5 Female Founders To Follow This Week

The Open

When I was fifteen, my dad put his FACE on a moving truck, and I learned two things about business before I could drive.

If you are new here, hi, I am Bailey. I grew up in a small city in Kentucky, and I started this club so the girl from a town like mine can see that she gets to build her own life, and keep her health while she does it.

My dad was a real estate agent with his own business, and he wanted more leads, so he bought a moving truck and put his face on the side of it. Picture being fifteen in a small city where EVERYONE knows that truck. Reader, I ducked down in the passenger seat more than once. It was the smartest marketing in town, and it taught me lesson one: when the business is yours, you get to try the wild idea.

My mom worked at the hospital, and she cared about her patients like they were family. She gave them everything, and from a young age I watched the stress slowly wear her down. That was lesson two, and it is the one this whole club is built on: your work only lasts as long as you do.

And the way my mom cared is a pattern the research sees too. A Cambridge-led study of more than 670,000 people, published in PNAS in 2018, found that women on average score higher on empathy than men, and a 2022 study across 57 countries found women on average are better at reading what someone else is feeling. The researchers stress these are group averages that say nothing about any one woman. In my experience, that care is our superpower and our blind spot at the same time: we lead with heart, we chase the work we love, and we forget to build the business so it takes care of US back.

Here is what growing up there looked like. Every business owner I saw was a man, and the only women living the life I wanted were celebrities on Instagram. They were glamorous and fun to watch, and none of them were running a company I could study.

What nobody told me at fifteen is that you can shape your mind on purpose. Your feed is mentoring you whether you choose it or not, so choose it. Here are five women founders I follow on purpose, because they show the messy middle of building a company and still look like they are enjoying their lives.

1. Krissy Cela · @krissycela
Co-founder of Oner Active and founder of the EvolveYou fitness app. She turned her own frustration with gym clothes for women who lift into an activewear brand built around her community. Follow her for: proof that your audience IS your business plan.

2. Emma Grede · @emmagrede
Co-founder and CEO of Good American, founding partner of Skims and host of the Aspire podcast. She talks about money, deals and ambition plainly, which is rarer than it should be. Follow her for: how the deals get made.

3. Grace Beverley · @gracebeverley
Founder of the activewear brand TALA and the fitness app Shreddy, and author of Working Hard, Hardly Working. She started building her businesses as a university student and has never once pretended it was effortless. Follow her for: ambition without the burnout.

4. Melissa Butler · @melissarbutler
Founder and CEO of The Lip Bar, which she started from her Brooklyn home in 2012 to make makeup for the women the beauty aisle overlooked. Shark Tank told her to quit in 2015, and today it is the largest Black-owned brand in Target. She posts plainly about money, from why founders underpay themselves to how hard it is to raise capital as a Black founder. Follow her for: the money talk most founders keep private.

5. Deepica Mutyala · @deepica
Founder and CEO of Live Tinted. In 2015 her video on using red lipstick to color-correct dark spots went viral, and she turned that moment into a community, then a beauty brand built for brown skin that now sells at Ulta, and a spot on TIME's 2022 Next Generation Leaders list. Follow her for: proof that one viral moment can become a whole company when you build the community first.

Here is my hot take. The first mentor most of us get is the one we choose to watch, so curate your feed the way you would curate a board of advisors. Unfollow three accounts that make you feel behind tonight, and follow these five instead.

What I am watching: which of you adds a sixth name to this list.

My dad put his face on a truck so the whole town would know who to call. Put women like these in your feed, so YOU know what is possible.

Before you scroll, hit reply and tell me: which woman founder do you follow on purpose? I read every one, and I will share the best picks in a future issue.

AI Release Radar

One launch and two big previews, and the theme is smarter models at lower prices.

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Anthropic, September 28). Anthropic calls it the second model in the Claude 5.5 family, and says it is more than 30% faster than Sonnet 5 and costs up to 30% less for most work. It is available in Claude.ai and through Anthropic’s platform, AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.
What it means for you: the model inside your everyday Claude chats got quicker, so the workflows you built last month run faster this week. Anthropic

The new Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft, September 25). Microsoft introduced Home, which brings chat and Cowork together with the Office apps, Code, which lets non-developers build apps by describing them, and Autopilot, an agent that keeps working on its own. Home and Code roll out to Frontier program users in the coming weeks, with Autopilot set to enter private preview at the end of September.
What it means for you: if your business runs on Outlook and Excel, an agent that works inside them is on the way. Microsoft

Gemini 4 Argon (Google, September 30). Google calls it its frontier model for coding, enterprise knowledge work and cyber defense. It is rolling out first to a set of trusted cyber defenders, with paid API customers and Google AI Ultra subscribers to follow, no date given.
What it means for you: you cannot use it yet, so file it under “coming,” and enjoy the price war between the big labs. Google

Women-Founded AI Spotlight

Dazzle, founded by Marissa Mayer. The former Yahoo CEO unveiled Dazzle on September 29, a personal AI assistant that learns your interests from your camera roll and suggests trips and gifts, through an app or by text. TechCrunch reports it is backed by an $8 million seed from December 2025 led by Kirsten Green at Forerunner.
Why I care: she is betting that your photos know more about your life than your inbox does, and as someone who screenshots everything, I feel very seen. TechCrunch

DetectifAI, founded by Tarini Padmanabhuni. After a deepfake voice fooled her grandfather, she built small AI models that run on a phone and catch fake voices live on calls and voice notes, all on the device. TechCrunch reported on September 28 that it already screens more than 100,000 calls a month for financial institutions in India, on an early seed of undisclosed size.
Why I care: the best founder stories start with someone you love getting hurt, and this one protects the exact people scammers target first. TechCrunch

AI Tools for Builders

Adobe inside Claude and Gemini (September 24). Adobe for Claude now includes Acrobat PDF editing and a layer-based Adobe Express design editor, with more than 80 tools across Acrobat, Express, Photoshop, Illustrator and other Adobe apps, rolling out globally on desktop, mobile and web. Photoshop, Lightroom, Express and Firefly are also rolling out in Gemini across all plans.
How to use this this week: ask Claude to fix the typo in that PDF one-pager you have been avoiding, then have it lay out your next event flyer in Express without leaving the chat. Adobe

The Claude Move

This week I turned one newsletter into a week of Instagram, in one Claude chat, using the Adobe connector above. Here is the EXACT setup, and you can build it tonight in about 15 minutes.

Create a Project in Claude called “Content week.” Upload your brand colors, your fonts, three posts that performed well for you and your latest newsletter or long-form post. Connect Adobe for Claude from the connectors menu. Then paste this into the Project instructions:

You turn my long-form writing into one week of social.

When I paste a newsletter or article:

1. Pull the 5 strongest ideas. For each, give me a hook
   under 12 words and a caption under 90 words in my voice,
   using my uploaded posts as your guide.
2. Pick the 2 ideas that work best as graphics. For each,
   write the on-image text (max 20 words) and build a
   4:5 design in Adobe Express using my brand colors
   and fonts.
3. Suggest which day each post goes out, Monday to Friday.
4. Never invent stats, quotes or dates. If a fact is not
   in what I pasted, flag it instead of filling it in.

Review the captions, fix anything that does not sound like you and download the graphics.

This is exactly what we build together at the AI Workshop on October 16 in Miami and October 23 in Austin: you bring the task, and you leave with it running.

The Wellness Read

What’s happening. Oura postponed its Nasdaq IPO on September 29. The smart-ring maker had planned to raise about $2.1 billion by selling 50 million shares at $40 to $44 each, most of them from existing holders, and Tech.eu reports it was seeking a valuation around $15 billion. Oura pointed to IPO-market uncertainty “despite strong demand.” Its filing showed $1.4 billion in revenue for the 12 months to June 30 and 5 million paid members, with about 5.7 million projected by the end of its fiscal year. Renaissance Capital · Tech.eu · The Next Web

What it means. The wearables business is booming, and the public market is the part that blinked. For founders, even a $1.4 billion revenue business waits for the right window. For your body, it helps to know what these devices are good at.

• Sleep timing, resting heart rate, HRV and temperature trends: evidence MEDIUM. Rings track these well enough to show you patterns over weeks.

• Readiness, recovery and “health age” scores: evidence WEAK. These are proprietary formulas and have not been validated as clinical outcomes.

• Safety flag: a ring is a wellness device and is not built to diagnose anything. The most common harm is anxiety and over-reading the scores.

What I’d do. Keep the ring if you love it, and use it for trends rather than verdicts. Watch your weekly averages and change one habit at a time. On a low-score morning, ask how you feel first, and if the answer is “great,” trust it.

The Raise

Five rounds this fortnight, largest first, about $414 million combined ($350M + $22M + $20M + $13M + $9M). Every one has a verified woman founder, from AI training data to fertility supplements in Ulta.

1. Snorkel AI, $350M Series E (September 22). Co-founded by Paroma Varma with CEO Alex Ratner, Chris Ré, Braden Hancock and Henry Ehrenberg. Snorkel provides the training data that AI models learn from, and this round triples its valuation to $3.5 billion. Led by Insight Partners and S32.
Why it matters: every model in the Radar above runs on data, and a woman co-founder is building the picks and shovels. TechCrunch · Tech Funding News

2. Teal Health, $22M Series A (September 22). Co-founded by CEO Kara Egan. Teal makes the Teal Wand, an FDA-authorized at-home test for cervical cancer screening, available in all 50 states. Led by .406 Ventures, with Serena Ventures, Labcorp, Forerunner and others, for $45M raised in total.
Why it matters: it removes the appointment that so many women keep postponing, which is the whole point. Femtech Insider

3. Ando, $20M pre-seed and seed (September 24). Founded by Sara Du. Ando is a team messaging app built for people and AI agents together, where agents get their own identities and inboxes and can join channels. Backed by Accel, Index Ventures and Emergence.
Why it matters: $20 million before a Series A says investors believe your next coworker might be an agent, and a woman is building the office they share. TechCrunch

4. Bird&Be, $13M (September 22). Co-founded by Samantha Diamond and Breanna Hughes. Bird&Be sells fertility and prenatal supplements plus at-home fertility tests, and it is in nearly 1,000 Ulta stores. Led by BDC Thrive and BFG Partners, round type not disclosed.
Why it matters: two women took fertility from the clinic to the beauty aisle, and retail scale is the story investors bought. Femtech Insider

5. Biotia, $9M Series A extension (October 1). Co-founded by CEO Niamh O’Hara with Chris Mason. Biotia’s urine test uses genetic sequencing to find the pathogens behind complicated and recurrent UTIs that standard cultures can miss. Investors include VillageMD co-founders Tim Barry and Dr. Clive Fields, Convergent Ventures and DigitalDx Ventures.
Why it matters: recurrent UTIs are one of the most common and most dismissed problems in women’s health, and a scientist founder is bringing better data to it. Femtech Insider

The Edit

1. Science’s women’s health special issue. SPEND the read. STAT covered the October 1 issue, including why women report functional pain at about twice the rate of men. STAT

2. Pvolve’s Movement Longevity Report. SKIP the program, SPEND the stat. Pvolve launched a 30-day strength program with Jennifer Aniston, and its report found 66% of women never got strength-training advice from a doctor or trainer, and only 32% of GLP-1 users learned about muscle-loss risk from a provider before starting. Femtech Insider

3. Flora x Clue. SPEND if you are under 35 and IVF is on your radar, SKIP otherwise. Flora’s fertility insurance starts at $15 a month, covers diagnostics, medication, IUI and IVF for ages 20 to 34, and now gives policyholders access to Clue premium. Femtech Insider

4. BCRF Ventures. SPEND your attention if you build in breast health. The Breast Cancer Research Foundation launched a $100 million venture philanthropy fund with $23 million committed, to back up to 30 early-stage companies. Femtech Insider

5. America.gov’s AI chatbot for health questions. SKIP. CBS’s Dr. Céline Gounder tested 37 health questions on the new government chatbot and found outdated guidance on hepatitis B vaccines and insulin pricing, though it handled chest-pain triage correctly. Use it for forms, and take health questions to your provider. CBS News

Trend radar
- Peptides are outrunning the science. Google mentions of peptide therapy are up 281% year over year, 67% of peptide publications are preclinical (mostly in rats), and Florida sits on the permissive end of the state rules. Evidence WEAK, safety flag HIGH, since tested gray-market products held anywhere from 5% to 75% of what the label claimed. AJMC
- Sleep shows up in your cycle. WHOOP and Stanford data on 2,596 women found six-hour sleepers were 1.3 times more likely to have cycles off by three or more days than eight-hour sleepers. Observational, evidence MEDIUM. Femtech Insider

Where to Be

Our rooms

• Oct 8 · Founder Coffee Hour · Miami

• Oct 16 · AI Workshop, Claude and ChatGPT training · Miami

• Oct 18 · Revamp your social: new headshots, better bios · Miami

• Oct 21 · Founder Dinner · Austin

• Oct 22 · Founder Dinner · Miami

• Oct 23 · AI Workshop · Austin

• Oct 26 · Quarterly Goal Setting · Miami

• Oct 29 · Founder Coffee Hour · Miami

Out in the world

• Oct 12 to 14 · Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, Fortune’s annual gathering of the most influential women in business · Santa Barbara · Women

• Oct 21 to 23 · NAWBO On the Rise, Miami Edition, about 150 women business owners in Coconut Grove and Little Havana · Miami · Women

• Oct 23 · Miami AI Summit, a full day of AI builders, founders and investors, tickets by approval · Coral Gables · AI

• Nov 10 to 13 · Global Wellness Summit, its 20th anniversary · Phuket · Wellness

• Nov 13 · Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Summit, its 13th year, at the United Nations · New York · Women

• Nov 18 to 20 · Singapore FinTech Festival, fintech and AI in finance at Singapore EXPO · Singapore · AI

• Dec 3 to 4 · Adopt AI Summit at the Grand Palais · Paris · AI

• Dec 9 to 10 · The AI Summit New York at the Javits Center · New York · AI

Close

Poll: who is mentoring you through your feed right now?
A) One of this week’s five, I already follow her
B) A founder in my own industry
C) Mostly celebrities, and I am fixing that tonight
D) Nobody yet, I am starting with this list

Vote in the comments, and if this helped, forward it to a founder friend, because that is how this room grows.

Countdown

We are 11 days out from the AI Workshop in Miami, Friday, October 16.

A live, hands-on day putting Claude and ChatGPT to work on your own business. Bring your laptop and the task that eats your week, like turning one newsletter into five posts, and leave with it built and running. Austin, your day is Friday, October 23.

RSVP HERE

See you in there, friends.

Bailey

Cover photos: Emma Grede by Janeirohy (CC BY 4.0), Grace Beverley by Web Summit (CC BY 2.0) and Deepica Mutyala (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons. Krissy Cela via Instagram, Melissa Butler via AfroTech.