9 brilliant female tech entrepreneurs that are ruling the world

From creating women-centric dating apps to creating groundbreaking blockchain-based jewelry tech, female tech entrepreneurs around the world are surely breaking the glass ceiling. A study showed that women made only for 25% of the United States’ technology force [1]. Hence, in celebration of the few yet powerful women who continue to inspire people out there by moving tech forward, we have compiled a list of top 9 female tech entrepreneurs.

9 top female tech entrepreneurs

1. Whitney Wolfe, Bumble 

Whitney Wolfe Herd is an American entrepreneur who has founded Bumble, a social and dating app that promotes women to make the first move. She also co-founded the world’s most renowned dating app, Tinder. In 2017 and 2018, Wolfe Herd was one of the names in Forbes 30 under 30 list. Moreover she made it to the Time 100 list in 2018. Wolfe was born and brought up in Utah. She attended Southern Methodist University where she majored in International Studies. At just the age of 20, she started a business of selling bamboo tote bags to help areas affected by the BP oil spill. Soon after, Wolfe started another business ‘tender Heart’, a clothing line that’s dedicated to raising awareness about human trafficking.

A powerful woman tech entrepreneur and strong voice that stands against sexism in Silicon Valley, Wolfe Herd founded Bumble to give control to women in the online dating scene. She founded Bumble in 2014. By 2015, her newly founded app crossed over 80 million matches. According to FastCompany, the app hit 100 million subscribers in 2020 [2]. Recently, she was in the it industry news for taking Bumble public becoming the world’s youngest female billionaire. At just the age of 31, she became the youngest woman to get a company listed. Currently, she is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Bumble and has a networth of US$1.6 billion. 

2. Rashmi Sinha, Slideshare

Rashmi Sinha is one of the top female tech entrepreneurs in the world. Sinha was born and brought up in Lucknow, India. She holds a B.A. and M.A. in Psychology from Allahabad University. She also has a PhD in Cognitive Neuropsychology from Brown University where she took up computer science courses. Sinha also went to University of California, Berkeley for a postdoc where she focused on human-computer interactions. 

She is the founder of Slideshare, an American hosting service for professional content. On Slideshare, people can host professional content like infographics, presentations, videos and documents. She built Slideshare with the help of her husband and brother. Since the launch of Slideshare in 2006, over 9 million presentations have been uploaded on it. In 2012, professional networking website LinkedIn acquired Slideshare for more than $100 million.

Before founding Slideshare, she co-founded Uzanto (a user experience consulting firm) and worked for various projects for prestigious organizations like eBay, AAA and Blue Shield. FastCompany included Sinha in its Web 2.0 World’s Top 10 Women Influencers in 2008. Moreover in 2018, The Economic Times listed her in their list of 20 most influential global Indian women.

3. Jocelyn Leavitt, Hopscotch 

Jocelyne Leavitt co-founded Hopscotch (with another inspiring female tech entrepreneur, Samantha John) with the goal of helping kids of grades 5 to 8 learn programming. Leavitt used to be a teacher and has worked with project-based learning since her graduation. She was a part of the New York startup community and always wanted to start her own company. She kept working on various projects but always kept realizing that there aren’t many women starting companies or working as engineers. She and John talked to their engineer friends and found a pattern. A lot of these people started programming when they were about 10 or 11, played a lot of video games and started making their own games later on. 

At Dartmouth College, Leavitt studied BA, Geography and Environmental Studies. Later she pursued an MBA in Real Estate & Finance from Columbia University. She worked as an associate at Kennedy Wilson before she co-founded Greencastle Partners, a commercial real estate investment and advisory partnership. She has also been on the advisory board for NYC Tech Talent Pipeline since 2015.

4. Lynda Weinman, Lynda.com 

If we’re talking about the world’s most powerful and influential female tech entrepreneurs, there’s no way we don’t talk about Lynda Weinman. Weinman is an American entrepreneur, author and computer instructor. She is best known for co-founding lynda.com, an online software training website with Bruce Heavin, her husband. Her venture lynda.com was acquired for $1.5 billion by LinkedIn in April 2015. 

Earlier, Weinman used to work in the film industry as a special effects animator. She’s done animation and special effects for famous titles like Star Trek V: The Final Monster, RoboCop 2 and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Later, she became a faculty at the UCLA, American Film Institute’s Art Center College of Design. At San Francisco State University, Weinman taught animation, computer graphics, motor graphics and interactive design. She graduated  from The Evergreen State College (Washington) in humanities.

SEE ALSO: VC Square Peg Capital appoints its first ever female investing partner

5. Gina Trapani, Lifehacker

Trapani is an American web developer, businesswoman and blogger. One of the most celebrated female tech entrepreneurs, Trapani is best known as the founder of Lifehacker, a provider of productivity tips, hacks and tricks. Born in New York, Trapani negan her career in high school as a writer for New Youth Connections. She graduated from Marist College and got her degree in MS in Computer Science from Brooklyn College. She founded Lifehacker blog in 2005 and led it till 2009. Later, she joined Expert Labs where she led development of ThinkUp. She has also published 3 books and written for publications like Harvard Business Online. In 2006, Wired awarded her its Rave Award. She was named in the list of FastCompany’s Most Influential Women in Technology in 2009 and 2010.

6. Sukhi Jutla, MarketOrders 

Sukhi Jutla is an award-winning entrepreneur who is also the co-founder and COO of MarketOrders, a jewellery-technology startup that uses blockchain to make diamond and gold jewellery more transparent and ethical. She is a pioneering international speaker, a thought leader in technology, an influencer and a qualified IBM Blockchain Foundation Developer. In 2018, Jutla made international headlines for becoming the World’s First Number 1 Bestselling ‘Blockchain’ Author.

7. Urska Srsen, Bellabeat Inc. 

Urska Srsen is the co-founder of Bellabeat, Inc., a Silicon Valley tech company that build tech-powered wellness products for women. The company also backs Leaf, a health tracking jewellery provider for women. Bellabeat was founded by Urska in 2014 as she felt something was lacking in brands out there that cater to women’s needs and wanted to build a technology that can monitor her lifestyle as well as balance work.

8. Izzy Obeng, Foundervine

Obeng is the founder of Foundervine, a not-for-profit that focuses on uncovering and nurturing entrepreneurial talent from communities that are underrepresented in the United Kingdom’s digitech ecosystem. Obeng established Foundervine to empower minority ethnic and black founders with the tools and support they need to grow their ventures and help them find resources, funding and advice. Till date, the company has delivered great programmes by partnering with companies PwC, KPMG, EY, Pivotal Software and Worldremit. Obeng is also one of the ambassadors for One Young World.

9. Ellen K. Pao, Project Include

One of the most pioneering female tech entrepreneurs, Ellen K. Pao is the co-founder of Project Include, a non-profit initiative focused on increasing and improving diversity in the technology industry. Previously working as the CEO of Reddit, Pao frequently speaks on pressing issues like sexism in Silicon Valley. She came into public limelight in the year 2012 when she lodged a $16 million lawsuit against the VC firm she used to work at for gender discrimination. 

SEE ALSO:Fintech unicorn Monzo appoints first-ever female US CEO

Image Courtesy:  People photo created by lookstudio – www.freepik.com

Sources

[1] Honey Pot (2018) “2018 Women in Tech Index” [Online] Available from: https://www.honeypot.io/women-in-tech-2018/ [Accessed March 2021]

[2] FastCompany (2020) “Bumble hits 100 million users—and has new plans to take over the dating world” [Online] Available from: https://www.fastcompany.com/90527896/bumble-hits-100-million-users-and-has-new-plans-to-take-over-the-dating-world [Accessed March 2021]