Decade in Review: 5 Game-Changing Businesses Founded By Women In The 2010s
And here we are ending the decade that brought us Instagram, an Oscar to Leo DiCaprio, the boom of startups, and made entrepreneurship and #GirlBoss trendy.
When I first started freelancing back in 2014 (in Brazil), there wasn’t much buzz around being a #BossBabe. And it was only in 2015, already in America, that I found out what having a business really means, how bumpy the road is, and that women were still not getting funding. Not shocking. But then, boom! The amount of side-hustlers, freelancers, self-funded and self-made #FemaleEntrepreneurs skyrocketed. And to be honest, although I’m not in a good place with Instagram right now, I can’t deny that social media played big not only to make our businesses more discoverable, but also to plant seeds in our heads that taking control of our future, and turning our passion into profit, IS possible.
So to celebrate the end of yet another decade (already!), and women standing up for themselves more than ever, I chose 5 women-founded game-changing businesses that opened their doors in the 2010s, and that you might have heard of (or you should have if not). They are changing the way we work, network, get funds, and show our worth.
1. The Wing (2016)
The women co-working space/social club opened its first door in the Flatiron district, in NYC, in 2016, and since then they’ve grown their spaces across the U.S. AND internationally. You probably saw the co-founder and CEO Audrey Gelman on the cover of INC magazine a few months ago as the first woman visibly pregnant on the cover of a business magazine. At some point in the early stages, Gelman and her co-founder Lauren Kassan were advised to “bring a man along to de-risk the deal for investors,” which they didn’t, and still raised $2.4 million that got them started with the first location. Four years, $118 million in funding, and 10 locations later, The Wing continues to grow and attract women (like me) — for the network, for the hot desk, the events, or all of it.
2. Create & Cultivate (2011)
When I read Jaclyn Johnson’s book “Work Party,” I was blown away by how she started Create & Cultivate, and the great advice she put in there. “Johnson recognized a gap in conversations, resources, events and community for female millennial entrepreneurs and responded with a solution.” (Forbes) Indeed. I had the opportunity to attend a few free events, as well as their conference in NYC, and I can guarantee you that it speaks to what it stands for. Jaclyn built an empire out of a side hustle, and never raised capital. With Create & Cultivate, she’s empowering young women to know their worth, go after what they want, and build the career of their dreams.
3. The Skimm (2012)
An easier way to keep women informed, without all that fluff that the regular newspaper bring. That’s the idea of The Skimm: a newsletter/subscription service that delivers a skim of the news of the day at 6 in the morning (EST time). The roommates Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg quit their (great) job to start The Skimm, literally from their couch, and with $4k to keep a roof to their head. With no business experience, but a good network and the eager to make their idea succeed, they went after investors and turned what was a company with 2 employees (themselves) to over 20, and an email list that keeps growing.
4. Black Girl Ventures (2016)
“If women don’t start organizations that create access to capital it’s quite possible we will continue to lack access,” wrote Shelly Bell, Founder of BVG on a medium post. Women are starting over 1200 businesses a day, and more than a half of these women are women of color. Yet, Shelly says that less than 1% of them receive venture capital. She’s proud to have grown her organization to have '“the largest pitch program for black/brown women in the world,” have held 25 programs, funded 41 women, raising over half a million dollars. Black Girl Ventures started in Washington, DC, and has now 5 chapters, being present in 12 cities in the United States.
5. Ladies Get Paid (2016)
A career development initiative turned into a private community of over 60.000 women worldwide to learn how to get paid what they deserve. LGP is an organization founded by Claire Wasserman, with the idea of educating and empowering women to negotiate their salaries, improve their skills, and I’d say their quality of life, too. It offers from meetups to webinars to conferences to an online private community, all focused on helping women “recognize and advocate for their value.”
I’ll stop the list here, although I do have more examples of businesses and female founders to add (maybe another time?). But before I finish, I want to add a little note to the already #solopreneurs or the ones thinking about starting their own thing:
When hearing or reading about successful stories from entrepreneurs, especially the ones like The Wing and Ladies Get Paid, who started not too long ago and are already ‘huge,’ please take into consideration how they started, their network, how much access to capital they had, etc. Each story is unique, and there’s no way we can compare ourselves to others without knowing the full and true story from mile 0.
I also want to add that this is the most competitive, yet the best time for us to start a business. When you hear that “the future is female,” it’s because it is.
Xo,
Izabelle Azevedo
(Founder of Red Skirt Media)
