Are we setting female founders up to fail?
Welcome to the Seventy-fourth edition of Unstoppable Founders!
☀️ Exciting Announcement! ☀️
Happy Friday! I am so excited to announce that as of today we are soft launching v1 of the Unstoppable Founders community hub. This is a result of all of the feedback I’ve received over the past year and the buzz from the Unstoppable Founders Summit last month. As a thank you, I’m offering exclusive Founding Memberships at a discounted price for my newsletter subscribers - that’s you btw! 😉
What can you expect from the community hub? Templates, playbooks and practical resources, an investor database, a private WhatsApp group, workshops and masterclasses - plus we have a lot more to come with our PitchLab, more investor matchmaking opportunities and fundraising database and more. I’d love for you to join and help us build the ultimate hub to support female founders with everything they need to build high growth businesses!
We have SO much more to come - thanks for joining me on this journey!
Jen
👑 #Unstoppable Female Founder
This week’s Unstoppable Female Founder is the humanist behind Anthropic's AI revolution, Daniela Amodei, Co-founder & President.
AI - an industry where most founders seem to have computer science PhD’s and a deeply technical professional background. So I was quite surprised when I began researching Daniela’s flounder story as she has neither a deep technical background, nor a PhD in computer science. Yet, she is running what is arguably, one of the fastest scaling AI companies, revolutionizing the world as we know it. Just last month it was reported that Anthropic is now valued at nearly $61.5 billion. However, I think it’s Daniela’s lack of a technical background that has helped give Anthropic its edge.
Daniela graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a degree in English Literature, again not exactly the background you'd expect for someone now leading an AI powerhouse. But when you assess her career history leading up to Anthropic, you start to notice a theme: she has a genuine desire to make the world a better place.
She started her career in international development, working on issues like poverty assessment, conflict mitigation, and global health issues. After college, she worked at the IRIS Center before helping train healthcare workers in Uganda with several nonprofits. It’s these experiences which gave Daniela a global perspective and humanitarian view of the world, clearly proving to be invaluable while developing AI systems with worldwide implications.
In 2013, after several years of working in US politics, Daniela decided she wanted a new challenge, something where she could have more impact. She then made a career defining decision and joined Stripe as a founding recruiter when it was still a little unknown startup. Working under the CTO Greg Brockman, she focused on risk management and user policy.
Come 2018, Daniela's brother Dario whom she is incredibly close with, was already established as one of the first employees at OpenAI. With Greg Brockman having moved to become OpenAI's CTO, Daniela also joined the team as an engineering manager. She was quickly promoted to Vice President of Safety and Policy putting her right at the intersection of AI development and the ethical considerations that come with it.
However, as the company's focus shifted more toward commercialization and away from the original nonprofit and open sharing model, concerns about prioritizing safety began to bubble up among some team members. So in 2021, Daniela and her brother, along with five other OpenAI colleagues, opted to leave and launch Anthropic.
The founding team of 7 ex-OpenAI employees established Anthropic as a PBC or Public Benefit Corporation meaning, the company must legally consider social impact alongside profits. They've gone even further with "The Long-Term Benefit Trust," a panel of five experts who have zero financial interest in the company with the power to oversee and potentially remove executive board members.
Safety sits at the core of Anthropic. In many interviews Daniela references the fact that they have taken a number of learnings from studying the research on the impacts social media has had on society. Both the good and the bad. As a result, they have pioneered the concept of "Constitutional AI," which uses a written constitution rather than subjective human feedback to instill values and limitations in its models. This constitution draws from diverse sources including the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, surprisingly, Apple's terms of service.
In 2023 Daniela and her brother Dario were named among Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in AI. For a technology with such profound implications for humanity's future, having a humanist at the helm might just be humanity’s saving grace.
📣 #TheRant
Are we setting female founders up to fail?
I absolutely love the rise in awareness and conversation about the gender investment gap and the lack of VC funding flowing to female founders. This is a core component of my business and what we do at Unstoppable.
As many will be painfully aware, only 2% of venture capital goes to all-female founding teams. The number has been frustratingly stagnan and sadly even regressing backwards. And yes, bias in the system is undeniable.
But in all the rightful outrage and sharing of the statistics, there’s one component missing from the conversation — and personally I think it’s a critical one:
If we’re going to talk about the lack of VC funding going to female founders, we also need to talk about what it means to be a VC-backable business.
Without providing this context, we run the risk of unintentionally pushing ambitious, capable female founders down a path that might not be right for them or their businesses.
Despite what many may think, venture capital is not a badge of honor. It’s a funding model designed for a very specific type of company. One that is being built to scale fast, raise multiple rounds, hit target milestones quickly and return 10x+ to investors within 7–10 years. That means you need to have a massive market opportunity ($1B+ global market), a unique tech offering or operational leverage and a clear path to an exit.
But if founders aren’t given that context:
They start believing they have to raise VC to succeed
They spend months building decks, cold emailing investors, and chasing intros
They get frustrated, exhausted, and disillusioned when the doors don’t open
They internalize the rejection as a personal or systemic failure
When in reality, it may have simply been misalignment, not bias that has caused them to struggle to raise.
This is how a well-intentioned narrative meant to drive change ends up doing more harm than good, by not equipping founders with the knowledge to assess the funding fit before they start chasing VC.
YES! Let’s absolutely continue talking about and working to solve the gender funding gap. We have to hold the system accountable. But we also need to empower female founders with clarity and education about funding their businesses.
Specifically:
What it actually means to be VC-backable
So founders can self-assess and decide if it fits their business and vision.What alternative funding options exist
So they know VC is one path, but not the only one.
It’s not enough to say, “Only 2% of VC funding goes to women.” We also need to follow up with the knowledge and education about how VC funds are constructed, how they function and assessing if your startup is VC backable to begin with.
Without this, we risk unintentionally pushing women toward a funding model that may not serve their business or their goals and then framing their rejection as systemic failure rather than potential misalignment.
💰#HypeCorner
This is where we cover funding rounds raised by female founders and their teams across Europe. With less than 2% of VC funding going to female led startups, the HypeCorner is simply our way of congratulating and celebrating these founders!
🇦🇹 Patricia Klimek Co-founder of Willow
🇱🇹 Gerda Oškeliūnė Co-founder & CMO of Commody
🇵🇱 Klaudia Szklarczyk-Smolana Co-founder & CEO of Intelliseq
🇳🇱 Gabriella Gomes Branco Founder of Maps Untold
🇬🇧 Katya Lait Co-founder & CTO of nettle
🇬🇧George Fairhall Founder of WAC
🇫🇷 Marion Aubert Co-founder & Chief International Officer of WeeFin
🇫🇷 Emmanuelle Martiano Rolland Co-founder & COO of AQEMIA
🇫🇷 Laure Betsch & Camille Le Gal Co-founders of FAIRLY MADE
🇫🇷 Lou DANA Co-founder of Grâce
🇬🇧 Georgie Steele Co-founder & CTO of Maiven
Huge congratulations to these founders and their teams. Wishing you all continued success!
🎤 Events for founders
🇲🇹 {Malta} April 24-25 EU Startup Summit showcasing many of Europe’s hottest startups, coming together to learn from some of the most successful European entrepreneurs of our time.
🇦🇹 {Vienna} FFX {formerlyLTST25} hosted by Female Founders is back May 8th & 9th and this years theme is ‘The Real Deal for Founders’ Early bird tickets on sale now! Grab your tickets now!
🇬🇧 {London} SXSW lands in London June 2nd - 7th taking over the city merging creativity, culture and technology. SXSW London are now taking applications for musicians, film makers and speakers!
🇪🇸 {Madrid} South Summit Madrid - June 4th - 6th brings together global innovators, bold entrepreneurs, leading corporations, and visionary investors. Early bird tickets now available.
🇫🇷 {Paris} VivaTech - June 11-14th- is the world's rendezvous for startups and leaders to celebrate innovation. It's a gathering of the world's brightest minds, talents, and products.
🇳🇱 {Amsterdam} European Women in Technology is a must for your calendar, happening June 25th & 26th. 5,000+ women in tech, diversity advocates, allies and change makers for Leading the Digital Revolution!
🇬🇧 {London} Sifted Summit is back 8th & 9th of October, bringing together 3,000 founders, startup and scaleup operators and investors to celebrate the resilience of the ecosystem and how its leading players are preparing for the long-haul.
🇫🇷 {Paris} UnlockVC (formerly WVCE) is hosting its annual Summit from the 13th - 15th of October. This event brings together ambitious investors, trailblazing thought leaders, and industry pioneers for two impactful days of networking, learning, and growth.
Thanks again for subscribing to the Unstoppable Founders newsletter. As a thank you, I’m offering readers the opportunity to become a Founding Member of the Unstoppable Founders Community Hub. - only 100 memberships available! This hub is exclusively curated for female founders building high growth startups; investor database, workshops, resources, investment tools and more!
☀️ Have a wonderful weekend! ☀️
Jen