Women Tech Founders You Need to Know and Their Success Stories

Only 5% of tech CEO positions are held by women. But as more young women see the success and influence women can have in the tech industry, the more this percentage will grow. To help inspire you to pursue a career in tech, we’ve compiled a list of powerful women tech founders and highlighted their contributions to the tech industry.

1. Melanie Perkins: CEO of Canva

Melanie Perkins co-founded Canva, a leading web-based graphic design platform designed to help entrepreneurs and small businesses achieve professional branding for an affordable price. Melanie first developed Canva when she was only 19 years old. Originally launched as an online design tool for school yearbooks, it evolved into Canva, a now multi-billion enterprise.

Canva is a tech unicorn with over 60 million users across 190 countries. It is one of the fastest-growing startups of all time. But you can see why? Her intuitive, affordable web-based design tool makes professional graphic design attainable for small businesses.

2. Sandy Lerner: Co-founder of Cisco

A Stanford grad, Sandy Lerner, built these now industry-standard routers in her living room while in college to create a better method for sharing data between computer facilities and students. She helped found the networking equipment enterprise, which is considered one of the most successful companies in Silicon Valley. 

Her story is a bittersweet tale involving a shark investor who uprooted her from the company. But while she was ousted from Cisco, she was able to take her stock and build other technology projects, including the spectrometer for SETI.

Ready to become the next woman tech founder? Learn more about our coding boot camps to set you on the path for success.

Related Link: Essential Skills to Land a Tech Career in 2023

3. Gina Bianchini: CEO of Mighty Networks

An alternative to Facebook, Mighty Networks is the community social platform created by Gina Bianchini. She wanted to provide a social space where brands could customize websites, offer courses, and build sub-groups for networking. 

With over 100 million users, Mighty Networks is a growing success that validates the creative ideas of women who see a need and create an intuitive solution. Gina wanted to create a space where people could collaborate creatively and build their brands. 

4. Jessica Livingston: Founder of Y Combinator

Jessica Livingston founded Y Combinator to help tech startups get through startup incubation. Her company has been instrumental in helping fund and develop early-stage tech companies like Airbnb, Instacart, Coinbase, and Reddit. 

She’s also one of the key financial backers of OpenAI. This AI startup created ChatGPT and is leading the AI revolution, fundamentally changing society and how we work.

5. Rukayyat Kolawole: CEO and Founder of PaceUP Invest

Rukayyat Kolawole founded PaceUP to provide a B2B and B2C personal finance platform designed for underrepresented communities. She wanted to create a solution that could help these communities manage all aspects of their finances. 

Her company is also a resource for female entrepreneurs. She wanted to provide opportunities to help women-led businesses that want to innovate and improve our world through sustainable solutions. 

6. Markea Dickinson-Frasier: Founder of Thermaband

Markea Dickinson-Frasier launched Thermaband in 2019, a health-tech company that offers smart bracelets managed through a mobile app. The smart bracelet monitors your thermal health and alerts you and your doctor when conditions aren’t optimal. 

She wanted an affordable health solution that could benefit underserved minority communities. By creating an app that works with your IoT device, users can easily manage their health in an affordable and dignified manner.

7. Lynda Weinman: Founder of Lynda.com

Lynda Weinman is a web designer that started the web design resource website Lynda.com back in 1995. She wanted to create a free resource site that helped web design students improve their web design skillset. 

Lynda.com is now a robust online learning platform for a wide range of industries, skills, and knowledge bases. She sold the platform to LinkedIn in 2015 for $1.5 billion. Because of her site, she made Time Magazine's most influential people in tech list.

8. Diane Greene: Co-Founder of VMWare

Diane Greene co-founded VMWare in 1998, a public cloud computing and virtualization enterprise. She led the company until 2008, leading the company through its IPO and acquisition by EMC Corporation for $635 million. Because of her strong leadership, she later became Google Cloud's CEO.

She is one of the leading pioneers in virtualization technology and has since founded and invested in several other successful startups. She also served on the boards of companies such as Alphabet, Intuit, and Khan Academy. 

Want to work in the tech industry? Learn more about our coding boot camps to level up your coding skills.

Related Link: Full Stack Developer vs. Software Engineer: Which Career Path to Choose?

9. Odunayo Eweniyi: Co-Founder of Piggybank & PiggyVest

Odunayo Eweniyi is a leading tech entrepreneur that founded Piggybank & PiggyVest back in 2016 at the age of 24. At the time, PiggyVest was the first online application for personal savings and investment in West Africa. With over a million users, her company is helping people all over West Africa manage and save their money.

Since then, Odunayo has co-founded another company, FirstCheck Africa, which acts as an angel fund for women entrepreneurs across the globe. She wants to provide an opportunity for women-led companies to get the funding they need and access to the right networks to grow their businesses.

10. Dr. Sasikala Devi: Inventor of LungXpert

Dr. Sasikala Devi is a leading deep learning and AI expert and academic at SASTRA Deemed-to-be-University in India. She developed LungXpert, an affordable and accurate AI-based prognostic tool for the early detection of cardiovascular and pulmonary illnesses. 

To build LungXpert, she studied 500,000 X-ray images from Stanford University and developed a prototype during the pandemic, providing healthcare professionals with the tools to save lives. She leveraged her expertise at a time when it was most needed, providing a game-changing solution.

At Sabio, we believe in empowering women to achieve tech careers by arming them with the most in-demand skills and a valuable network. We strive to create an environment of inclusion and diversity, so you can level up your coding skills in a safe and supportive environment.

Related Link: Females are Deleting Myth that Tech is for Men