Women in Tech communities and platforms of note
by Startacus Admin
Even in this age of supposed enlightenment, a little authority and power, however minute, meaningless, or even imagined, can then go to people’s malfunctioning heads. Particularly in a still sadly female-deficient industry like tech, when these people are men, the result can be a hostile environment in which the women affected often feel they cannot say or do anything about it. Intelligent and decent people continue to work towards true equality, but until that is realised, there is certainly still very much a place for female-oriented tech platforms, communities, and groups where women can find support and advice from other women.
Here are just a few of women in tech communities and platforms of note...
Ada’s List
Ada’s List, named after Ada Lovelace, is an email-based community of over 4000 women working, however loosely, in STEM - from scientists to sci-fi authors to journalists. 
Members can chat about STEM - or business-related topics, share details of events and conferences, find support, source people to work with, find people worth writing about, receive informal mentoring, and much more.
Womentum
We have written more about Womentum here. This is a non-profit crowdfunding platform for women entrepreneurs in developing countries. Womentum exists to counter the lack of support and even opposition that women in developing countries often find when trying to start a business.
Women of Wearables
Despite the name, Women of Wearables goes beyond only wearables, providing support, inspiration, and connections for women entrepreneurs in wearable tech, fashion tech, the Internet of Things, augmented reality, and virtual reality. As well as opening up a new network for women, WoW provides mentorship with events and wearable tech workshops (including workshops for girls aged 10-18). The global WoW community includes universities, incubators, and accelerators as well as female founders, executives, designers, developers, and over 6000 others. We’ve previously written about Women of Wearables.
Blooming Founders
Blooming Founders is a community that provides support, motivation, a safe environment to ask questions and share experiences, and opens up a whole network from which to make connections and find people to work with. They run events and programmes which promote female entrepreneurs as well as educating girls and women about entrepreneurship and inspiring the entrepreneur in them.
Women Who Tech
Since 2008, this non-profit has been dedicated to bringing together women across all of STEM, particularly tech. A large part of what they do is help address the massive imbalance in where funding goes. The Women Startup Challenge, run by Women Who Tech, is a platform for female-led startups to showcase and pitch, with over $1m in prizes and investment.
Global Invest Her
Global Invest Her is, as the name suggests, a global network of female entrepreneurs with a focus on funding. The platform gives members access to stories from women who have raised over $400m in funding. Advice specific to women entrepreneurs, tools, templates, and all sorts of information are all available to members to help with the funding journey.
Everywoman
Since 1999, Everywoman has been dedicated to advancing women in businesses within any industry. Everywoman has over 20,000 members and provides and promotes everything from events, leadership programmes, and awards programmes to personal development, support, and sponsorship opportunities.
Female Entrepreneur Association
The Female Entrepreneur Association is an online hub dedicated to inspiring and empowering women from all over the globe to build successful businesses. This is a community built for women entrepreneurs to support and inspire other women entrepreneurs. As well as weekly, 10-minute inspirational videos and hosting inspiring stories, the Female Entrepreneur Association publishes a free magazine, hosts live masterclasses across a wide range of subjects, and maintains a Facebook page of over half a million members.
Savor the Success (US based)
Savor the Success is an online support and wellness hub, business school, and community centre for female entrepreneurs. They offer events, a supportive community, classes, and meetups, as well as publishing a magazine.
There are of course many more groups and platforms out there for supporting female entrepreneurs than we can comprehensively list here, however if there are any that have been of particular help to you, please feel free to drop us a tweet or send an email to [email protected]
Subscribe to our newsletter
If you would like to receive our startup themed newsletter, full of the latest startup opportunities, events, news, stories, tips and advice, then sign up here.
Thortful - The startup that's providing a creative card marketplace for designers, illustrators and photographers...
We are liking the sound of Feels FM, an emoji-powered jukebox using music as a positive coping strategy, & to find new ways to talk about mental health.
Innovative startups and businesses designed and focused on empowering and embracing female consumers.
P2P investment aggregator Orca raises £500K on equity crowdfunding platform, Seedrs within two days.
British logistics company Wincanton is looking for tech startups to pitch their solutions for industry specific challenges, as part of their returning W2 Labs innovation programme.
Portugal-based startup Magikbee secures a further $250k round of funding to continue its mission to reimagine kids’ learning and screen time.
Perlego - billed as the 'Spotify for textbooks' - has closed a $4.8m venture round, signalling a new chapter for the growing company on a mission to make textbooks more accessible.
Startup Hubbite has been launched with the aim of putting the trust back into online reviews.
20 aspiring early stage NI technology startups pitched for the chance to win a cash prize for their businesses, closing Ignite NI’s first Propel Pre-Accelerator programme.
Product Guru is a product discovery platform that's helping buyers from consumer goods & gift companies to discover unique & innovative new products.
Published on: 20th August 2017
If you would like to enable commenting via your Startacus account, please enable Disqus functionality in your Account Settings.
- Irish startups invited to pitch at Innovation Nation 2018 19th Aug 2018 Startacus has teamed up with the inaugural Innovation Nation 2018 to deliver Ascend, an all-Ireland tech startup pitch competition.
- North East entrepreneurs sought for new Ignite Accelerator in Newcastle 17th Aug 2018 Ignite returns to Newcastle, home to its inaugural accelerator programme, to launch a 3-month funded, pre-accelerator programme for up to 20 early-stage businesses.
- Urban Massage raises over £2.5m via Seedrs 13th Aug 2018 Urban Massage announces new on-demand wellness services and immediately raises over £2.5m in investment via equity crowdfunding platform, Seedrs.
- Seedrs expands into investor automation with AutoInvest 17th Jul 2018 Seedrs’ AutoInvest will allow investors to customise investment criteria from industry sector, stage of business and tax relief eligibility to automatically invest in equity crowdfunding campaigns.
