There are a lot more women run startups these days but often they don't get the same amount of publicity as there male counterparts.
Although much progress has been made there still seems to be a lingering attitude of assumption that a successful business is owned by a man. It is often that many women especially young women come away from business meetings feeling like they are not being taken seriously.
Michael Arrington at TechCrunch says "the press is dying to write about women startups." but only 10% of the speakers at Techcrunch Disrupt are women, but not from the lack of trying.
Anyways here are 10 women-run startups that I'm sure you will be hearing a lot more of this year:
1.) Alexa Andrzejewski & Soraya Darabi of Foodspotting
CEO Alexa and Co-founder Soraya began Foodspotting in 2009 alongside Ted Grubb. The idea for Foodspotting came after seeing that although there were many restaurant review apps there weren't any that aloud you to rate specific dishes. So the idea for Foodspotting was born. Ever since officially launching in January 2010, there has been rapid growth and the app now sees over 500,000 users.
2.) Julia Hartz Co-Founder and President of Eventbrite.com
Eventbrite is a ticketing and event management site that has also seen massive growth in the last year reaching series D round of funding, $400 million in gross ticket revenues and currently gets 6 million unique monthly visitors. Julia founded Eventbrite in 2006 alongside Renaud Visage and husband Kevin.
3.) Wendy Tan White founder of MoonFruit
Moonfruit provides software that allows users, to build and develop websites with great ease, so much so that even my dad managed to get on there and create a site without any help! The company actually started in 1999 but faltered after the dot com bubble burst. Wendy didn't give up and MoonFruit has made a great comeback since 2009 and has seen the over a million sites made through MoonFruit.
4.) Alexa von Tobel founder of Learnvest
Learnvest a site dedicated to provide unbiased financial information to all women so that they can make the best financial decisions possible. Founded in 2008, the Harvard student, took a leave of absence to get Learnvest of the ground. By the start of 2009 Alexa managed to secured $1.1 million in seed funding from executives at Goldman Sachs. The company closed its second round of funding of $4.5 million in February 2010.
5.) Viviane Jaeger and Emma-Jayne Parkes founders of SquidLondon
Viviane and Emma are brightening up those rainy days with there innovative colour changing umbrellas. When the umbrellas get wet the design changes colour. Now branching out into a corporate branding market customers can customise umbrellas with there own logo/advert. The fashion graduates are mixing science and art with stunning results and have a huge scope to expand over the next couple years.
6.) Cathy Edwards co-founder at Chomp
Chomp is the search engine that finds the apps you want. Cathy luanched Chomp at the bigining of 2010 and has secured over $2million in funding. In 2010 Chomp reached over 300,000 users and will reach the half a million mark sometime this year.
7.) Jessica Mah founder of inDinero
Founded in 2009, inDinero helps business owners monitor the financial health of their companies. It's simple, easy and quick accounting software. Jessica Mah started her first business aged 12 and by 18 she started inDinero. As of summer 2010 inDinero is backed by Y-Combinator.
8.) Rashmi Sinha founder of SlideShare
SlideShare is a platform where users can share powerpoint presentations publicly or privately. Rashmi founded slideshare in 2006 and has since seen over 40 million visitors. She decided to get into startups as she found her Phd and working in a lab boring. SlideShare is her second venture after Uzanto a design consultancy.
9.) Caterina Fake founder of Hunch
Caterina was a co-founder of the popular Flickr before becoming founder of Hunch, which has ambitions to create a taste graph of the entire internet. Hunch personalizes the internet by getting to know your habits and then make recommendations on what you might like.
10.) Carol Realini founder of Obopay
Obopay is a service that allows users to transfer money using a mobile phone. Carol got the idea when she was in Africa and saw that many people had mobile phones but didn't own a wallet. In 2009 Nokia invested in Obopay and last year they announced a platform for banks to integrate with Obopay. Transfer money through a text; sounds good.
So that's my list, who did I miss? Let me know in the comments below or via Twitter.