💌 Founder’s Story: Meet Elizabeth Gore, Co-founder and President of Hello Alice
FemWealth Issue #98
Happy Sunday, FemWealth Friends!
Founder’s Story 💌
Meet Elizabeth Gore, Co-founder and President of Hello Alice, a US-based company which helps businesses launch and grow. The free platform serves more than one million small business owners across the United States, and has a special focus on women, people of color, those who are military-affiliated, the LGBTQ+ community, and people with disabilities.
FemWealth Favourites ❤️
💸 Google invests almost US$400 mil in ChatGPT rival Anthropic - Co-founded by Daniela Amodei (President), Anthropic, a San Francisco-based AI safety and research company (registered as a public benefit corporation), has raised almost US $400 million from Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
💸 IgGenix Announces First Close of $40M Series B Financing to Accelerate Lead Antibody Program in Peanut Allergy - The California-based startup, co-founded by Kari Nadeau and led by Jessica Grossman, aims to create innovative therapies that cure allergies. The Series B round was led by Alexandria Venture Investments with participation from Eli Lilly and Company, Khosla Ventures, Aller Fund, and Sean Parker.
💸 Breef raises $16M to match brands with marketing agencies - Co-founded by Emily Bibb, Breef enables brands to manage and service marketing agency projects. The US-based company raised $16 million in a Series A round (an undisclosed portion of which was debt) led by Greycroft.
💸 Marker Learning Raises $15M to Make Quality Learning Disability Assessments and Support More Accessible and Affordable - The New York-based startup co-founded by Emily Yudofsky provides remote learning and attention disability services. The company raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz.
💸 FireCompass raises $7 Mn in fresh round - The Boston-based startup, co-founded by Priyanka Aash, uses AI tools to scan the deep, dark, and surface webs for evidence of data breaches.
💸 Moonhub wants to transform the way companies find job candidates using AI - Founded by CEO Nancy Xu, the US-based company announced its $4.4 million seed round led by Khosla Ventures and GV.
“The fundamental thesis we have as a company in the way we work with our clients, and also internally in our own hiring, is that we truly believe that talent is universal and opportunity is not. And that plays out in our own hiring process. While we have people who have worked at great companies and great universities, we also have people who don’t have that pedigree, but are incredibly talented themselves. And we’re very proud that we have a very diverse team.” - Nancy Xu
💸 EarlyBird Education, a Boston-based gamified early literacy assessment platform, raised $3 million in funding (Fortune Termsheet $) - Carla Small (CEO) and Nadine Gaab, PhD (Scientific Advisor) are two of the company’s co-founders. MassMutual’s MM Catalyst Fund led the round and was joined by Lobby Capital and Amplify Capital.
💸 Beaming Health debuts autism therapy directory - Led by co-founder and CEO Marissa Pittard, the San Francisco-based occupational therapy platform helps families of children with autism find good-quality therapy providers. It has raised $1.7 million in seed funding led by NextGen Venture Partners and joined by Tau Ventures, Divergent Investments, Designer Fund, and MedMountain Ventures.
💸 ShareWell wants to scale mental health support with its 10,000 support groups - Founded and led by CeCe Cheng, the company offers an affordable peer-support model for mental health. The company secured a $1.3 million pre-seed round.
💸 MicaAI Medical raises $3M for its breast cancer diagnostics platform - Lilia Shwartsman is a co-founder of the Israeli company offering technology for early breast cancer detection and diagnosis on contrast-enhanced mammograms.
💸 Jendaya raises funding to scale its Africa-focused luxury e-commerce platform - The e-commerce platform co-founded by Kemi Adetu (COO) and Teni Sagoe (CCO) acts as a gateway for global luxury brands to the African continent and for consumers in the rest of the world to discover African brands. The company came out of stealth after raising £1 million (~$1.2 million) in pre-seed funding.
👩🏻💻 The 101 Guide to Board Meetings for Early Stage CEOs - By Laura McGinnis, an investor at Balderton.
VC: 🙌 GV welcomes new Partner and Silicon Valley veteran Luna Schmid to London office - Luna (Dai) Schmid joins Google’s venture arm as a Partner in its London office.
Tech: 👩🏻💻 The Creator of ChatGPT Thinks AI Should Be Regulated - Features Mira Murati, Chief Technology Officer at OpenAI, leading the teams behind DALL-E and ChatGPT.
Women’s & Family Health: 👩🏽⚕️ Simple HealthKit is taking on health equity with at-home diagnostics, treatment - Features Simple HealthKit, a US-based health tech company co-founded by Sheena Menezes and Lisa Le.
👩 Femtech startups to watch, according to investors - Features 14 of Europe’s most promising up-and-coming startups focus on women’s health.
❓Does size really matter? $80bn sextech market still too taboo for VCs
Culture: 🎶 Beyonce Just Became The Most-Awarded Grammy Winner Ever - Beyonce became the most-winning artist in the history of the Grammys with a total of 32 trophies.
What I’m Reflecting On 💭
For Female Founders, Fundraising Only from Female VCs Comes at a Cost - An analysis of more than 2,000 venture-backed startups shows that women-led firms whose first round was raised exclusively from female VCs are two times less likely to raise a second round. This is caused by attribution bias.
When people see that a female founder received funding from a male investor, they assume it’s because she is competent and her startup is strong. But if the same founder only has female investors, then people are more likely to assume that her success is due to her gender, rather than her competence. - Isabelle Solal (assistant professor of management at ESSEC Business School) and Kaisa Snellman (associate professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD)
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Wish you a lovely Sunday and a successful week ahead!
Anamaria
Founder & Writer of FemWealth