women-founded
(15)
Madison Reed Gave Away 7,000 Boxes - Then Built a Hair-Color Habit People Would Pay For
Amy Errett spent heavily to make salon-grade color feel safe at home, discovered that free customers rarely return, and turned the lesson into an omnichannel beauty business built around guidance, repetition and trust.
The $5,000 Wedding Dress Mistake That Became Atlanta's Rental Bridal Bet
Lundyn Carter spent $5,000 altering a family wedding dress, then built the service she wished had existed. Laine London's sharper idea is not rental alone - it is treating fit as the product.
Wondermind Sold Mental Fitness for Everyone - Then the Startup Couldn't Make Its Own Numbers Work
Wondermind made mental health feel less like homework and more like a daily habit. Its free media reached millions - but a celebrity-sized launch could not protect a fragile business model from missed payroll, layoffs and an unresolved investor lawsuit.
Grön Turned a $50,000 Chocolate Bet Into the Edibles Brand Wyld Had to Buy
Christine Apple’s first cannabis chocolate was rough, Oregon’s rules kept moving, and every new state required a new production puzzle. Grön’s answer was to make dosage feel like product design - then scale the recipe without flattening the brand.
The Beauty Industry Still Runs on Spreadsheets. Good Face Project Is Selling the Exit.
Good Face Project began by helping shoppers decode ingredient labels. Then its founders found a larger problem upstream: cosmetic chemists were still building global products in spreadsheets while regulations multiplied around them.
Dagne Dover
Dagne Dover is a New York-based direct-to-consumer accessories brand founded in 2013 that designs hyper-functional bags - backpacks, totes, diaper bags, and luggage - engineered around organization and everyday problem-solving. Built by three women who bootstrapped rather than chasing venture capital, the brand is known for its signature neoprene 365 Collection, recycled Repreve linings, and an 'Almost Vintage' resale program that extends the life of its products.
TALEA Beer Co.
TALEA Beer Co. is a women-founded and women-owned craft brewery based in Brooklyn, New York, built to make beer approachable for people the craft category has historically overlooked. Founded in 2018 by Tara Hankinson and LeAnn Darland and opened as a brewery and taproom in 2021, TALEA brews fruit-forward, lower-alcohol reinventions of classic styles and runs a growing network of design-forward taprooms across New York City, alongside a direct-to-consumer online shop, retail distribution in 1,300+ New York stores, and events.
OneSkin
OneSkin is a San Francisco biotech and direct-to-consumer skincare company founded by four Brazilian women scientists who set out to slow skin aging at the molecular level. Its flagship OS-01 peptide - identified from a library of 900+ candidates using computational screening and tested on lab-grown human skin models - targets senescent 'zombie' cells that drive wrinkles, thinning and loss of firmness. The company sells topical 'supplements' for the face, eyes, body and sun protection, and frames skin not as a cosmetic surface but as the body's largest organ and a lever on overall healthspan.
JourneyTrack
JourneyTrack is a Miami-based enterprise SaaS platform for customer journey management. It gives CX, UX, product and leadership teams one governed place to build personas, map end-to-end customer journeys, score opportunities, and measure business impact - with a layer of AI (Journey AI, Insights AI, Persona AI, Storytelling AI) that turns qualitative research into board-ready decisions. Founded in 2021 by CX veteran Ania Rodriguez, the woman-founded company says more than 100 top brands, including Google, use it to find and recapture revenue lost to bad experiences.
Out of Office
Out of Office (OOO) is a Chicago-based travel technology company that helps people plan trips using recommendations from the people they actually trust - friends, family, and the influencers they follow - instead of anonymous review sites. Founded in 2020 by former Trunk Club executives Jan Seale and Coabi Kastan, the app lets travelers browse curated spots across thousands of cities, build and share itineraries, book hotels, and reserve restaurant tables in one place, and more recently generate full trip plans with an AI trip generator.
Sabai Design
Sabai Design is a New York-based direct-to-consumer furniture company making sustainable, non-toxic sofas that are actually affordable. Founded in 2019 by Phantila Phataraprasit and Caitlin Ellen, Sabai builds modular, repairable seating from recycled velvet, upcycled poly, recycled water bottles, hemp, and FSC-certified wood - manufactured in High Point, North Carolina. As a Certified B Corporation, Sabai pairs circular programs like 'Repair Don't Replace' and a first-of-its-kind US furniture buyback line (Sabai Revive) with a mission to keep couches out of landfills and make conscious living accessible to a generation that shops its values.
Soofa
Soofa builds solar-powered, network-connected digital signs that turn ordinary street corners into two-way community bulletin boards. Spun out of the MIT Media Lab in 2014, the women-founded company started with a phone-charging park bench and grew into a network of zero-carbon kiosks that broadcast hyperlocal news, transit updates, and events while giving advertisers and cities measurable pedestrian data - smart, social, and sustainable street furniture for the modern city.
Milk Stork
Milk Stork is the first breast milk shipping and lactation logistics company, helping breastfeeding parents who travel for work or return to the office ship pumped milk home in pre-paid, refrigerated and shelf-stable kits. Offered as an employer benefit by hundreds of companies including Pinterest, Capital One, SpaceX and Nissan, it has shipped tens of thousands of kits across more than 100 countries.
M.M.LaFleur
M.M.LaFleur is a New York-based direct-to-consumer womenswear brand that coined the term 'Power Casual' and built its business around solving a single problem: getting ambitious women dressed for work without wasting their time. Founded in 2013 by Sarah LaFleur, designer Miyako Nakamura, and Narie Foster, the company pairs thoughtfully engineered professional clothing with a free personal-styling service called Bento that curates a box of pieces around each customer. After a near-collapse during the pandemic, the company was rescued by a syndicate of women investors and refocused on the wardrobe needs of a hybrid working world.
Promise
Promise is an Oakland-based govtech company that modernizes how government agencies and utilities collect payments and distribute benefits. Founded in 2017 by Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins and Diana Frappier, it offers flexible, interest-free repayment plans, AI-powered fraud detection, automated benefits distribution, and income verification - all designed to make public systems work better for both agencies and the residents they serve.