Weekly Female Founder Funding Updates
Two women make inroads into traditionally male based industries—global money transfers and marketing SaaS.
WorldRemit, $175 million, Series D, Catherine Wines, Co-Founder and Executive Director
London-based money transfer service that enables quick money transfers from migrant workers and immigrants living in developed countries back home. LeapFrog Investments, TCV and Accel led the round. (Website, Crunchbase)
Zyper, $6.5 million, Series A, Amber Atherton, CEO & Founder
San Francisco-based marketing platform that connects brands with their superfans to drive engagement, insights and sales. Talis Capital led the round, joined by Forerunner Ventures and Y Combinator. (Website, Crunchbase)
Weekly Female Founder Funding Update
MOD Pizza piles on $160M to grow internationally, Modsy with a Series C (keep eyes on rock star CEO, Shanna Tellerman), another ecomm with a sex tech focus and a much needed platform for finding a therapist.
MOD Super Fast Pizza, $160 million, private equity, Ally Svenson, Co-Founder and Director
Bellevue-based fast casual pizza brand. Led by private-equity investment firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice. The investment will continue to fuel MOD’s growth plans and expansion to reach 1000 locations in the next five years. Including this round, MOD has raised $335 million to date. (Website, Crunchbase)
Notable:
“Consumers are leaning in to brands that are more relevant, that are delivering a product and an experience that’s more in keeping with what they’re looking for today, “ said Scott Svenson, CEO.
Svenson also points to the chain’s commitment to social impact as crucial to its success. MOD recruits workers who might otherwise struggle to find employment, including people who were previously incarcerated. Perks such as higher pay, free meals, and a fund that employees can access during emergency situations help build culture and reduce turnover, Svenson says. (Business Insider)
Modsy, $37 million, Series C, Shanna Tellerman, Co-Founder and CEO
San Francisco-based ecommerce company that creates 3D renderings of customized rooms and allows customers to purchases recommended products. Round led by TCV, bringing Modsy’s total funding to $71 million. (Website, Crunchbase)
Soda Says, $2.5 million, Seed, Grace Gould, Founder & CEO
London-based online marketplace for lifestyle tech products (go-to-market focus on sex tech). Investors include LocalGlobe. (Website, Crunchbase)
Talkspace, $50 million, Series D, Roni Frank, Co-Founder
New York-based provider of therapy via a subscription-based online platform. Round led by Revolution Growth. The New York company’s model involves connecting users with a network of over 5,000 licensed therapists through a web and mobile platform. (Website, Crunchbase)
Weekly Female Founder Funding Update: More Unicorns
Away and Nextdoor join the unicornsphere, hauling in a combined $223 million. Plus two more raises in health and wellness and women’s lifestyle brands.
Away, $100 million, Series D, Steph Korey, Co-Founder & CEO, and Jen Rubio, Co-Founder
New York-based online luggage retailer Away raised $100 million in funding at a $1.4 billion valuation. Wellington Management led the round, and was joined by investors including Baillie Gifford, Lone Pine Capital and Global Founders Capital. Away, which said its 2018 sales totaled $150 million, is planning to use some of the new capital to expand into apparel, wellness and lifestyle accessories. (Website, Crunchbase)
Nextdoor, $123 million, Series F, Sarah Friar, CEO
San-Francisco-based neighborhood social network is now valued at $2 billion. It’s the company’s first round since Friar took over, with the cash set to fund international expansion. Riverwood Capital led the round, joined by investors including Benchmark, Tiger Global Management and Kleiner Perkins. (Website, Crunchbase)
Core, $4 million, Seed, Sarah McDevitt, Founder & CEO
San Francisco-based meditation experience and personalized wellness company. Spero Ventures led the round, joined by investors including Bolt , Corigin Ventures and Stanford-StartX Fund. (Website, Crunchbase)
Hatch, $5 million, Series A, Ariane Goldman, Founder
New York-based lifestyle brand for women before, during and after pregnancy, raised $5 million in Series A funding. Silas Capital led the round, joined by investors including M3 Ventures. (Website, Crunchbase)
Weekly Female Founder Funding Update
Pow POW!!! Two unicorns birthed in a $264,000,000 week. Here’s the scoop on the 5 female led companies in the health, wellness and e-commerce industries.
Cleo, $27.5 million, Series B, Chitra Akileswaran and Shannon Spanhake, Co-Founders
San Francisco-based supplemental benefits company that partners with enterprises like Uber, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Slack to offer supplemental benefits to working parents. Greylock Partners and Forerunner Ventures led the round. Cleo has an all-female, three-person board. (Website, Crunchbase)
Glossier, $100 million, Series D, Emily Weiss, Founder and CEO 🦄
New York-based direct-to-consumer beauty products retailer. Sequoia Capital led the round, joined by Tiger Global Management, Spark Capital, Forerunner Ventures, Thrive Capital, IVP, and Index Ventures. The financing sets a $1.2 billion valuation. (Website, Crunchbase)
Henry the Dentist, $10 million, Series A, Alexandria Ketcheson, Co-Founder and Chief Brand Officer
New Jersey-based mobile dental practice. Forerunner Ventures led the round, joined by Brand Foundry and Trail Mix Ventures. (Website, Crunchbase)
Maude, $1.5 million, Seed, Eva Goicochea and Dina Epstein, Co-Founders and CEO and CPO, respectively
New York-based sex essentials company, Tune House Capital led the round, joined by RRE, CASSIUS Family, Outbound Ventures, Shrug Capital, and Pico Alto Ventures. (Website, Crunchbase)
Rent the Runway, $125 million, Venture Round, Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss, Co-Founders and CEO and Head of Business Development , respectively 🦄
New York-based e-commerce website that rents designer apparel and accessories. Investors included Franklin Templeton Investments, Bain Capital Ventures, and T. Rowe Price. (Website, Crunchbase)
🦄 Other Female Founded Unicorns 🦄
23andMe — Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey, Co-Founders and Co-CEOs
Nextdoor — Sarah Leary and Madison Bell, Co-Founders and VP of Marketing and Operations and Chief Product Officer
Cloudflare — Michelle Zatlyn, Co-Founder and COO
Credit Karma — Nichole Mustard, Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer
Houzz — Adi Tatarko, Co-Founder and CEO
Eventbrite — Julia Hartz, Co-Founder and CEO — IPO’d in September 2018
Weekly Female Founder Funding Update
The $105 million raised from March 4-11, and the other $325 million we missed since the start of 2019.
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.
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)
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)
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.