💸 Danielle Cohen-Shohet‘s GlossGenius Raises $25M to Innovate Beauty Industry’s Tech Stack
FemWealth Issue #80
Happy Sunday, Femealth Friends!
In the Spotlight ✨
During her studies at Princeton University, Danielle Cohen-Shohet experienced firsthand the challenges of running a small business as a freelance makeup artist. Determined to make it easier for small owners in the beauty industry to manage their operations, she taught herself how to code and launched GlossGenius in 2016.
“Zooming out from a single customer and this fabric we’re creating, it’s exciting that we are, in some way, an engine for economic mobility, for entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds, and an engine for economic mobility for small businesses that is helping them play on the same level playing field as larger companies.” - Danielle Cohen-Shohet
With more than 40,000 customers in the beauty and wellness space, and $2 billion in transaction activity annually, the tech platform automates functions across back office operations and client experience, including bookkeeping and finances, inventory management, online booking and email marketing. Notably, over 70% of GlossGenius’ customers are women and a significant portion are underrepresented minorities.
Aiming to be a vertical software “business-in-a-box” for beauty professionals, GlossGenius raised $25 million in financing led by Imaginary Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Left Lane Capital, bringing its total funding to $44.2 million.
Read more: GlossGenius triples valuation, raises $25M to give beauty industry’s tech stack a makeover (TechCrunch) | Salon management system GlossGenius raises $25 million series B (Fortune $)
Listen to: Danielle Cohen-Shohet on the future of beauty and disrupting tech for hyper-local businesses (The Room Podcast)
FemWealth Favourites ❤️
Startups: 💸 How menstrual underwear brand Knix landed one of the largest exits by a female founder in Canadian history (Fortune $) - Joanna Griffiths of Knix has sold a majority stake of the business to Swedish health and hygiene company Essity for $320 million U.S. dollars. The deal is the largest publicly disclosed sale of a direct-to-consumer brand by a female founder in Canadian history, and one of the largest sales of a female-founded brand in US history. Griffiths will continue to run the company as CEO, while raising her three young children, and doubling down on her investments and mentorship of female and minority founders.
“When I started working on Knix, this category didn’t exist. Here we are 10 years later, and [menstrual underwear] is on track to become a billion-dollar category. It’s really made its way into the mainstream.”
“I’ve been pretty open and honest about what the journey is really like as an entrepreneur. One of the best ways you can give back is just letting someone know that they’re not alone in the way that they’re feeling, that nobody has all the answers, that it’s hard, and that you’ll get through it.” - Joanna Griffiths
💸 YC-backed fintech Numida raises $12.3M led by Serena Ventures to extend loans to MSMEs beyond Uganda - Co-founded by Catherine Denis (COO), the Uganda-based fintech provides digital lending services to small enterprises as part of its strategy for driving financial inclusion in emerging markets. The $12.3 million pre-Series A equity-debt funding round was led by Serena Ventures with participation from Breega, 4Di Capital, Launch Africa, Soma Capital, and Y Combinator, alongside existing strategic investor MFS Africa and Lendable Asset Management.
💸 Meliora Therapeutics Raises $11 Million Seed Financing to Develop First Mechanism Of Action Atlas in Oncology - Joan Smith is a technical co-founder of the biotech company pioneering a machine learning-driven platform to decipher oncology drugs’ true mechanisms-of-action. The company aims to improve the current success rate of oncology drugs.
💸 Tactic’s $11M raise shows even when cryptocurrencies are down, companies still need to count ’em up - The crypto accounting software startup founded and led by Ann Jaskiw has raised an oversubscribed Series A round, led by FTX Ventures, Lux Capital, Exponent Founders Capital, Definition Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and existing backers including Founders Fund, Ramp, Dylan Field, Elad Gil, and Sabrina Hahn.
💸 CoRise’s approach to up-skilling involves fewer courses and more access - Founded and led by Julia Stiglitz, a US based startup that sells expert-led programming to people who want to up-skill their careers, has recently announced their official launch and a $8.5M seed financing from Greylock, GSV Ventures, and Cowboy Ventures.
💸 Bug startup betting big on food producers bags €6m Series A - LIVIN farms, an Austria-based startup founded and led by Katharina Unger, provides “plug-and-play factories” and baby larvae on subscription to large industrial food producers to prevent food waste.
💸 Zócalo Health Raises $5M in Seed Funding to Launch Culturally Competent Digital Primary Care Services for Latinos in the U.S. - Co-founded by Mariza Hardin, the Latino-founded healthcare service designed for Latino patients has raised $5M in seed funding co-led by Animo, Virtue, and Vamos Ventures. The round includes other notable investors, including Necessary Ventures, Able Partners, and angel investors Toyin Ajayi, Freada Kapor Klein, Nikhil Krishnan, and Erik Ibarra.
💸 Former Revolut employees launch Solvo, an app that simplifies crypto investing - The startup co-founded and led by Ayelen Denovitzer has raised $3.5 million in a seed round led by Index Ventures with participation from CoinFund and FJ Labs.
💸 This Danish startup has a planning app for neurodivergent people - Co-founded by Melissa Azari (CPO) and Helene Lassen Nørlem (CEO), Tiimo - a first of its kind time planning app for neurodivergent people (i.e., who have ADHD, autism, dyslexia and dyspraxia) - has raised a €3m seed round.
💸 France’s Phagos raises €2.4m to replace antibiotics in animal farms - The startup co-founded by Adèle James (CTO) aims to use viruses to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria in farms.
📆 Female Founder Office Hours [November 10] by Playfair. Apply by October 20 to join one of the largest office hours initiatives for women founders in Europe.
📣 Shout-out: OwnTrail is where people achieve their next milestones in work and life. Their proprietary life OS toolset combined with a vibrant and supportive community helps people be and become so much more than their resumes. They are currently raising - deck here. Email their CEO & co-founder, Rebekah Bastian, to discuss the opportunity.
VC: 💸 Hustle Fund’s side hustle just helped it close a third fund - The US-based firm, co-founded by Elizabeth Yin, closed its third and biggest fund to date, with $46.1 million in capital commitments. | Also, listen to Hustle Fund GP Elizabeth Yin on Building An Investor’s Oasis with Camp Hustle | Seed to Harvest
“We’re deploying capital in a fairly efficient way. You want to test some initial hypothesis to see if there’s a need, and if there is a need, and the founder seems to be great, then we’re pouring in more capital.” - Elizabeth Yin
💸 Aviva’s $10m to back female stars of fintech (The Times $) - Aviva, an FTSE 100 insurance business led by Amanda Blanc, has invested $10 million into the Anthemis Female Innovators Lab fund, the world’s largest female-focused financial technology (fintech) fund. The funds are aimed at backing female-run UK financial technology businesses.
💸 Europe’s inaugural Women in VC Summit is the first step in a long climb toward equity - Features Sophie Winwood and Ruth Foxe Blader of Anthemis, who organized the first Women in VC Summit, European edition.
👶 Mom Founder And VCs Are Disrupting The Childcare Industry - Features Shadiah Sigala, a first-generation Mexican immigrant and co-founder and CEO of Kinside, an online marketplace that connects employers, employees and childcare providers. The startup is backed by VCs who are also moms Joanna Drake (Magnify Ventures), Sasha McKenzie (Wellington Access Ventures), Alda Leu Dennis (Initialized), and Sara Deshpande of Maven Ventures.
Tech: 👩💻 Facebook whistleblower launches nonprofit to solve social media harms - Frances Haugen is launching Beyond the Screen, a nonprofit organization on a mission to seek solutions to harms created by social media.
Sports: ⚽ How Angel City FC Created a Women’s Soccer Moneymaker - The US National Women’s Soccer League franchise wraps its first season by blowing past its financial goals
“We found investors that understood the power of using their platform, not only to move forward a social purpose or a movement but also understand the value of making money so that the whole engine works.” - Julie Uhrman, Angel City co-founder and president.
What I’m Reflecting On 💭
‘I Think the Women Are Winning’
“What happened to Mahsa Amini happened to every single one of us. We’ve all been stopped [by Iran’s religious police], and some of us have been detained. I was stopped many, many times. When you think back to all the conversations that you have had with the people who have stopped you, you realize that a slight shift in tone or something very, very small could have gone wrong to get the person who had stopped you to deliver a blow to your head. All of us, the women who’ve lived under this regime, we all know what it’s like and that we could be a victim like Mahsa Amini.” - Roya Hakakian
A Better Birth Is Possible - By Ruha Benjamin, author of Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want
“As a young Black woman, I saw my pregnancy treated like a problem. So I ditched the doctors for home delivery and found an alternative model for health care.” - Ruha Benjamin
Also, read More than 80% of maternal deaths in the US are preventable
“More than 55 Black women die of pregnancy-related cause for every 100,000 live births, a risk three times as high as that of white women, whose mortality is less than 18 per 100,000. (…) Black women accounted for 31% of deaths, while representing only 13% of the population (…)”
Women have been led astray on egg-freezing, bombshell study finds. There are 2 major things they have to know. - In a recently published research paper, a team of experts from NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine and Langone Fertility Center concluded that the proportion of patients who ultimately had a baby after undergoing egg-freezing procedures and using their eggs was just 39%, respectively that the success rate was heavily influenced by the patient’s age.
The economic case against unpaid domestic work
“Compensating people for tasks like housework and child care could bring about a more just—not to mention wealthier—society.”
Thank you for reading! 🥰 Please share this issue with a friend. Have a wonderful Sunday and an exciting week ahead!
Anamaria
Founder & Writer of FemWealth