The Rise of the Female Hardware Entrepreneur

As the fundamentally important debate over women in technology and entrepreneurship rages on (most recently sparked by what Paul Graham said, or perhaps didn’t say), I’ve been intrigued by the comparatively higher proportion of women who seem to be starting companies in one of my areas of predilection: hardware (broadly defined: open hardware, Internet of Things, wearable computing, 3D printing, etc.).

I don’t have much data here, other than my anecdotal personal experience, both as a VC and as the organizer of Hardwired NYC. But, without having to rack my brain for more than a minute or two, a bunch of names of great female founders and/or CEOs in the general hardware space comes up, including, in no particular order:

  • Limor Fried, founder, Adafruit
  • Ayah Bdeir, founder and CEO, littlebits (who spoke at Hardwired NYC last November)
  • Amanda Peyton, co-founder and CEO, Grand St (see her talk at Hardwired NYC here)
  • Jenny Lawton, President, Makerbot (see her talk at Hardwired NYC here)
  • Kegan Schowenburg, co-founder and CEO, Sols (speaking at Hardwired NYC next week)
  • Helen Zelman, co-founder, Lemnos Labs
  • Cheryl Kellond, co-founder and CEO, Bia
  • Monisha Perkash, co-founder and CEO, Lumo BodyTech
  • Daniela Perdomo, co-founder and CEO, GoTenna
  • Mary Huang, co-founder, Continuum Fashion
  • Meredith Perry, founder and CEO, uBeam
  • Julia Hu, founder and CEO, Lark
  • Debra Sterling, founder and CEO, GoldieBlox

And there are many more (both in the U.S and globally), which is exciting.

The question, of course, is why hardware would be an area of particular focus for female entrepreneurs. As a category, hardware is broad, lends itself to all sorts of products, and as a result feels pretty gender-neutral.

Could it be that there are more female role models in hardware, since it is often said that role models are particularly important to female entrepreneurs ? It doesn’t appear that way. Sure, women have run some of the biggest hardware companies in the world (Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman at HP; Ursual Burns at Xerox) but it’s unclear how much of an inspiration they would be to early stage tech entrepreneurs, and more importantly, a number of software or internet companies have been run by women as well. Perhaps more relevant are female entrepreneurs like Limor Fried, who under her “Lady Ada” moniker has become the closest equivalent to a celebrity in the hardware alpha geek world (and beyond, through her appearance on the cover of Wired in 2011).

What’s interesting is that hardware lends itself particularly well to new entrants – there’s been a big gap in innovation in hardware in the last 10 or 15 years (with some notable exceptions like Apple), and as a result there’s a “missing generation”, and plenty of opportunities for new entrepreneurs to become leaders in what, in some ways, feels like a brand new field.

Curious if anyone can think of an explanation?

Regardless, and to the extent this is indeed a trend, it is particularly exciting and promising, and we should collectively think about how to accelerate it and extend it to other areas of tech entrepreneurship.

*****

UPDATE:

Got some great feedback on Twitter, and while my initial goal was not to be comprehensive here, thought it could actually be helpful to start a running list of female hardware founders  – perhaps it can become a good resource.   Here are the people that were recommended to me, who else should I add? (please add in comments)

First Name Last Name Company Location
Jeri Ellsworth Technical Illusions Bellevue, WA
Kati Bicknell Kindara Boulder, CO
Mary Turner AlertMe Cambridge, UK
Liz Salcedo Everpurse Chicago, IL
Anastasia Leng Hatch New York, NY
Christina Mercando Ringly New York, NY
Ezster Ozsvald Notch New York, NY
Gauri Nanda Toymail New York, NY
Lisa Fetterman Nomiku San Francisco, CA
Laura Berman Melon Santa Monica, CA
Amanda Williams Fabule Fabrications Montreal, Canada
Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino Good Night Lamp London, UK
Alice Taylor MakieLab London, UK
Natasha Carolan MakieLab London, UK
Becky Pilditch Bare Conductive London, UK
Becky Stewart Codasign London, UK
Bethany Koby TechnologyWillSaveUs London, UK
Emily Brooke Blaze London, UK
Jane ni Dhulchaoinfi Sugru London, UK
Jessi Baker Provenance London, UK
Ana Burica Teddy The Guardian Zagreb, Croatia
Mila Burger Loccie Zagreb, Croatia
Alicia Asin Libelium Zaragoza, Spain

8 thoughts on “The Rise of the Female Hardware Entrepreneur”

  1. You might find that there is a good mix of entrepreneur already in hardware already so no such “rise”. You may want to include: The founders of http://toymailco.com/ makielab.com / goodnightlamp.com (that’s me) / Alicia Asin, founder of MakieLab, Bethany Koby co-founder of Technology Will Save Us and others that appeared at the Tech City IWD I organised http://techcityiwd.com/showcase/
    You might also want to look at the program of last month’s Thingmonk conference http://redmonk.com/thingmonk/speakers/

  2. Nice list of female hardware entrepreneurs but was a little disappointed to see Jeri Ellsworth left off the list? She is perhaps even more famous, although perhaps not in the “startup world” as Limor Fried.

  3. Azadeh Jamalian at Tiggly should be on the list. Thanks for sharing. Definitely worth highlighting and celebrating

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