18 Female Founders In Tech To Watch

As part of our Women in Tech series, we've hand-picked 18 female tech founders to watch--women who are behind tech startups that are upending industries, changing the way we browse the web, revolutionizing medicine, and much, much more. From fashion to city government, these leaders have noticed opportunities in the market and created companies around them.

Women in Tech has already profiled some noteworthy female founders, such as Rent The Runway CEO and co-founder Jennifer Hyman, GenJuice CEO and co-founder Arielle Patrice Scott, and LearnVest CEO and co-founder Alexa Von Tobel, and you can read more about their stories, and others', here.

Of course, these 18 founders represent only a fraction of the many pioneering women in tech who have started innovative companies that are changing the way we think about and engage with technology. Take a look at the founders in our slideshow below, then we want to hear from you: let us know who else we should have included by sending us a tweet at @HuffPostTech, or leaving a note in the comments below.

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Jess Lee, Polyvore

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Lee is the co-founder of Polyvore, a social fashion site where users can curate wardrobes by assembling products from across the web, then share these virtual ensembles with other users. Prior to joining the startup, Lee worked at Google for four years. As a product manager for Google Maps, she helped launch a variety of features like embeddable maps, multipoint driving directions, and real time traffic routing. After falling in love with Polyvore's prototype in 2008 (and winning its Halloween contest), she decided to heed advice from her former boss, Marissa Mayer, to, as Lee wrote in her blog, "always take the more challenging, more risky path."

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Lee is the co-founder of Polyvore, a social fashion site where users can curate wardrobes by assembling products from across the web, then share these virtual ensembles with other users. Prior to joining the startup, Lee worked at Google for four years. As a product manager for Google Maps, she helped launch a variety of features like embeddable maps, multipoint driving directions, and real time traffic routing. After falling in love with Polyvore's prototype in 2008 (and winning its Halloween contest), she decided to heed advice from her former boss, Marissa Mayer, to, as Lee wrote in her blog, "always take the more challenging, more risky path."

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[grapost]

10:32 AM on 09/26/2011

Yeah women are attracted to the Tech world just like they were attracted to the Real Estate because there is no heavy lifting, no getting dirty, you get to dress up nice and wear makeup, and everything is PC. A nice, pleasant, non threatening world for little girls!

[sensorchip]

04:55 PM on 08/31/2011

You forgot one: Tina Nova PH.D; Founder of Genoptix (www.genoptix.com) which recently sold to Novartis for $600M; Ligand (which IPO'd in 1998) and others....and, oh yeah, she IS actually trying to cure cancer....

[labluvver]

05:20 PM on 08/15/2011

What I found most interesting, and a little sad, is that of the 18 selected, 3/4 of the women featured are in software of some kind, mostly websites. While admirable that they're achieving great things in software, where are the women founders in other tech industries, such as high tech manufacturing? We do exist, and frankly, I'm tired of seeing software founders as representative of all that's exciting in technology.

[holliebakerlutz]

09:45 PM on 08/11/2011

I think the content here is good, but I don't see why it was necessary to separate *female* tech founders from tech founders. I also don't understand why their photographs are so much larger than the explanation of their contributions. In fact, I wrote a blog post about it... http://bit.ly/qIAOZC Still, thank you bringing these creative endeavors to our minds.

[ignacio sanabria]

05:55 PM on 08/11/2011

Awesome, inspiring and practical. Liked the biotech stuff!

[NCWIT]

11:31 AM on 08/11/2011

Great list!

We (NCWIT - The National Center for Women & Information Technology) have interviewed some of these women (including Dina Kaplan, Pooja Sankar, Caterina Fake, and Julia Hartz) as a part of our ongoing Entrepreneurial Heroes series, which has over 60 interviews with women CEOs and founders in technical fields.

The interviews live here: http://ncwit.org/heroes

Thanks for sharing this list of inspiring women!

[kclz2420]

04:08 PM on 08/09/2011

None of these ideas, with the possible exception of Flickr, is even worth the millions of dollars these tech entrepreneurs make after selling their inventions.

It's a sad state of affairs when our nation's school teachers make 40K a year on top of being blamed for "failing" their students who were already bound to a life of generational poverty. But on top of that, coders make millions of dollars a pop for inventing some goofy "social fashion" website that 9/10ths of the world hasn't even heard about nor would even be interested EVEN IF they already spend five hours a day on facebook and twitter.

This is a society that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Very sad.

[GustavoRejivik]

03:12 PM on 08/09/2011

Wow, so opening up an insignificant fashon web site gets you headlines on the Huff Po??

This whole "Hers" and "ours" mantra needs to go ... this women's section .. highlighting trivial accomplishments because someone has a Vagina .. is discriminatory ...

[omgriri]

09:46 PM on 08/10/2011

and you've done what, exactly?

[kitana3737]

01:01 PM on 08/11/2011

worked on some mean pecs, by the looks of it.

[risu23]

01:49 PM on 08/09/2011

Brenda Garno Brathwaite is a founder of social game developer Loot Drop (http://lootdrop.com/). She's the longest serving woman in game development, and is a prominent speaker, educator and author. Brenda definitely belongs on this list!

[EmilyWindsorCragg]

12:39 PM on 08/09/2011

The only fundamental research happening in this group is in robotics. How does one get in contact with one of the principals ... just to preview an idea?

[Dianna Ivanov]

11:40 AM on 08/09/2011

Inspiring! There are so many brilliant "tech" women out there I am humbled by their ideas & contributions! Of course there are so many not mentioned here. Keep at it ladies you rock!

[STARTUPSMAP]

10:31 AM on 08/09/2011

Don't forget our brilliant founder of the http://fundingroadmap.com and http://startupsacrossameica.com Ruth E. Hedges.
She has been featured in the Chronicle of Philanthropy as well as the New York Times, the LA Times and People Magazine for her work with Oxfam America and the Hollywood Hunger Banquets. She was also once featured on ABC's Home Show, and the Financial News Network did a two-part series on her for their show entitled 'American Entrepreneur'.

[clarendon67]

09:22 AM on 08/09/2011

It's good to see women of all different races involved in stuff like this. Way to go ladies!!

[BuckoForce]

08:01 AM on 08/09/2011

Cool stuff.

[Justjack1]

04:22 AM on 08/09/2011

Keep up the great work ladies.
GEEK-UP THE WORLD!
:)