Hi everyone,

This week we wanted to try something a little different.

Instead of focusing on venture firms or funding news, we’re spotlighting women who are building the future across some of the most important sectors in venture capital. From fintech and healthcare to defense and AI, these founders are tackling complex problems and building companies that shape industries.

Female founders still receive less than 2% of venture capital funding, yet they continue to launch category-defining companies and drive meaningful innovation. Our goal with this edition is simple: highlight a few of the incredible women building in sectors that investors care deeply about.

Let’s meet some of them. ✨

🗂️ This Week’s Agenda

• 🤖 AI Founder Feature
• 💳 Fintech Founder
• 🩺 Healthcare Founder
• 🛡️ Defense Founder
• ⚡ Energy Founder
• 🛍️ Consumer Founder
• 📊 Data Snapshot: Female Founders in VC
• 🎤 Campus Event: The Midas Touch with Bill Gurley
• 📚 Community Ask: Research Study Participation

🤖 AI

Fei-Fei Li — Founder & CEO of World Labs

About the founder

Fei-Fei Li is one of the most influential pioneers in modern artificial intelligence. A Stanford professor and former Chief Scientist of AI at Google Cloud, she is widely known for her groundbreaking work in computer vision and for creating ImageNet, the dataset that helped spark the deep learning revolution.

Beyond her research, Fei-Fei has been a strong advocate for human-centered AI and expanding opportunities for women and underrepresented groups in technology.

What she’s building

Fei-Fei is now the founder and CEO of World Labs, an AI company focused on developing spatial intelligence — technology that helps AI systems understand and reason about the 3D world. The company is building models that can interpret physical environments, which could unlock major advances in robotics, augmented reality, autonomous systems, and real-world AI applications.

💳 Fintech

Anne Boden — Founder of Starling Bank

About the founder

Anne Boden is the founder of Starling Bank, one of the leading digital challenger banks in the United Kingdom. With decades of experience in banking leadership, she launched Starling to rethink how financial services could work in a mobile-first world.

Boden is widely recognized as one of the pioneers of digital banking and has been a vocal advocate for innovation in financial infrastructure.

What she’s building

Starling Bank was designed as a fully digital bank, allowing customers to manage finances seamlessly through a mobile platform. The company has grown into a major fintech player, offering personal banking, business accounts, and payment infrastructure.

🩺 Healthcare

Julia Cheek — Founder & CEO of Everlywell

About the founder

Julia Cheek founded Everlywell after recognizing how difficult it was for individuals to access affordable health testing. She launched the company with a mission to make healthcare information more accessible and consumer-friendly.

Julia is also known for appearing on Shark Tank, where her company received one of the largest investment offers in the show’s history.

What she’s building

Everlywell offers at-home health testing kits that allow individuals to test for things like hormone levels, food sensitivities, and general wellness indicators. The company is helping shift healthcare toward consumer-driven diagnostics and preventative health monitoring.

🤳 Media

Avni Barman — Founder of Gen She

About the founder

Avni Barman is on a mission to empower more women to step into entrepreneurship and leadership. After early roles at companies like LinkedIn and Atlassian, she saw firsthand how few women were represented in tech and venture, and decided to build something to change that.

She launched Gen She while still working in Big Tech, initially as a nonprofit community that hosted conferences bringing together hundreds of women across the technology and startup ecosystem. When the pandemic forced events online, Gen She expanded rapidly, reaching more than 16,000 attendees at a virtual conference and growing a global audience.

Today, Avni has built a community of over one million women through Gen She’s media platform across social media, a podcast, and a newsletter. Alongside building the platform, she also invests personally, writing $50–100K checks into early-stage founders.

What she’s building

Gen She has evolved into a media-driven platform designed to inspire and support the next generation of women founders and leaders. Through digital content, storytelling, and community programming, the platform shares insights on entrepreneurship, leadership, and building companies.

By combining audience-first media with community and early-stage investing, Gen She is creating a network that connects aspiring founders with resources, role models, and opportunities in tech and venture capital.

🛡️ Defense

Katherine Boyle — Defense Tech Investor & Advocate

About the founder

Katherine Boyle has become one of the most influential voices supporting the growth of defense technology startups. With a background in venture capital and policy, she has helped bring attention to the importance of supporting companies building national security technologies.

She has been deeply involved in shaping the defense innovation ecosystem.

What she’s building

Her work focuses on supporting founders building next-generation defense and national security technologies — from autonomous systems to cybersecurity infrastructure — helping bridge the gap between Silicon Valley innovation and government adoption.

⚡ Energy

Daniela Rus — Robotics & Energy Systems Leader

About the founder

Daniela Rus is a leading robotics researcher and director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Her work bridges robotics, AI, and energy systems to create technologies that improve efficiency and sustainability.

She has spent her career pushing forward innovation at the intersection of engineering and real-world infrastructure.

What she’s building

Her research focuses on intelligent robotic systems and automation that can optimize everything from manufacturing processes to energy systems, helping industries operate more efficiently and sustainably.

🛍️ Consumer

Emily Weiss — Founder of Glossier

About the founder

Emily Weiss founded Glossier after building a passionate beauty community through her blog Into the Gloss. She recognized an opportunity to create a brand shaped directly by consumer feedback and digital engagement.

Her approach to community-first product development has become a case study in modern consumer startups.

What she’s building

Glossier built a new model for beauty brands by emphasizing minimalism, customer engagement, and direct-to-consumer distribution. The company helped define the modern community-driven beauty brand and influenced how consumer startups build loyal audiences.

📊 Data Snapshot: Women in Venture

A recent report from PitchBook highlights both the progress and the persistent gap for women founders in venture.

Despite record startup activity over the past decade, female founders still receive a small share of venture capital funding, often cited around 2–3% of total VC dollars annually. However, the report also shows that the number of women-led startups and female venture investors continues to steadily increase, particularly in sectors like healthcare, fintech, and climate.

Why this matters:
As more women enter venture and launch companies, the pipeline of female-led startups is growing stronger every year — and the next decade of venture innovation will increasingly reflect that shift.

🎤 Campus Event

The Midas Touch with Bill Gurley

Students in Boston have a unique opportunity to hear from legendary venture capitalist Bill Gurley, General Partner at Benchmark Capital.

Bill led Benchmark’s $11M investment in Uber in 2011, which ultimately became an $8B return. He has also backed category-defining companies including Grubhub, Zillow, and OpenTable.

📅 April 9 | 5:00–6:00 PM
📍 Questrom Events Center (HAR 4th Floor)

Attendees will receive a signed copy of his book Runnin' Down a Dream, and the event will be followed by a networking reception.

These events are free and open to students from Boston institutions, making them a great opportunity for anyone interested in venture capital.

📚 Community Ask

Calling All Female Founders: Apply to Be Featured in Our Investor Newsletter.

Girls Into VC is planning to spotlight female-founded startups in our soon-to-be-launched weekly investor newsletter, which will be shared directly with our network of female VCs!

If you’re building and gaining traction, we want to hear from you. Featured startups will:

• Be introduced directly to our investor community

• Share key metrics and fundraising details (if raising)

• Be considered for deeper engagement through our Venture Program

Our focus is simple: create more direct pathways between female founders and female investors.

If that’s you (or someone you know), apply here

Help a Fellow Girl Into VC (and Student!)

A researcher at London Business School is conducting a study on how early-stage ventures are evaluated under uncertainty, and she’s looking for participants.

The survey asks you to review a few startup profiles and takes just 8–10 minutes to complete — no investing experience required.

Your participation will help support academic research on startup evaluation and decision-making in venture capital.

📊 Take the survey by Saturday, March 14:
https://lbs.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cGzqpTm1w6qDYH4

The future of venture capital will be shaped by founders across every sector — from AI and fintech to healthcare and energy.

Highlighting female founders building in these industries isn’t just about representation. It’s about recognizing the innovators creating new technologies, new markets, and new ways of solving complex problems.

At Girls Into VC, we believe the next generation of venture-backed companies will be built by more diverse founders than ever before.

And we can’t wait to see what they build.

Until next week,
The Girls Into VC Team 💗