👩🏻💻 Yoko Spirig's Ledgy Raises $22M to Help European Startups Manage Equity
FemWealth Issue #79
Happy Sunday, FemWealth Friends!
A warm welcome to all new readers!
In the Spotlight 👩🏻💻
Ledgy, a Zurich🇨🇭based company, co-founded and led by Yoko Spirig, builds cap table management software for companies and their employees working across multiple countries.
It has recently raises $22M from NEA, Sequoia and more. The fresh Series B funding will be used for hiring, product development, and user acquisition.
“We started in fragmented Europe, which was a curse and blessing. It forced us to serve customers with international teams.” - Yoko Spirig
Listen to Yoko’s founder story 🎧
FemWealth Favorites ❤️
💸 Pano has a burning desire to apply AI smarts to wildfire detection- Founded and led by Sonia Kastner, Pano AI is the first company to offer a fully-managed solution for active wildfire detection using AI. It has raised $20M in Series A funding led by Initialized Capital, with participation from Congruent Ventures, Convective Capital, DCVC, January Ventures, Quiet Capital, a.o.. Kim-Mai Cutler, a partner at Initialized Capital, will be joining the board of directors.
“The climate crisis is happening now, and humanity needs to start adapting today. At Pano AI, we’re working to pioneer the field of climate change adaptation, so that we can help society cope with the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters.” - Sonia Kastner
💸 Andreessen Horowitz leads London fintech Sequence’s $19m seed round - Co-founded and led by Riya Grover (previously cofounder and CEO at food delivery platform Feedr) is building a B2B “low-code” modular software product for billing, payments, and revenue data. Read more.
💸 InnerPlant grows with new John Deere-backed millions for sustainable farming - The California-based startup, co-founded and led by Shely Aronov, uses plant physiology combined with sensing and satellite technologies to make farming more efficient and sustainable. InnerPlant has recently raised $16 million in Series A funding, led by Deere & Co and joined by MS&AD Ventures, Bee Partners and UpWest.
French biotech Tridek-One gets €16 million booster to restore the immune balance in patients - Dr. Giuseppina Caligiuri is a co-founder of the France-based startup which develops immune checkpoint agonists to restore the immune balance in patients living with auto-immune diseases.
Vienna-based Prewave rakes in €11 million for supply chain risk intelligence platform - Co-founded and led by Dr. Lisa Smith, the Austrian company’s AI-powered platform analyses millions of online sources in more than fifty languages to find, categorise and directly address the risks that might impact supply chains, including human rights issues, sustainability risks, and legislation compliance.
💸 Hamburg’s MicroHarvest reaps in €8.5 million to build protein production system - Katelijne Bekers is the founder an CEO of the biotech startup focused on the development and commercialisation of single cell protein.
“We have a strong shared vision for creating impact to our food systems, using the power of nature. We aim to deliver impact at scale, bringing the faster protein production system to commercialisation.” - Katelijne Bekers
💸 The Muse Announces $8 Million Investment Led by MBM Capital For Future of Work Consolidation Play - Kathryn Minshew’s values-based job search and career development platform, used by 75 million people annually, helps top talent discover and land jobs that fit their future.
“Candidates and companies deserve something better. By aligning The Muse's product around a better match, not just a low-cost, high-volume flow of candidate clicks, we're changing the way people hire—and ultimately creating a vastly improved jobseeker experience.”
💸 Dame Products expands sexual wellness product line following $7M raise - Founded and led by Alexandra Fine, the sexual wellness company is planning to launch a new, more affordable vibrator which it describes as “an unintimidating, inclusive entry point to pleasure for people who are in the early stages of their sexual wellness journey.” The Series A funding was led by Amboy Street Ventures with participation from Listen Ventures, Flybridge, Echo and Forest Road Company.
“We don’t shy away from believing that pleasure is healthy.” - Alexandra Fine
💸 Block Party, a tool to combat online harassment, raises a $4.8M seed - Developed by Tracy Chou, a software engineer and tech diversity advocate, Block Party helps people curate a safer experience on Twitter, enabling users to automate the process of blocking bad actors and creating block lists on the platform.
💸 AOA Dx Adds $4.5M in Seed Funding to Develop the Next Generation of Its Ovarian Cancer Detection Technology - The startup is co-founded and led by Oriana Papin-Zoghbi.
🎙️ Pitch. New York-based Enthuse Foundation is looking for women entrepreneurs in the food, beverage, and CPG industries to apply to its Pitch Competition. Applications are open now and close at 11:59 ET Monday, October 3rd.
📣 Shout out to Shona D’Arcy, co-founder of Kids Speech Labs, an Irish company developing a digital health solution for children’s allied health services, starting with speech and language services. She’s currently fundraising. Get in touch!
Are you a female founder looking for funding or planning a product launch? Reply to this email or DM on Twitter.
VC: 💸 Berlin-based Extantia unveils €300 million platform to advance net zero transition - Laura-Marie Toepfer is a Partner of the climate venture firm.
“Extantia Ignite is where industry meets technology and science. By combining our scientific carbon measurement with sustainable investing, our hub is designed to engage and empower all stakeholders — entrepreneurs, policymakers, family business leaders, and institutional investors — to achieve their own net zero targets and that of their customers.” - Laura-Marie Toepfer
💸 BDC launches $500 million Thrive Venture Fund and Lab for Women - The bank for Canadian entrepreneurs has launched the Thrive Venture Fund and Lab for Women, aiming to raise $500 million and become the largest investment platform of its kind in the world, to support Canadian women-led businesses for them to grow and have a lasting impact on the economy.
💸 Bank of America anchors new Human Ventures fund - Human Ventures, a US-based venture capital firm and studio co-founded by Heather Hartnett, is in the process of raising north of $50 million. The new fund will focus on pre-seed and seed stage companies. 50% of the firm’s portfolio’ founders are women.
“By nature of the opportunities we are seeing in women’s health care, child care, reskilling and upskilling — it happens to attract more female founders. These are areas that are completely underinvested in.” - Heather Hartnett
💸 Deep tech VC First Star plots a $40M third fund - Millie Liu is a founding partner of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, VC firm, which typically invests in early-stage robotics, blockchain, AI and machine learning-focused startups.
👩🏻💻 Path to partner: looking back, looking forward and shouting out - Features Annalise Dragic, partner at Sapphire Ventures, Emma Steele, Partner at Ascension, and Aurore Falque-Pierrotin, Partner at Samaipata.
Women’s Health: 👩🏽⚕️ Femtech Has the Potential to Change How Women Are Treated in Healthcare
Women’s Wealth: 💸 Sallie Krawcheck Says Women Drive Impact Investing - Women now control over 1/3 of the world's wealth. Ellevest CEO and co-founder Sallie Krawcheck highlights strategies to advise women on reaching their financial goals.
Women’s Art: 👩🏽🎨 Ex-Tate Modern Boss Builds New Fund Targeting Minority Artists - The Swedish Arte Collectum I fund co-led by Deborah Gunn, who previously managed Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s collection, takes “an activist approach” to diversity, focusing on undervalued female and minority artists. The fund, capped at around $45.4 million, aims to buy into artists that, until recently, were ignored by the establishment. Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian from Iran, African-American artist Stanley Whitney and Wook-kyung Choi from South Korea, Kerstin Bratsch from Germany and Toyin Ojih Odutola from Nigeria are among the artists sourced by the firm.
🎧 Worth listening to these two podcasts on women artists, featuring Katy Hessel, art historian and author of The Story of Art Without Men
What I’m Reflecting On 💭
Dissident: ‘Iranian Women Are Furious’ Over Headscarf Death - People in Iran are protesting against their government after Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, died in police custody after refusing to adhere to the country’s strict religious dress code. Women are removing their state-mandated head coverings and cutting their hair. Also read Women Across Iran Are Protesting the ‘Morality Police’
“Let me make it clear that Iranian women who are facing guns and bullets right now in the streets, they’re not protesting against compulsory hijab like just a small piece of cloth. Not at all.
“They are protesting against one of the most visible symbols of oppression. They are protesting against the whole regime.” - Masih Alinejad, Iranian dissident and founder of My Stealthy Freedom
Here’s how you can help support Iranian women:
Prospect of far-right female premier divides Italian women - Giorgia Meloni, the leader of a right-wing party is expected to win the elections in Italy. Women across the country are divided over the prospects of Meloni becoming Italy’s first female prime minister.
Starving for success: How our elite athletes are ‘under-fuelling’ to meet body image [🇦🇺 focused, but an interesting read]
“In an attempt to meet a mix of social media ideals and strict athletic tests such as skinfolds, many athletes were failing to eat enough to fuel their bodies to meet the physical demands of training and competition.”
Thank you for reading FemWealth! 🥰 If you enjoyed this issue, please share it with your friends. Wish you a wonderful Sunday and a great week ahead!
Anamaria
Founder & Writer of FemWealth