Compiled by: Xiangxiang, flowie, Nianqing, ChainCatcher
On the eve of Women's Day this year, a new report from BCGX, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and People of Crypto revealed a set of heartbreaking figures: only 13% of Web3 founding teams include women. Among the founders, only 7% are women. The report also found that Web3 startups founded by men raised almost four times as much money as those founded by women, a larger gap than other startups.
To sum it up simply, there are fewer women starting Web3 businesses than in other industries, and this industry seems to discriminate against women more severely, thus raising the threshold for women to enter the Web3 industry. They have become a more low-key presence in this industry.
In fact, there is no shortage of dazzling female entrepreneurs and powerful female leaders in the Web3 field. ChainCatcher and data platform RootData have marked many female project entrepreneurs through [Web3 projects founded by women], hoping that through this collection, "they" can be seen by more people.
If this collection doesn’t include any shining women you know in the Web3 field, please recommend them to us. Contact information is at the end of the article.
Song Xiaodong, Founder and CEO of Oasis Network
Twitter: @dawnsongtweets
Professor Song Xiaodong graduated from the Department of Physics at Tsinghua University, and then continued to study physics at Cornell University in the United States. But then she transferred to Carnegie Mellon University to study computer science, and then completed her doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, focusing on computer security.
After graduation, Song Xiaodong served as a professor in the computer science departments of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of California, Berkeley. He has won numerous awards in the computer field and is known as the "godmother of computer security." In 2019, Song Xiaodong founded Oasis Labs and began to build a scalable and privacy-protecting system by combining dedicated computer chips and blockchain technology. Oasis Network was officially launched on November 19, 2020. It is the world's first decentralized high-performance blockchain network with privacy protection and scalability.
Professor Song Xiaodong has also been focusing on blockchain technology education. The famous open course DeFi MOOC was initiated by Song Xiaodong. In addition, Song Xiaodong and the University of California, Berkeley also launched the ZKP MOOC and ZKP/web3 Hacker Mara to provide academic and financial support for more young entrepreneurs.
Elizabeth Stark, Lightning Labs co-founder and CEO
Twitter: @starkness
Elizabeth Stark holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from Brown University and received her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. Before entering the crypto world, she was more of a scholar, having served as a researcher at the Yale Information Society Project, a lecturer in computer science at Yale University, an adjunct associate professor at New York University, and an entrepreneur-in-residence at Stanford StartX.
In 2014, Elizabeth Stark officially entered the crypto world and founded StartBitcoin.org; in 2015, she became a researcher at the cryptocurrency policy research organization Coin Center, advocating the implementation of good government policies for cryptocurrencies and other decentralized technologies; in 2016, she co-founded Lightning Labs.
Lightning Labs develops the software that powers the Lightning Network. Its open source, secure, and scalable system enables users to send and receive funds more efficiently than ever before. It also provides a range of verifiable, non-custodial Lightning-based financial services.
Elizabeth Stark did not cut off her connection with academia after starting her own business. She also served as a visiting scholar at the Yale University Information Society Project and taught at Yale University. As a mentor for the Thiel Fellowship, she is also committed to supporting students under the age of 23 who plan to drop out of school to pursue other projects.
He Yi, Co-founder and CMO of Binance, Head of Binance Labs
Twitter: @heyibinance
From the perspective of the global exchange landscape, Binance undoubtedly occupies a core position. As co-founder and CMO, He Yi has played an indispensable role in the development of Binance.
Binance was not well-known at first, but He Yi successfully helped it gain the necessary market popularity and user volume in the early stage with the help of multiple marketing activities. Five months after its launch at the end of 2017, Binance's trading volume ranked top 3 in the world, with more than 2 million users. Since then, Binance has been far ahead.
After Binance established its solid position as a leading exchange, He Yi began to be in charge of Binance Labs, using Binance resources to find, help, and incubate more early-stage high-quality crypto projects and founders. As one of the largest venture capital firms in the industry, Binance Labs has not only invested in a large number of early-stage projects in key vertical fields, but also made important contributions to accelerating Web3 into the mainstream.
Jinglan Wang, Co-founder and CEO of Optimism
Twitter: @jinglejamOP
Jinglan Wang first became interested in the crypto world because of the MIT Bitcoin Club, and in order to better understand Bitcoin, she decisively chose to switch to computer science. Since 2015, Jinglan Wang has been fascinated by Ethereum's scalability research. In 2019, she co-founded the non-profit research organization Plasma Group, which is the predecessor of Optimism.
Optimism is an Ethereum L2 solution that uses optimistic rollup technology, which greatly reduces costs and transaction times while retaining Ethereum's security advantages. In March 2022, Optimism's valuation reached $1.65 billion and successfully entered the ranks of crypto unicorns. In June of the same year, it officially launched the governance token OP and launched a large-scale airdrop, which made the entire crypto world excited.
Elena Nadolinski, Founder and CEO, Iron Fish
Twitter: @leanthebean
Elena Nadolinski graduated from Virginia Tech in the United States. She was recognized as a rising star in computer science by the White House as a teenager. She interned at Microsoft and was hired as an engineer by the popular startup Tilt, and then worked in software development at Airbnb.
After Ethereum-Google in 2017, Nadolinski began to develop a strong interest in the crypto world, reading a lot of white papers and communicating with founders, protocol developers, and engineers. She began to participate in hackathons and meetups, asking questions, providing solutions, and making friends. After that, Nadolinski chose to start a business full-time and founded Iron Fish.
Iron Fish is a layer 1 blockchain that aims to be the universal privacy layer for all Web3. Using zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKs) and the industry's highest encryption standards, Iron Fish enables users to conduct completely private transactions, becoming a true SSL layer for all blockchains.
Gloria Zhao, Bitcoin Core Maintainer
Twitter: @glozow
(Although Gloria Zhao is not an entrepreneur in the strict sense, as one of the representatives of the Bitcoin project, her experience is equally "hardcore")
Gloria Zhao was born in California, USA, and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in computer science in 2020. She is also a researcher at Brink, a British non-governmental organization that supports the development of Bitcoin. In 2020, Gloria Zhao was awarded the first scholarship by Brink. Since then, she has been actively working on Bitcoin Core, mainly in charge of memory pools and verification code.
Last July, Gloria Zhao became the sixth developer with commit access to Bitcoin Core. Since the advent of Bitcoin in 2009, only 17 people have been granted code modification permissions, and Gloria Zhao is also the first woman to have this permission. According to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal, Gloria Zhao is the most likely successor to become the chief maintainer of Bitcoin.
Natalia Ameline, Elena Sinelnikova, Co-founders of Metis and CryptoChicks
Twitter: @Natalia_Ameline @ElenaCryptoChic
Elena Sinelnikova on the left and Natalia Ameline on the right
Natalia Ameline and Elena Sinelnikova are the two co-founders of Metis, the Layer-2 Optimistic rollup network of Ethereum's scaling solution. They are also the founders of CryptoChicks, a non-profit international women's blockchain education center.
Elena Sinelnikova holds a master's degree in computer science, specializing in blockchain, cybersecurity, and full-stack programming. She is also the head of the software development team, blockchain educator, and blockchain consultant for projects such as MaxGapPlus and Jupiter Vision.
Natalia Ameline is a senior financial executive with multi-industry experience. She holds a Master of Computer Science and Business Administration degree and a CPA/CMA accounting qualification. She is good at strategic financial planning, decision support, operations management and change management. Natalia Ameline worked as a financial analyst at Unilever in her early years. Later, she joined Pitney Bowes, a world-renowned shipping company, and worked there for 18 years, rising from financial manager to senior financial executive and senior director of global business analysis. In addition to being the co-founder of Metis and CryptoChicks, Natalia Ameline has another identity that has attracted much attention - the mother of Vitalik, the founder of Ethereum.
Kathleen Breitman, Co-founder of Tezos
Twitter: @_kathleenBreit
Kathleen Breitman graduated from Cornell University. In 2014, she published the Tezos white paper with her husband Arthur Breitman and officially launched Tezos in October 2016. Previously, Kathleen Breitman worked as a senior strategic assistant at R3, a blockchain alliance composed of nearly 100 financial companies. She also worked at Accenture, Bridgewater Associates, and The Wall Street Journal.
Sandy Peng, Co-founder of Scroll
Twitter: @SandyPeng1
Sandy Peng graduated from Cambridge University and obtained his master's degree from the London School of Economics. He worked in research at the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission. In 2017, he started working on Web3 project investment. He also worked on game and product projects before. Currently, he is in charge of non-technical work in the Scroll team.
In early 2021, Sand co-founded the Ethereum scaling project Scroll with Ye Zhang and Haichen Shen. Recently, Scroll completed a $50 million financing with a valuation of $1.8 billion, with participation from Polychain Capital, Bain Capital Crypto and others.
Kathryn Haun, founder and CEO, Haun Ventures
Twitter: @katie_haun
Kathryn Haun graduated from Stanford University and worked at the U.S. Department of Justice for ten years. In 2014, she created one of the first cryptocurrency working groups in the U.S. government. In 2017, Kathryn left the government to join the Coinbase board of directors, where she met Chris Dixon, and then left Coinbase to join a16z as a general partner in the crypto department, jointly launching and expanding the world's earliest and largest dedicated crypto venture fund.
After working with many outstanding entrepreneurs and builders with entrepreneurial spirit, Kathryn Haun founded her own crypto investment company Haun Ventures in 2022 to help founders build the next generation of the Internet. It has raised $1.5 billion in funds to support the development of web3.0. According to RootData, Haun Ventures has made 12 investments since its inception, and its investment portfolio includes star projects such as OpenSea and Aptos.
Morgan Beller, Partner at NFX and Co-founder of Diem
Twitter: @beller
Morgan Beller graduated from Cornell University with a bachelor's degree in statistics and information science. Morgan is the co-founder of Libra and the head of strategy for Novi, Facebook's digital wallet for the Libra payment system. She initially joined Facebook in 2017 and was responsible for Facebook's strategy on blockchain, cryptocurrency, and decentralized technology. Previously, she was in charge of corporate development at Medium, led the acquisition of Embedly, and played a key role in developing Medium's subscription strategy. Beller has also worked as an a16z partner and as a product manager for buyer experience at eBay.
Morgan joined NFX, a venture capital firm focusing on startups, in 2020 as a partner and head of crypto investment funds. According to RootData, NFX has 24 investment portfolios, and many of its investments include Celestia, Sui and other star projects.
Cheryl Liu, Co-founder, Deeper Network
Cheryl Liu is an excellent serial entrepreneur. She graduated from the University of Wyoming in the United States and holds a doctorate in mathematical structures. Before entering the blockchain field, she worked in the education field and founded an offline school, with rich entrepreneurial experience. It was not until she came into contact with blockchain and founded Lianquan Technology Consulting Co., Ltd. in 2017 that she began to make great efforts in the blockchain field.
Cheryl Liu is also the marketing partner and co-founder of Deeper Network. As a Web3 infrastructure, Deeper provides users with enterprise-level firewalls, privacy protection, and ad removal.
Marina Guryeva, Founder and CEO, Neon Labs
Twitter: @mariaveirug
Marina Guryeva has been actively involved in the blockchain field since 2015. She was a director of CyberFund, a startup investing in blockchain. In 2019, she joined Commun, a blockchain-based social network, as director, leading a blockchain-based social network operated by an autonomous community.
In 2021, Marina founded Neon Labs, dedicated to bringing Solana's scalability and low transaction costs to the Ethereum ecosystem. Before entering the blockchain industry, Marina Guryeva had extensive experience in marketing, public relations and strategic planning.
Leah Wald, Valkyrie Co-Founder & CEO
Twitter: @LeahWald
Leah Wald is an economist who specializes in asset management. She graduated from the University of Haifa in Israel and studied international economics and Chinese at Peking University. She then studied for a master's degree in international politics and economics at Georgetown University and Pitzer College in the United States, and a master's degree in management at IE Business School.
After graduating from IE Business School, Leah Wald worked in non-governmental organizations, the World Bank, and asset management. In August 2020, Leah Wald founded Valkyrie, an asset management company focused on the digital asset economy, and in October 2021, she became a member of the board of directors of Cypherpunk Holdings, a crypto investment company listed on the Canadian Stock Exchange.
In addition, Leah Wald is a staff writer for Forbes and co-authored "Superwave Theory: Rogue Waves in Financial Markets."
Linda Xie, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Scalar Capital
Twitter: @ljxie
Linda Xie is the co-founder and managing partner of Scalar Capital. Previously, she was an early employee and product manager at Coinbase, where she built internal tools including compliance, fraud, and financial systems. Prior to joining Coinbase, she was a portfolio risk analyst at AIG, and she is also an advisor to 0x. Linda holds a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of California, San Diego.
Linda Xie and Jordan Clifford founded Scalar Capital, a hedge fund company focusing on crypto assets, in 2017. According to RootData, Scalar Capital has invested in a series of star projects including YGG, Aztec, dYdX, and Aleo.
Galia Benartzi, Co-founder of Bancor
Twitter: @galiabenartzi
Galia Benartzi is a serial technology entrepreneur. She holds a BA in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College and an MA in International Economics from Johns Hopkins University, SAIS.
After graduating from university in 2005, Galia Benartzi co-founded Mytopia, a smartphone social game company. In 2010, she founded Particle Code, a cross-platform development technology for mobile applications, which was later acquired by Appcelerator. In 2013, she moved from Silicon Valley to Tel Aviv to support and invest in local technology development in Israel as a venture partner of Founders Fund. In March 2017, she co-founded the Bancor protocol, a decentralized on-chain automated market maker (AMM) network. Galia Benartzi is also a founding member of Powder Mountain and is passionate about distributed technology, women's empowerment, natural health and plants.
Rebecca Liao, Co-founder and CEO, Saga
Twitter: @beccaliao
Rebecca Liao studied economics at Stanford University and Harvard Law School. She is a lawyer with many years of experience. She was the director of business development and head of Asia for Globality, a B2B industry unicorn. She worked on Clinton's foreign policy team and focused on technology policy. She also co-founded Skuchain (annual transaction volume exceeds US$5 billion, and is rated by the World Trade Organization as one of the top three blockchain companies in the field of trade and supply chain finance) and served as a consultant and former COO.
Rebecca is also currently an advisor to Sommelier Protocol, for which she is designing a DAO. She is also a fellow at Stanford University's Law, Science and Technology Program and produces and hosts the global-public-policy podcast.
Rebecca founded Saga in early 2022, a protocol that reimagines how developers and end users interact with blockchain, with a focus on scalability, sovereignty, and ease of setup, helping to make launching a dedicated blockchain as simple as deploying a smart contract.
Grace Wang and Helena Gagern, co-founders of Salsa
From left to right: Helena Gagern, Grace Wang
Salsa is a Web3 messaging platform that personalizes emails and in-app messages using on-chain data. Users can personalize their announcement experience, and community managers can send secure messages using a wallet-to-wallet messaging protocol.
The two co-founders behind the company, Grace Wang and Helena Gagern, are both women. Grace Wang studied at the University of Pennsylvania and later worked in software development and management at Palantir and Primer AI; Helena Gagern graduated from University College London, is a serial entrepreneur, and has extensive experience in software development and product design.
Imge Su Cetin, Founder & CEO of Defy
Imge Su Cetin is a data scientist working on predicting global migration patterns using online search data and social media data for the IOM Global Migration Data Analysis Center in Berlin. She attended graduate school at the University of California, San Diego, where she specialized in applied data science and statistical analysis, and is proficient in statistical and analytical tools and software.
Imge Su Cetin joined the Deep Decarbonization Initiative (D2I) as a researcher in 2019. The program was jointly founded by the Jacobs School of Engineering and the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. In 2020, he joined the International Organization for Migration (IOM) - UN Migration as a data scientist. In April 2021, he officially founded the investment trend data platform Defy.
Séraphie de Tracy, Co-founder and CEO of Cohort
Séraphie de Tracy holds a Master’s degree in Management from HEC Paris Business School and a double degree from CEMS. She has extensive experience in enterprise SaaS services and has served as COO, VP of Growth Operations, and Sales Director at the fintech company Stratumn. She has also worked as a senior strategy manager at AXA Global P&C, one of the world’s largest insurance companies, and as a consultant at Roland Berger, a top global strategic management consulting firm.
In May 2022, Séraphie de Tracy founded Cohort, an NFT-based digital engagement platform, and served as CEO. Cohort is a Web3 SaaS solution based in France that uses NFTs (non-fungible tokens) to help brands create innovative experiences and products without any technical or significant time commitment. Through integrations such as Salesforce and Shopify, Cohort removes adoption barriers through a "no code, no crypto, no wallet" solution, making web3 accessible to all brands and customers.