Women, now, are no longer confined to their houses. They’ve gotten out of their homes and created an impact worldwide. As efficiently as they do household chores, with similar ease they go ahead to lead their firms. On this occasion of Women’s Day let us take a look at 5 women-led unicorn companies. Let’s appreciate these powerful women for breaking the shackles of patriarchy.
What is a unicorn company?
We have often come across the term unicorn but here, the context of the word is something else. “Unicorn” is a term used in the venture capital industry to describe a privately held startup company with a value of over $1 billion. The term was first used in the year 2013 by venture capitalist Aileen Lee. Aileen Lee first wrote about unicorns in the venture capital world in her article, “Welcome to the Unicorn Club: Learning from Billion-Dollar Startups.”
5 women-led unicorn companies
Glossier
Emily Weiss founded Glossier. She started her journey a decade ago with the blog, “Into the Gloss”. It took her over 4 years to build her audience. However, when she decided to go ahead with her venture to launch beauty products, 11 out of 12 investors turned her down. Nonetheless, with the help of 1 million dollars funding by Kirsten Green, she started ‘Glossier’. Within one year of the company launch, she went ahead to put out 4 new products in the market to strengthen her core before expanding. Intothegloss.com, Weiss’s blog, is still one of the top ways the company connects with its target audience and tests ideas. It is one of the most famous women-led unicorn companies.
Canva
Melanie Perkins is another great leader to look up to if you want to start a unicorn company with a female founder. Perkins, like Weiss, did not dive headfirst into the role of CEO of a multibillion-dollar corporation. With her now-husband, Cliff Obrecht, she started a yearbook design and publishing company to get going. In 2013, Canva was launched as a full-scale design platform that made the creation of high-quality digital designs available to everyone. Perkins tells Entrepreneur, “Solve a real problem that many people experience. If you find a problem that people care about, then it will make every other aspect of running a business much easier”. As of 2021, the company has a valuation of $40 billion with 60 million monthly users in 190 countries.
Xendit
Tessa Wijaya’s fintech startup Xendit, founded in Indonesia, became a unicorn in September 2021. Wijaya’s company concept was inspired by a desire to remedy a real-world issue. Even after facing immense obstacles and discrimination, she kept on fighting for what she wanted. She honed her skills by absorbing as much information as she could about the financial industry. She rose to prominence in Southeast Asia’s financial sphere over time. In 2015, she launched Xendit after noticing a gap between eCommerce and ride-hailing services in Southeast Asia. The corporation has 150 million dollars in the bank as of 2021.
Airwallex
For female entrepreneurs interested in practicing strengths-based leadership, the co-founder of Airwallex, another fintech payment company, is a terrific resource. The company came into the world to counteract excessive bank costs when importing items from other countries. Lucy Liu’s primary strengths were related to money, while her co-founders had experience in coding, engineering, and machine learning. She further explains to StartupSmart, “I’m very happy to represent women in the tech industry. But what I stay away from is making it a label . . . It’s just how you play to your strengths. I have other co-founders, and we complement each other in different ways”. Launched in 2016, the company reported a “165% YoY revenue increase, with annualized revenue exceeding the US $100 million.”
Nextdoor
One of the co-founders of Nextdoor, an app that connects people with their neighbors, is Sarah Leary. With her business partner Nirav Tolia, a Harvard MBA graduate and former Microsoft employee, she launched the digital sports platform Fanbase in 2010. They realized they needed to broaden their ambition as they acquired extra financing to expand the website. Eventually, they came up with the idea for Nextdoor after seeing an issue with the connection people felt with their neighbors. She tells Marie Claire, “We did lots of non-scalable things first, like physically visiting the neighborhood; so that we could figure out what works before we could build a more elegant and scalable solution. True innovative solutions come from those hands-on, non-scaleable experiences.” As of 2021, the company also has over 10 million users in 116,000 neighborhoods across the United States.