Forget the tired image of tech bros in hoodies.
Meet the women who didn’t just launch startups, but built game-changing platforms you probably use without even realising.
From design to digital banking, they didn’t wait for permission. They just built better.
1. Canva – Melanie Perkins
What began as a uni project turned into a $40B design unicorn. Melanie Perkins built Canva to make design accessible to everyone, no Photoshop needed. From pitch decks to TikToks, it’s now the backbone of the creator economy, powered by clever UX, real-time collaboration, and a relentless focus on simplicity.
2. Bumble – Whitney Wolfe Herd
She took on a male-dominated industry—and rewrote the rules. Bumble isn’t just a dating app, it’s a platform for building connections, where women message first and safety is baked into the tech. Whitney Wolfe Herd scaled it from an MVP to a public company, proving that feminist UX has market power.
3. ClassPass – Payal Kadakia
Payal Kadakia made boutique fitness accessible with a single subscription—and used location data, machine learning, and slick UX to make finding a workout feel effortless. Behind the scenes, ClassPass is a logistics and scheduling powerhouse that helped digitise the entire fitness industry.
4. Eventbrite – Julia Hartz
Julia Hartz scaled Eventbrite into a global platform that powers millions of events every year. With live reporting, integrations, and open APIs, it’s much more than a ticketing tool—it’s an infrastructure layer for the modern experience economy. And Julia’s still steering the ship.
6. Starling Bank – Anne Boden
Anne Boden built Starling Bank to be mobile-first, user-friendly, and radically transparent—unlike the big banks she used to work for. The app-based challenger bank is driven by clean UI, real-time analytics, and modern infrastructure. It’s fintech that puts users (not branches) first.
7. TaskRabbit – Leah Busque
Before the gig economy had a name, Leah Busque launched TaskRabbit to match people with local help for everyday tasks—via app. Behind the scenes? Real-time job routing, trust and safety tech, and a scalable platform that IKEA eventually acquired. She didn’t just build an app—she helped build a movement.
Still think tech’s a boys’ club?
Image credit: flickr Web Summit, TechCrunch, Melanie Perkins.