We have a big problem in the startup and tech world that is not only squashing innovation, but is leaving billions of dollars on the table for every single investor. I’ve reviewed thousands of startup pitches and have found that many of the game-changing products that have the potential to make a huge impact on this world happen to be run by women and people of color. Despite this, only 10% of funding globally goes to women-led startups. And, as I’ve written about before, the funding for women of color is far more dismal.

For the past few years, many investors have publicly committed to funding more women founders, yet somehow, the percentage of women founders funded hasn’t budged. Even after the public scrutiny the tech sector experienced in the face of the #MeToo movement, the amount of funding for diverse startups is paltry. If investing in startups led by women and people of color were a product, it would be considered one of the biggest product failures in startup history as “a product that stagnates for two years has a growth problem,” said Bo Ren  who is a product adviser and investor.

Interestingly, hundreds of millions of dollars is being spent on diversity and inclusion initiatives by major tech companies to recruit more tech employees, but from what I see, not a dime of this is being spent on some of the company’s most important divisions: mergers and acquisitions and VC arms. If we crack that nut, it will open up a whole new world of funding being funneled into some of the most innovative companies around the world. There are thousands and thousands of women-led tech startups disrupting every industry you can think of: health, finance, transportation, education, fashion, energy, AI, Augmented Reality, and more.

Need some inspiration to find these next unicorns, or rather zebras, as Mara Zepeda, CEO and co-founder of Switchboard, and coauthors so eloquently stated? Here are 60 women-led startups (listed alphabetically) who are shaking up tech across the globe. A few on the list are companies that have been part of our Women Startup Challenges, where we are on a mission to close the funding gap. Others we’ve been following their products and traction. Research them. Introduce yourself to them. Fund them!

1. #1. 10Power (Haiti) — 10Power invests in renewable energy projects that can be paid back over time, providing access to clean power in the places that need it most. Founder: Sandra Kwak
2. Abartys Health (Puerto Rico) — A healthtech startup that facilitates and streamlines communication between insurance companies and healthcare providers. Co-founders: Dolmarie Mendez and Lauren Cascio
3. Accompany (United States) — Through artificial intelligence and machine learning, Accompany is a virtual chief of staff, providing one with all of the information they need about anyone they are meeting with in a given day. Co-founder: Amy Chang
4. AIM (Korea) — An automated investment management platform creating Korea’s very first robo-advisor for investment management. Founder: Jihae Jenna Lee
5. Automio (New Zealand) — A lawyer bot that interviews clients and frees legal staff from tedious legal work. Founder: Claudia King
6. Azimo (Poland and England) — Works with large payment companies worldwide to ensure that money transfers reach their destinations safely. They hold funds in most currencies around the world which means they can send money instantly to 60+ countries, and they work with partners in 195+ countries. Co-founder: Marta Krupinska
7. Billie (United States) — A shave and body brand delivering premium-quality razors and skincare subscriptions at half the price of the competition. Founder: Georgina Gooley
8. Chic by Choice (Portugal) — A next-generation dress rental player that allows women to access the newest designer dresses directly from the catwalk. Founder: Filipa Neto
9. CloQ (Brazil) — Provides nano-credit and financial literacy resources, via an app, to the poor and the unbanked. Co-founder: Rafaela Cavalcanti
10. Comparaonline (Chile, Colombia and Brazil) — A platform designed to add transparency to the process of purchasing insurance and applying for credit. Co-founder: Mariana Larrain
11. DEKO EKO (Poland) — An upcycling platform that works with the best designers globally to create well-designed consumer products out of carefully selected waste materials from the largest companies and brands. Founder: Agata
12. Frankiewicz
13. Devoleum (Italy) — Tracks and stores every single step of the extra virgin olive oil supply chain in the blockchain allowing the final consumer to know the entire history of each product, from the comfort of their smartphone. Co-founder: Elisa Romondia
14. Digitail (Spain) — Digitail is a software startup for veterinary clinics that is AI-enhanced, fully customizable and easy to use. Co-founder: Ruxandra Pui
15. EmptyTrips (South Africa) — Through machine learning and smart matching algorithms, the EmptyTrips platformcreates a marketplace where shippers, agents, and transport carriers can connect, bid for cargo, find transport assets to move their cargo, and even store or insure it for faster logistics, better economics, and a significantly lighter carbon footprint. Founder: Benji Coetzee
16. Enterprise Bot (Switzerland) — Develops AI powered chatbots to automate customer interactions and provide enterprises with a readily accessible digital agent to improve customer experience and create operationally efficiency for companies. Co-founder: Ravina Mutha
17. Fove Inc (US and Japan) — Created the first consumer friendly priced VR headset with complete eye-tracking technology. Founder: Yuka Kojima
18. GrabTaxi (Malaysia) — A mobile app that connects customers directly to taxi drivers via phone. They submitted the plan to a Harvard startup competition in 2011. GrabTaxi is now available in 21 cities across the region. Co-founder: Tan Hooi Ling
19. Hatch Apps (United States) — Using their automated app creation platform, users can launch native apps for iOS, Android and the web with no coding required. Co-founder: Amelia Friedman
20. Humanitas (Jordan) — The company’s mobile video app Dandi enables organizations and youth to collaborate on local community issues. Co-founder: Julia Solano
21. ImpactVision (United States and England) — Combines hyperspectral imaging with machine learning to provide information about the quality of foods. Co-founder: Abi Ramanan
22. INOREVIA (France) —  Develops and commercializes a new generation of patented technologies that miniaturize lab instrument volumes for analysis. This drastically reduces costs, time and manipulation necessary to perform next-generation bioassays and precision medicine. Co-founder: Amel Bendali
23. JobsCentral (Singapore) — One of the largest job portals in Singapore with over 800,000 registered jobseekers at the time of its acquisition by US-based CareerBuilder in 2011. Co-founder, who exited: Shao-Ning Leigh Huang
24. Laboratoria (Peru) — A Peruvian-based startup that teaches Latina women from low-income backgrounds to code for free. Co-founder: Mariana Costa Checa
25. Mathaqi (Saudi Arabia) —  An on-demand platform for delivery of home cooked meals. Co-founder: Nouf Alsaleem
26. Medina’s Health (United States) — A data-driven marketplace helping healthcare organizations safely and securely buy and sell their surplus and short-date medical supplies and equipment. Co-founder: Chloe Alpert
27. Mellow (Portugal) — A sous-vide machine that takes orders through your smartphone and keeps food cold until it’s the right time to start cooking for you remotely. Co-founder: Catarina Violante
28. Menstrual Health Hub (Germany) — An online global platform specifically designed to be the home for all menstrual health actors and organizations. *Not all women and girls menstruate and not all those who menstruate identify as women or girl. Co-founders: Danielle I. Keiser and Milena Bacalja Perianes and Mariana de la Roche
29. Motivo (United States) — A platform providing clinical supervision for mental health professionals online. Founder: Rachel McCrickard
30. Nano-X (Australia) — Changing the delivery of radiation therapy from large reference centres to small-town hospitals. An advanced on-board imaging/planning system captures 3D images in real-time, controls the radiation beam, and automatically delivers the right amount of energy to the right tissue, requiring fewer dedicated staff. Founder: Ilana Feain
31. NotesFirst (United States) — Electronic health record (EHR) platform for physicians to capture patient data via smartphone. Co-founder: Patricia Lopez
32. NOVA (Germany) — The first bluetooth headset that can be integrated in earrings with a built in speaker, microphone, and volume control. Co-founder: Judith Gampe
33. ObjectBox (Germany) — The first high-performance NoSQL, ACID-compliant on-device database for mobile and IoT. It’s 10X faster than the industry leader, and takes only 1/10th of the code to implement. Founder: Vivien Dollinger
34. PetCloud (Australia) — An online community for pet parents to connect with pet sitters who have been screened and are ready to care for your pet. Founder: Deb Morrison
35. Pops Worldwide (Vietnam and Global) — Produces mobile apps as well as licensing and publishing media. Since September 2008, it has been accumulating the licenses and distribution rights for most of Vietnam’s music – up to 90%. It is the primary licensee of Vietnamese music on YouTube. Co-founder: Esther Nguyen
36. Qerja (Indonesia) — Allows jobseekers and employees to share information about companies publicly – much like the U.S. platform Glassdoor. Users go to the site to find transparent information about a company’s pay scale and hiring practices. Co-founder: Veronika Linardi
37. Sampson Solutions, Ltd. (England) — Creating bio-based construction materials from sustainable sources using a closed-loop, carbon neutral manufacturing process. Founder: Colleen Becker
38. Savitude (United States) — An AI platform that curates personalized fashion collections based on shopper’s individual shape and proportion. Co-founder: Camilla Olson
39. She Leads Africa (Africa) — One of the first accelerators in Africa for women-led startups. Co-founders: Yasmin Belo-Osagie and Afua Osei
40. Shupperz (Israel) — A social platform for connecting shoppers from all over the world enabling them to interact, inspire, share content, and shop for one another. Co-founder: Tal Rubenstein
41. Sidekix (United States) — An urban discovery app which provides interest based routes across categories including shopping, culture, and nightlife. The app has had over half a million global downloads since its launch in 2016. Co-founder: Jenny Drezin
42. SIRUM (United States) — SIRUM (Supporting Initiatives to Redistribute Unused Medicine) is the “match.com” for unused, unexpired medicine, matching it with people in need. Co-founder: Kiah Williams
43. SocialCar.com (Spain) — A leading peer to peer car rental company (P2P carsharing). Founder: Mar Alarcon Batlle 
44. Solenica (Italy) — A smart natural lighting robot with an Italian design that’s beautiful, affordable and easy-to-use. They bring real sunlight into your home where the sun can’t reach. Co-founders: Diva Tommei and Mackenzie Garrity
45. Solstice Energy Solutions (United States) — IoT and software to easily monitor, manage and control consumers and businesses energy sources in emerging markets. Co-founder: Ugwem Eneyo
46. Tipa (Israel) — The company is set to address the dire need for food packaging that is genuinely ecologically-sensitive. Tipa is developing revolutionary biodegradable packages that automatically “perish” within 180 days. Co-founder: Daphna Nissenbaum
47. Tonic App (Portugal) — An app for medical doctors. It increases the efficiency of clinical work: allows fast and safe discussion of patient cases, team collaboration and aggregates content for day-to-day professional use, such as drug conversion tables or clinical calculators. Co-founder: Daniela Seixas
48. Travelshoot (Australia) — A service that helps you book a local photographer while travelling. Founder: Sarah Pearce
49. TRIK (England) — A Google map for structural inspection that turns photos from drones into a digital 3D model. You can make comments, take measurements or compare changes directly from the time-lapse 3D models. Co-founder: Pae Natwilai
50. Tutored (Italy) — A social app, tackling youth unemployment, dedicated to college students and talent acquisition. Co-founder: Martina Mattone
51. Unima (Mexico) — Fast and low cost diagnostic and disease surveillance technology for diseases which allow doctors, nurses and community health workers to diagnose diseases directly at the point of care, in less than 15 minutes. Co-founder: Laura Mendoza
52. VitalSines (Canada) — Creator of iHeart, a fingertip device that calculates your internal age. Co-founder: Sarah Goodman
53. Vitrue Health (England) — A system that sits in the background of clinical assessments, autonomously measuring motor function metrics, freeing clinicians to focus on more complex patient interactions and saves millions in healthcare costs. Co-founder: Alex Haslehurst
54. Vouchery.io (Germany) — A predictive coupon, discount & loyalty automation platform that optimizes promotional strategy for customer engagement, while preventing coupon fraud. Co-founder: Ewelina Robaczek
55. Wala (South Africa) — A financial services app driving economic participation in emerging markets. Founder: Tricia Martinez
56. Wazi Vision (Uganda) — Provides more affordable means of diagnosing refractive errors among children & provides eye glasses made from recycled plastic. Founder: Brenda Katwesigye
57. Womena (United Arab Emirates) — A platform that promotes diversity and inclusion in entrepreneurship in the Middle East. Co-founder: Elissa Freiha
58. WOOM (Spain) — A bespoke app that empowers women to maximize chances to be pregnant, gain time and eventually have kids faster; either through natural conception or, in necessary cases, by seeing a doctor. Co-founders: Laurence Fontinoy and Clelia Morales
59. Yask (Columbia) — A global community of native speakers paired with AI and gamification to offer quality translations and proofreading in real time. Co-founder: Andrea Higuera Araque
60. Zeplin (Turkey and United States) — A connected space for product teams where they can share designs, generate specs, assets, and code snippets. Co-founder: Pelin Kenez
61. ZipMatch (Philippines) — A real estate portal that lists and reviews properties for sale and rent and adds a professional touch on property brokerage by taking out old industry habits of cutting corners and pushing for sales without a strong sense of customer service. Co-founder: Chow Paredes

Author Allyson Kapin is the founder of Women Who Tech and the cofounder of the social change web agency Rad Campaign. Follow her on Twitter.

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Thursday, December 27, 2018 – 1:20am

 

Proponents of large, centralized electricity generation, transmission and distribution systems must start to ask if that paradigm of infrastructure is the right one for energy access and resiliency. The electric grid in Haiti provides access to less than one-third of the population, and that access is spotty at best. Businesses, from agriculture to manufacturing, cannot rely on the centralized system.

Enter 10Power, a gender-lensed solar energy and storage startup, founded by Sandra Kwak.

While attending Presidio Graduate School, Kwak worked on a project with a Nicaraguan evergreen fund bringing solar energy to farmers. “I found it incredibly unfair that those most impacted by climate change had the least to do in creating it,” Kwak says. She later went to AutoGrid, excited by saving megawatts of electricity at the click of a mouse with the help of big data and machine learning.

However, from a social equity perspective, Kwak felt unfulfilled. She began to research the data in her spare time and learned that energy poverty is centered around the equator. “When I looked at the places with the highest cost of electricity and the lowest access to electricity, Haiti jumped out — and it was super close to home,” she says. So Kwak says in 2015, it was a no-brainer to visit Haiti for the first time as a humble learner. She says she found that after people saw you a third time, they began to take you seriously, and recognize that you weren’t the typical fly-in and fly-out foreigner. Haiti was filled with one-time deals that just weren’t working. A new approach was needed.

After listening tours, market research and on-the-ground observation, Kwak decided to address what is known as productive energy — energy used for commercial and industrial (C&I) purposes. If jobs are the foundation of economic prosperity, then C&I energy is the foundation for those jobs. And while there has been considerable progress globally in the pay-as-you-go residential solar lighting space, the commercial scale solar industry required to fuel resilient economies is still a big missing piece of energy access.

There is a famous Chinese proverb, “Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to fish and you feed them for a lifetime.” As Kwak put it, “People in Haiti know how to fish; they just need cold chain storage to get their fish to market.”

10Power serves as a solar project developer and financer. The name was inspired by the “each one teach 10” idea, whereby one can scale resilience from the bottom-up if one empowers 10 people so much that they, in turn, influence 10 more people. 10Power’s first market is Haiti. Why isn’t Haiti beaming with solar panels, given the low cost of solar and availability of sunshine? Financing, Kwak answers. “Even though solar electricity is cheaper than diesel, still even the multimillion dollar businesses in Haiti do not want to commit working capital for the upfront costs.” 10Power aims to remove that barrier by providing financing for turnkey solar installations.

As a startup CEO, Kwak does a little bit of everything. To succeed, she must be flexible and determined. “You have to be unyielding in pursuing your goals and also be ready to roll with the punches.” She has built strong relationships with local team members, and hires Haitian installers for all projects. “I’m grateful that 10Power has been able to attract top talent in Haiti,” she says. There are four Haiti-based team members with international engineering experience and one team member in the U.S. with credit expertise in emerging markets.

10Power is raising a Series A funding round, one of its biggest challenges to date. It has received investment from a number of angels and early stage investing funds, including the Force for Good Fund, SheEO, Echoing Green and individuals. Kwak points to a number of capital sources that can be more easily accessed than even five years ago, including high-net-worth individuals who would like to have social, environmental and financial returns in their investing, accelerators with grant and other early-stage sources of capital, and impact debt (country-adjusted rates for well understand business models such as selling electrons). What is missing is the catalytic finance — the kind that blends different forms of capital to take on emerging market risk. “There is no blended capital term sheet on Sand Hill,” Kwak laments.

With a portfolio pipeline of over 50 megawatts of projects representing over $100 million, the current raise will allow 10Power to invest in $10 million worth of solar and storage C&I projects. 10Power recently completed a flagship installation at UNICEF Haiti: the largest solar array on any UNICEF base in the world. The system consists of PV panels and Lithium Ferro Phosphate energy storage and serves UNICEF Haiti’s operations base, including the data center.

“In Haiti, we can demonstrate that it is possible to decouple carbon emissions from prosperity. Developing countries do not have to follow the antiquated order of mandatory industrialization and exploitation before participation in climate action. It is more advantageous to everyone to transition straight into regenerative economics,” Kwak says.

I second that thought. As this wraps up the last feature in this 1 Hotels Environmental Entrepreneurssponsored series, I invite readers to consider supporting women-led startups, which receive less than 5 percent of venture capital. Here are three ways: contributing to the Force for Good loan-loss reserve; becoming a SheEO activator; and investing in any of the startups in the series if you are an accredited investor.

Link to article:

https://www.greenbiz.com/article/10power-aims-tap-energy-potential-stand-out-island-nation

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The Caribbean Renewable Energy Forum (CREF), the largest annual gathering of the regional clean energy market, today announced 8 winners for its second annual CREF Industry Awards. The winners were recognized on stage at the 10^th CREF in Miami.

10Power, 121 Consulting and SMA were honored with the Project Addressing Social and Environmental Impacts Award for their project on UNICEF Haiti. The project was implemented in conjunction with the Haitian firm OmniTek and employed local Haitian solar installers. 10Power also provided training opportunities for women engineering students in Haiti Tec University and Solar Electric Light Fund’s solar technician program.

The project is the largest solar installation on any UNICEF base in the world to date. It includes photovoltaic generation and energy storage and is powering UNICEF Haiti’s operations base including the facility’s data center. “We are grateful on behalf of our entire team to receive this award,” said 10Power CEO and Founder, Sandra Kwak. “This project is exciting because it tackles multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals and demonstrates that Haiti can be a leader in clean growth.”

New Energy Events, the organizers of CREF, developed the awards to recognize the leaders in the Caribbean energy sector who are making a lasting impact on resilient and renewable energy. Many award winners are first-movers, forging a path for project development in the region.

“Ten years ago, projects of any description in the Caribbean were few and far between,” said Matthew Perks, CEO of New Energy Events. “That we can now generate awards for eight impactful projects is evidence of just how far the market has come in the past decade. The awards serve to underscore the trajectory of the market, but also to provide a benchmark for excellence in the development of renewables across the region.”

The awards program drew candidates from across the Caribbean region, including Turks and Caicos, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Haiti. The selected award winners represent the entities who have had a profound impact on the region’s clean energy development. “With the continued tenacity and innovation of organizations like these, the Caribbean’s switch to a clean and resilient energy grid will be much sooner than many thought possible,” said Advisory committee member Adam Carter, Managing Director, Head – Investment Banking, CIBC FirstCaribbean, “2018 has been another growth year for renewables.”

Award recipients were chosen by an industry-leading Advisory Committee including Chris Burgess, Director of Projects, Rocky Mountain Institute; Nils Janson, Executive Vice President, Castalia Advisors; Jennifer DeCesaro, Acting Director of Technology to Market Program, U.S. Department of Energy; Adam Carter, Managing Director, Head – Investment Banking, CIBC FirstCaribbean; Emily Chessin, Senior Associate, The Cadmus Group; Doug Hewson, Managing Partner, Portland Private Equity; and Julie Taylor, Editorial Director, New Energy Events.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF THE WINNERS OF CREF 2018 INDUSTRY AWARDS:

• Lifetime Achievement in Energy Leadership: Tessa Williams Robertson
• Utility Scale Solar: Monte Plata Solar, Dominican Republic
• Energy Storage Project: Andres and Los Mina Advancion Energy Storage Arrays, Dominican Republic
• Distributed Generation Project: FortisTCI U.O.R.E and C.O.R.E Program, Turks and Caicos
• Microgrid: Mirebalais Hospital, BHI and SMA Sunbelt as technical partner, Haiti
• Energy Efficiency Project: Caribbean Hotel Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Programme (CHENACT)
• Project Addressing Social and Environmental Impacts: UNICEF Haiti, 10Power, 121, SMA, Haiti
• Energy Leadership MVP: Leroy Abraham, CEO, British Virgin Islands Electricity Corporation

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