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The Big One: Female Founders to Watch
Female founders have long struggled to raise startup funding compared to their male counterparts, and there have been a slew of new funds and initiatives launched in recent years to get more money in the hands of women-led startups.
Even with increased efforts to boost these startups, the amount of venture capital that makes its way to female founders has remained paltry. And when it comes to startups led by all-women founders, funding is declining. Startups led by all-women teams raised just 1.9% of all VC funding last year, down from 2.4% the year prior. Startups with at least one female founder raised 17% of all venture capital funding in 2022, the same percentage raised in 2021.
To spotlight some of the country's promising women-led startups, American Inno has compiled its first Female Founders to Watch list, a collection of startup leaders behind fast-growing young firms. With input from our startup reporters in more than 40 cities across the country, we're providing a list of names that need to be on your radar — from founders leading artificial-intelligence unicorns to bootstrapped founders just getting started.
Our Startups to Watch series, which also includes National Startups to Watch, AI Startups to Watch and Serial Entrepreneurs to Watch, is designed to introduce readers to founders and companies from across the country. Dive into our inaugural Female Founders to Watch list:
Female Founders to Watch: 34 thriving startup leaders from around the U.S. you need to know
Startups to Watch
- YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley has reportedly launched and raised a seed round for a new startup that aims to use artificial intelligence to create short-form videos and scripts. Dubbed EyeTell, Hurley's new company is working on a service that will use generative AI — the latest version of the technology that can mimic human-created text, speech and images from text or other prompts — to produce scripts and videos. Hurley is best known for founding YouTube in 2005 with Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. Bay Area Inno has the full story.
- AireXpert, a startup in Buffalo, New York, whose software manages the complex series of maintenance tasks that are required before commercial planes can take flight, recently closed a $3 million seed round. Its customers include United Airlines and JetBlue, Buffalo Inno reports.
- Elucid, a Boston startup that says its AI-powered imaging analysis software is designed to understand the cause of cardiovascular disease, has raised $80 million in new funding. Elucid wants its technology to help establish a more objective way of looking at plaque in arteries and its potential effects on the body, instead of relying on subjective visual assessments, BostInno reports.
- Portland, Oregon-based startup Ratio Coffee has launched a high-end home coffee maker dubbed Ratio Four, its latest in a line of coffee makers that are designed to deliver pour-over coffee brewing in an automated fashion. The machines feature sleek design and high-end finishes, which also means they come with high-end prices — between $645 and $745, Portland Inno reports.
- What does the future of health care look like? For San Francisco startup Forward, the future has no health insurance, no copays, a network of AI-powered self-service health-care pods, an app store and no cost to patients. The startup, which announced a $100 million funding round this week, offers health-care pods in places like malls, gyms and office buildings that can draw your blood, check your blood pressure and swab you for viruses, Bay Area Inno reports.
VC is bullish on crypto now with 'Hurricane Sam behind us'
A new fund from Chapel Hill, North Carolina's Morgan Creek Capital has raised more than $50 million in funding to bet on blockchain, AI and other “transformational technologies.”
Mark Yusko, CEO of Morgan Creek Capital Management, told Triangle Inno that with "Hurricane Sam behind us" – a reference to the recent conviction of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried – the crypto space is heating up.
“I think people are realizing that this cycle is going to be very positive in terms of more use cases," he said of Bitcoin. "The technology is more mature, so Bitcoin is once again the best performing asset of all the major assets his year, which is pretty amazing.”
Full story: Yusko closes $50M+ Morgan Creek Digital fund
Weird and Wired: Rocket company is sending remains of 'Star Trek' legends to the moon
The debut flight of United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur V, scheduled for Christmas Eve, will be the first of two missions required to demonstrate the rocket’s performance for high-priority National Space Security Launch spacecraft.
One notable cargo item will carry the cremated remains of the original "Star Trek" series creator Gene Rodenberry and those of cast member Nichelle Nichols, who portrayed the character Nyota Uhura.
Houston-based Celestis is the company behind the “memorial spaceflights” of Rodenberry’s and Nichols’ ashes. The cremated remains of another 332 people also will be part of the spaceflight.
Full story: Canaveral rocket set to launch lunar lander — and 'Star Trek' legends' remains — to the moon
