30 Austin Female Startup Founders You Should Know

The number of funded companies with women founders is on the rise nationwide; in 2014, 15.5 percent of funded startups on Crunchbase had at least one female founder.

In Austin, companies and organizations like Feminist Hack, Girl Develop It, recruitHer and Women at Austin are all working to support and encourage women who start their own tech companies. 

From industry veterans like Mellie Price to relative newcomers like Katie Fang, here are 30 Austin women startup founders you should know:

 

Porter is CEO and founder of AffiniPay. She was previously co-founder and President at National Bankcard Systems.

 

 

Simpler holds an MBA from the University of Texas and is also active in growing membership for the Austin Technology Council. She is also a founding member of the Software SIG of the Greater Austin Chamber and is actively involved in the Software CEO Group and Tech Women CEO Network.

 

Landers founded Authors.me after 20+ years experience at several content businesses, like ABC News and Demand Media.

Mary Haskett, BeehiveID

Haskett spent eight years managing security-related software projects before founding BeehiveID. She holds a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from The University of Texas at Dallas and an M.Ed. in Educational Technology from Texas A&M University. 

Daina Linton, Fashion Metric

Prior to becoming co-founder and CEO of Fashion Metric, Linton did optical imaging and data processing research at MIT and UCLA research laboratories, where she published several high-impact papers and contributed to a number of collaborative research initiatives. 

 

Rachel Guest, LookNook

Before founding LookNook, Guest was an award-winning interior designer in Austin. 

 

Sara Rodell, Loop & Tie

After Rodell experienced how bad corporate gifting could be, she founded Loop & Tie. She previously worked for UBS in New York and before that she was Founder of The Next One's On Me, Inc.

 

Senem Guney, NarrativeDX 

Patti Smith, Querium

Smith has extensive experience in education, including time as the VP of Marketing at DreamBox Learning, VP of K-12 Math & Science Strategy at schoolbook publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Director of Marketing at Thinkwell, and a former area director at Kaplan Test Prep centers.

Gina Helfrich, Ashley Doyal, and Alexa Loken, recruitHER

Helfrich is the former Director of the Harvard College Women’s Center at Harvard University and has been promoting diversity and inclusion for over 12 years. She is also founder of Feminist Hack. Doyal spent the last eight years recruiting and retaining diverse teams for a variety of tech and gaming companies. Loken has since left the company and currently works at Indeed.com.

 

Samantha Snabes, Katy Jeremko and Lara Jeremko, re:3D

The trio met as a "group of space geeks, scientists, engineers and artists at NASA but, because of cutbacks in the U.S. space program, considered they might never get a chance to slip the bonds of earth’s orbit." Before re:3D, Snabes worked as a research affiliate for the Digital Media Collaboratory at the Center for Agile Technology at the University of Texas. Katy Jeremko is a former Designer in Residence at NASA. Lara Jeremko manages private equity at UT and is an angel investor.

 

Katie Fang, SchooLinks

Fang holds a finance degree from UBC, Sauder School of Business.

 

Mellie Price, Softmatch

Price is the Executive Director of Technology Innovation at the Dell Medical School as well as a founder and investor in Softmatch. She is also an eight-time entrepreneur and a founding mentor and Managing Director of Capital Factory as well as a General Partner to its investment fund. Price was also the Founder & CEO of Austin’s own Front Gate Solutions and Front Gate Tickets.

Michelle Breyer, TextureMedia

Breyer was named one of the 50 Most Influential People in the Multicultural Market by Women's Wear Daily in 2015. Before that she was a business reporter for the Austin American Statesman for 13 years. 

 

Laura Kilcrease, Triton Ventures

Kilcrease helped create the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) and The Capital Network (TCN), the first network of angel investors in Texas. She is also a member of the Central Texas Angels Network. She also served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence for the McCombs School of Business at UT.

 

 

Liz Grow, SnapSitter 

Grow was formerly a Strategic Sales Executive at Spredfast. 

 

Jen Grogono, uStudio

Grogono is founder and CEO of uStudio. She previously co-founded On Networks, where she served as Chief Content Officer and President. Grogono is also a frequent event speaker.

 

Ellen Wood, vcfo

Wood co-founded vcfo and serves as its CEO. She also serves as the Chair-Elect for the Austin Chamber of Commerce and was previously a two-term Board member of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce and their past Vice Chair of Finance. Prior to vcfo, Wood served as Executive Vice President and CFO at Capital Network System, Inc. 

 

Sara Gates, Wisegate

Gates was a former executive with Sun Microsystems, Waveset Technologies, Microsoft and several startups. She also pens a blog called “Listening to IT.”