from startups for the Summer 2021 funding cycle. It will take place from June–August 2021. If you want to apply, submit your application online by 8 pm PT on March 19. Startups that submit early have a small advantage because Y Combinator has more time to read their applications. You can also submit after the deadline - though keep in mind that if you apply late, Y Combinator can’t guarantee the exact date you’ll hear back with a decision.
About the Author
Alex Marley is a junior majoring in electrical engineering and economics at Northeastern University. Currently he is the Vice President for the Huntington Angels Network, External Relations Lead for Generate, researching neural interfacing devices at Northeastern, an electrical engineer for Paradigm Hyperloop and the founder of the StartOP newsletter. Alex is also working part time as an electrical engineer at Notch Technologies and was a venture analyst for Wiase Capital.