Updated Female Founder Spreadsheet

This is Flo Freely, the code name for the new and improved Underwire Female Founder Funding Update. Access the full spreadsheet here.

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Crazy, sexy, cool data

Mama's been giving her spreadsheet some TLC.

I spent the past two weeks revamping the Underwire Female Founder Fundings Update. Yeah, the name's a mouthful. But that bitch is SEO'd up. Just between you and me, I call it Flo Freely in honor of Margaret Jane Swendsen's alter ego, and the hope that one day funding will flow freely and equally to womankind.

I never thought I'd enjoy working a spreadsheet so much. Pffftt, yes, Sarah Bryar, I really just said that.

So what's up with Flo?

You can now access year-to-date funding and exit details for U.S. headquartered companies with at least one female, non-binary, bigender, gender fluid, gender-nonconforming, or transgender female founder.

For ease of weekly reporting, I made an executive decision to focus on:

• Crunchbase as my primary data source; Crunchbase gets its data from AI and machine learning, a venture network program, investor and founder contributors, third-party partnerships and in-house data analysts

• Additions from Fortune Term Sheet, as well as investor and founder word of mouth for deals that don't show up on Crunchbase (happens very rarely)

• U.S. only companies (for now)

• Filings for Pre-Seed, Seed, all Series rounds, Venture - Series Unknown, Angel, Private Equity, Debt Financing, Convertible Note, Crowdfunding, and Initial Coin Offerings.

At the bottom of each future newsletter I'll cover filings reported from Friday to Friday of the previous week. Details will include:

• Company name and industry

• Founder(s) name and title

• Last funding round and type of deal

• Number of funding rounds total

• Top 5 investors

• Links to their website and Crunchbase profile

• Notable insights about a founder, investor, or category.

Finally, one big change to save my sanity: the weekly summary will only be available in the newsletter. The easiest way to stay current on female fundings is to subscribe to the Underwire newsletter (it’s an irreverent doozy).

Click here to see the full year-to-date Underwire Female Founder Update.

Tips encouraged

Contact Underwire if you’re a founder or investor with a funding tip to share. In addition to inclusion in the YTD update, I’ll feature your company info in an upcoming newsletter.

Weekly Female Founder Funding Update

Crunchbase released an analysis that shows over $8 billion in funding internationally has gone to women-led companies since the start of 2019. 

Here are the biggest deals:

The rundown:

Grab, $1.46 billion, Series H, Tan Hooi Ling, Co-Founder
Singapore-based ride-sharing service. SoftBank Vision Fund led the raise.

Horizon Robotics, $600 million, Series B, Annie Tao, Co-Founder, VP Operations
Beijing-based AI for robots. Investors include Morningside Venture Capital, Hill House Capital, Sequoia Capital, GSR Ventures, Linear Venture, Innovation Works, ZhenFund, Wu Capital, Tsing Capital, and Vertex Ventures.

DaDa, $255 million, Series D, Hui Zhi, Founder and CEO
Shinghai-based online English training institution for one-on-one online tutoring. Investors include Warburg Pincus, TAL Education Group and Yonghua Capital.

Zilingo, $226 million, Series, D, Ankiti Bose, Co-Founder and CEO
Singapore-based online fashion marketplace. Round investors include Temasek Holdings, Sofina, Sequoia Capital India, EDBI, Burda Principal Investments and Angel Capital Management.

Relex Solutions, $200 million, Series Unknown, Joanna Smaros, Founder and Director, Scandinavia
Finnish retail and supply chain system. Led by TCV.

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From that same Crunchbase analysis, Underwire discovered three missed raises by U.S. companies:

Confluent, $125 million, Series D, Neha Narkhede, Co-Founder and CTO
Palo Alto-based streaming platform, backed by Sequoia. (Website)

Andela, $100 million, Series D, Christina Sass, Co-Founder and COO
New York-based distributed engineering teams with Africa’s top software developers, led by Generation Investment Management. (Website)

ImpactAlpha, $100 million, Zuleyma Bebell and Avary Kent, Co-Founders
Berkeley-based, investment news media organization. Led by Equilibrium Capital. (Website)

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Funding update for week of March 11, 2019

KonMari Media, $40 million, Marie Kondo, Founder
Marie Kondo, the author, businesswoman, and personality behind the popular Netflix series “Tidying Up,” is reportedly in talks to raise up to $40 million in venture funding to scale her personal media brand, KonMari Media. Details undisclosed. (Website)

Kuli Kuli, $5 million Series B, Valerie Popelka, Anne Tsuei, Lisa Curtis, Co-Founders
Oakland-based superfood brand. Griffith Foods led the round, joined by eighteen94 capital, InvestEco, S2G Ventures, Authentic Ventures, VilCap Investments and Rocana Venture Partners. (Website)

Luminary Media, $60 million, Series Unknown, Lauren Perkins, Co-Founder, Head of Talent
New York-based podcast subscription service. Notably, they haven’t launched an actual product. Lead investor was New Enterprise Associates. Two male co-founders. (Website)

Max-Bone, Undisclosed, Parisa Fowles-Pazdro, Founder and CEO
Los Angeles and New York-based pet label, raised Series A funding of an undisclosed amount. Colle Capital led the round, joined by investors including Cooley LLP. (Website)

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SheEO 2019 U.S. Finalists

SheEO offers another path to funding for majority woman-owned companies with at least $50,000 in revenue and mission to better humanity.

This year’s U.S. Finalists:

• BioCellection

• Farm From a Box

• Tyga Systems

• S.O.U.L. Sisters

• Solstice

Learn more about SheEO and this year’s global ventures.