The Seed 40: The best women early-stage investors of 2026

Some of tech's most powerful companies began as risky early bets. For decades, the venture capital that helped turn young startups into giants flowed through networks that largely excluded women. The investors on this year's Seed 40 are changing who gets to shape the future of tech.

Business Insider's sixth annual Seed 40 spotlights the women who have proven they can spot breakout founders before the rest of the market catches on — and help steer those fledgling businesses toward becoming market leaders.

The Seed 40 is a companion to Business Insider's Seed 100, which identifies the most successful early-stage investors. But because venture capital has historically been shaped by who you know, not just what you know, the Seed 100 also reflects the industry's lingering lack of gender diversity. Many women investors are still building the length and depth of track record required to be captured by our data model.

That is why we also publish the Seed 40. It uses the same ranking and methodology as the Seed 100, and gives fuller recognition to the women whose early bets have helped shape the startup ecosystem — even as they remain underrepresented in venture capital's highest ranks.

This list is compiled using data analysis by Termina, a Tribe Capital spinoff that builds software for quantitative diligence. Read the full methodology behind the list.

1. Shan-Lyn Ma

Cofounder and co-CEO, Zola

Select investments: Deliverr, Flow Commerce, Billie, Archive, Nara Organics, Vic.ai

City: New York

Cofounder of wedding planning company Zola, Shan-Lyn Ma started her career at Yahoo and is an active angel investor. She's backed several successful DTC startups, like trendy razor brand Billie and infant milk formula brand Nara Organics.

"I've had the privilege of investing in many companies with compelling business models and growth trajectories, but it's less common for me to invest in a consumer product I've personally relied on," Ma told Business Insider.

Nara Organics, however, became a product she used regularly while feeding her son, she said.

Her e-commerce investments include Deliverr, acquired by Shopify in 2022 and then sold to Flexport in 2023, and Flow Commerce, sold to Global-e in 2021.

2. Ann Miura-Ko

Cofounding partner, Floodgate

Select investments: Merlin Labs, SmarterDX, Hebbia, Thinkful, Studio, Emotive

City: Menlo Park, California

Miura-Ko has built a reputation as one of the most influential early-stage investors in Silicon Valley by backing companies long before they become household names. As a cofounding partner at Floodgate, she has made prescient bets on category-defining startups like Lyft, Twitter, Twitch, and Okta. often spotting potential where others saw risk.

A Stanford Ph.D. and longtime lecturer, Miura-Ko combines deep technical expertise with a founder-first mindset, helping entrepreneurs think through not just what to build, but why it matters. Her recent investments reflect that same forward-looking approach. AI startups like Hebbia, which raised $130 million in 2024, are part of her growing portfolio

3. Lynne Chou O'Keefe

Founder and managing partner, Define Ventures

Select investments: Evermore Health, Cohere Health, 9amHealth, GXL, Liza Health, Marit, San Luca

City: San Francisco

Since founding Define Ventures in 2018, O'Keefe has set her sights on funding early-stage health startups that can have a real impact on the world.

O'Keefe, who started her career as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, told Business Insider that in the past year, Define has worked closely with portfolio company Evermore Health — which the VC firm has backed since its inception — by introducing several strategic customers and sourcing technical talent, including the medtech startup's CTO.

Now, she focuses on championing early-stage health startups working on the most innovative and life-changing medical technologies.

4. Ann DeWitt

General partner, Engine Ventures

Select investments: Terrestrial Bio, Cellino Bio, Matrisome, Bexorg, and Predicta Biosciences

City: Cambridge, Massachusetts

At Engine Ventures, Ann DeWitt helps start and build new biotech companies.

She's worked closely with Predicta Biosciences, which is developing a blood test to help doctors better treat blood cancers — without the need for painful bone marrow biopsies. She worked with the academic founders to bring in a CEO, raise $23.4 million, and get the company off the ground. She's still closely involved as it grows.

5. Yun-Fang Juan

General partner, Brighter Capital

Select investments: Infracost, Empowerly, Creatify, Chowdeck, Expo

City: Cupertino, California

Before founding VC firm Brighter Capital, Juan's career covered a lot of ground, from working as a tech lead in the early days of Facebook to opening a robotic dumpling shop.

At Brighter, Juan has proven to be a prolific seed investor, with successful early bets including Reddit, Envoy, and Matterport. She told Business Insider that one of the most memorable investments she's worked on recently was AI marketing firm Creatify, which Juan invested in back in 2023. "They move and grow incredibly fast," she said.

6. Ling Wong

Founder, CEO, and managing partner, Highbury Group

Select investments: Devoted Health, Guardant Health, Stripe, Orca Bio

City: Seattle

Wong, the inventor of the first inhaled tuberculosis vaccine, is an entrepreneur and science-focused investor backing companies across healthcare and biotechnology. After earning her PhD from Harvard, she worked at the Gates Foundation, managing a $1.5 billion investment portfolio, before founding Highbury Group in 2013.

Wong also served as a senior advisor to Lightspeed Venture Partners between 2019 and 2023.

As an investor, she's been involved in several multibillion-dollar exits, including Anacor Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Pfizer) and the public companies Guardant Health and Singular Genomics.

7. Sarra Zayani

Investor, Hedosophia

Select investments: Embed, Pacaso, TaxBit, Savvy Wealth, Pivot, Metal Gear

City: Paris

After four years at Global Founders Capital, Sarra Zayani joined Hedosophia in 2023 to lead its early-stage investing team.

Zayani also worked at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, focusing on private equity and venture capital.

"At the earliest stages, I look for speed of execution and iteration," she told Business Insider. "Those traits reveal founders who adapt fast, endure setbacks, and uncover what comes next."

8. Aileen Lee

Founder and managing partner, Cowboy Ventures

Select investments: Guild, Drata, Mutiny, Basata, Eisen, Standard Kernel

City: Palo Alto, California

It's been over a decade since Lee coined the term "unicorn" to describe startups worth over $1 billion. She left Kleiner Perkins in 2012 to start her own firm, Cowboy Ventures, to invest in pre-seed to later-stage startups. Since then, a few of Lee's notable exits include Dollar Shave Club, which sold to Unilever for $1 billion in 2019, and Trendyol, which Alibaba acquired for almost $750 million in 2018.

"We look for founders who are 'learning animals,' who have an incredible propensity to gather, synthesize, and grow with new information, and who love to think through possibilities, combined with an incredible velocity of execution," Lee told Business Insider.

9. Joanne Chen

General partner, Foundation Capital

Select investments: Tennr, Fulcrum, Jasper, SafelyYou, Tonkean, Tubi

City: San Francisco

Chen learned to program early and created her first website for a client at age nine. She began her career as an engineer at Cisco and later worked on Wall Street, advising companies on IPOs, M&A, and fundraising.

Chen was an angel investor for 2 years at Hyde Park Angels before joining Foundation in 2014, which focuses on AI and blockchain startups. She said a memorable deal was leading Tennr's seed round when it had no revenue or customers, and working closely with the team on early hiring and customer focus. Today, the AI healthcare company has moved through Series A, B, and C rounds in quick succession.

Chen told Business Insider she uses AI to prep for panels, repurpose content across different formats, and to quickly get up to speed on founders.

10. Laura Rippy

Managing partner and board member, Alumni Ventures

Select investments: Aurora Insight, Alix, Datanomix, Astro Mechanica

City: Boston

Rippy has become a key connector in venture capital's school-driven investing ecosystem. Based in Boston, she has built a network of founders and investors tied to top universities, channeling that access into two student- and alumni-focused funds: Green D at Dartmouth and Yard Ventures at Harvard.

She also serves as managing partner at Alumni Ventures, one of the world's most active VC firms, with over 1,500 portfolio companies. Prior to joining Alumni Ventures in 2017, Rippy spent 14 years at the private family office Ripplecreek Partners.

11. Sarah Smith

General partner, Sarah Smith Fund

Select investments: Rork, Mirai, F2, Rowspace, Bandana, Unreal Labs

City: Menlo Park, California

For sole general partner Smith, securing genuinely differentiated deal flow doesn't always rely on cold pitches or warm introductions — it comes directly from the next generation of venture talent she trains herself.

Smith's edge as an investor is her highly selective Stanford Graduate School of Business Venture Fellowship. She brings three MBA students into her firm, connects them to her network of GPs and LPS, and arms them with $50,000 of capital to deploy. It's paid off big time when a cohort of fellows sourced and led an investment in Unreal Labs, which heavyweights Sequoia and First Round invested in just a week after Smith's initial investment. Past fund fellows have become partners at A16Z, Redpoint, Menlo Ventures, and Amplify.

"The fellowship is a unique way for me to give back to Stanford and punch above my weight as a solo GP," she said.

12. Oana Olteanu

Managing director, Motive Force

Select investments: Poolside, MaintainX, Inngest, HealthLeap

City: San Francisco

Olteanu recently left SignalFire to launch her own firm, Motive Force, where she's investing in AI-native startups with a focus on technical founders.

One company she highlighted is Soffi, which aims to bring "beautiful software" to large businesses. Her portfolio also includes AI coding startup Poolside and equipment maintenance startup MaintainX, both of which have reached multibillion-dollar valuations.

As a sole general partner, Olteanu is leaning heavily on AI to scale herself up. She's built a team of agents that support everything from sourcing to hiring, including a tool that scours technical blogs to find talent for her portfolio companies.

13. Naomi Ionita

Board director, investor, and advisor

Select investments: Listen Labs, Flora, Nuance Labs, Mastra, Orb, Fleetsmith

City: San Francisco

Ionita is willing to go the extra mile to secure a competitive deal — even if it means hiking up San Francisco's hills at 35 weeks pregnant to pitch an entrepreneur. That's part of how she locked down an investment in Endgame, a startup building tools for revenue teams.

Ionita focuses on infrastructure and applications, with a special interest in products helping companies rethink how to work in an AI-native world. Her sharp eye for software has yielded exits, including Fleetsmith, which Apple bought in 2020, and Eppo, which Datadog acquired last year.

Before she was a venture capitalist, Ionita spent years leading teams focused on growing and keeping users, as well as monetizing products, at Invoice2Go and Evernote.

14. Mathilde Collin

Cofounder and executive chair, Front

Select investments: Mercury, Speak, Retool, Vanta, Meter, Dust, Postscript, Mutiny

City: San Francisco

Colllin cofounded Front, a customer service platform startup, in 2013 after working as a project manager at another startup. Since stepping down as CEO in 2024, she's been investing in various startups, including the fintech banking startup Mercury and the tool-building platform Retool.

She's also a visiting partner at Y Combinator and is building a nonprofit called KORA, a site that measures AI benchmarks for child safety.

15. Stephanie Palmeri

Partner, NextView Ventures

Select investments: SchoolAI, Poshmark, Wrapbook, Hallow, Carrot Fertility

City: San Francisco

NextView Ventures partner Palmeri invests in founders using AI to reshape how people live, work, and learn. She's been building a portfolio of AI-native companies to bet on early before the rest of the market catches up. She invested in SchoolAI - one of her first investments at the firm. Last year, she guided it through its Series A funding led by Insight Partners.

Previously, Palmeri spent a decade as a partner at Uncork Capital, where she made seed investments in Poshmark, Clever, Chariot, and ClassDojo. Before venture investing, Palmeri held roles at Accenture and Estée Lauder.

16. Shruti Gandhi

General partner, Array Ventures

Select investments: Placer.ai, Rad AI, Openprise, Simility, Solugen, Zimperium

City: San Francisco

In under a decade, Gandhi went from investor to solo capitalist with three funds closed and another on the way, regulatory filings show. She noted that her last fund included checks from more than half of the entrepreneurs in her portfolio, a sign of the trust she has earned.

A former startup founder herself, Gandhi launched Array Ventures in 2016 because she saw a need for more investors willing to roll up their sleeves at the seed stage. Today, she lends her expertise to help technical founders close early sales and craft their go-to-market strategies.

17. Sara Deshpande

General partner, Maven Ventures

Select investments: Hello Heart, Carrot Fertility, Perplexity, Gondola AI

City: Palo Alto, California

Now at Maven for over a decade and the first employee at the seed-stage firm, Deshpande has a knack for spotting early-stage consumer tech startups.

She has led Maven's investments into digital health companies like Hello Heart and Carrot Fertility. She's also guided the firm's investments into AI startups like Perplexity and Gondola AI.

"I'm particularly excited about really novel and unique ideas right now that can reach millions of customers and have a dramatic positive impact on their lives," she told Business Insider.

Deshpande also teaches a startups course at Stanford's business school.

18. Julia Hartz

Cofounder, Eventbrite

Select investments: Felt, mmhmm, Doppler, Socket, Nooks

City: San Francisco

Julia Hartz, the former CEO and cofounder of Eventbrite, has entered a new chapter after stepping down earlier this year and overseeing the company's $500 million sale to Bending Spoons.

Alongside founding and leading Eventbrite, Hartz has angel invested, backing startups like Socket, which secures open-source software, and Nooks, an autonomous sales assistant platform. Before building Eventbrite into a global ticketing powerhouse, Hartz worked in television development at MTV and FX.

19. Anne Dwane

Cofounder and general partner, Village Global

Select investments: Apex Space, Fal, Hadrian

City: San Francisco

Dwane cofounded Village Global in 2017. Prior to that, she worked at GSV Acceleration Fund and was chief business officer at Chegg.

Village Global invests at inception. It has introduced its portfolio companies, such as Apex Space, Fal, and Hadrian, to other founders for enterprise sales and direct investment. Dwane said that seeing these founders engage is "electric."

Before Village Global, Dwane cofounded the veteran-focused news site Military.com and later served as the CEO of Zinch, a university-recruitment startup acquired by the edtech company Chegg in 2011.

20. Kirsten Green

Founder, Forerunner

Select investments: Chime, Faire, Hims&Hers, Decagon, Wabi, Depthfirst, Basic Capital

City: San Francisco

She founded Forerunner in 2012 after launching a career in finance and private equity. Forerunner invested in Chime's seed round in 2013 — the fintech company went public in 2025. Her wins include Chime, Hims&Hers, and Warby Parker.

Green spearheaded Forerunner's now-annual consumer AI "Humans in the Loop" conference, where hot AI startups present their emerging tech to investors.

21. Brianne Kimmel

Founder, Worklife Ventures

Select investments: Deel, Supabase, Hightouch, WorkOS, and Metronome

City: San Francisco

Brianne Kimmel has built Worklife Ventures into a fund known for backing technical founders early. Over the past year, one of her earliest bets, Metronome, became her first $1 billion outcome, reinforcing her focus on investing in infrastructure for the AI economy. Kimmel looks for founders who think outside the bubble.

"When I founded Worklife in 2019 to make work more creative, flexible, and human, I wanted to build a future where anyone could be a founder," she told Business Insider. "We partner with deep technologists who want to build intuitive products that become a part of mainstream culture."

22. Caterina Fake

Founder, Worklife Ventures

Select investments: Deel, Supabase, Hightouch, WorkOS, and Metronome

City: San Francisco

A serial entrepreneur, Caterina Fake, co-founded social photo-sharing site Flickr, which was acquired by Yahoo in 2005. Today, she invests through Yes VC, backing companies at the intersection of climate, AI, health and longevity, energy, and defense. Her portfolio includes successes like Etsy, Cloudera, Oura, and Adept.

In 2024, Fake was also recognized by venture firm TRAC as a "SuperForecaster," a distinction for investors with an exceptional ability to spot breakout companies early. She emphasizes that identifying future unicorns — combined with strong networks and access — is essential for top-tier venture investing.

23. Jana Messerschmidt

Founding partner, #Angels

Select investments: Anchorage, Argentio, Carta, Vanta, Ashby, Persona, Lovevery

City: San Francisco

Before becoming a venture capitalist, Messerschmidt worked in tech at companies including Netflix and Twitter, now X, where she spent six years as its vice president of global business development and platform. A few years after leaving Twitter, she joined Lightspeed Venture Partners as a partner.

Messerschmidt also founded #Angels in 2015 with other former female tech execs to close the gender gap among investors and founders. She bets on entrepreneurs from the get-go and her investments include private capital platform Carta and recruiting software maker Ashby.

24. Julie Lein

Managing partner, Urban Innovation Fund

Select investments: Jeeves, Ethic, Electriphi, Variance & Sent

City: San Francisco

As managing partner of Urban Innovation Fund, Lein invests in startups that aim to transform large, regulated industries like energy, government, transportation, and fintech. The fund manages $300 million in assets and has invested in over 70 seed-stage startups since 2016.

Lein wrote a large check for Ethic's seed round, a sustainable, tech-enabled asset manager, and also helped it make several customer introductions. Recently, Ethic raised a Series D round led by State Street.

Lein says the firm only invests in startups "looking to make the world a better place" by overhauling massive, regulated industries. It also uses AI tools to work with "regulatory tailwinds" to inform deal sourcing. For example, she says an AI-powered research project led directly to its investment in Mogul, which is building a system of record for royalties.

25. Anna Palmer

Cofounder and general partner, XFactor Ventures; venture partner, Flybridge Capital

Select investments: Boston Legacy FC, Women's Professional Baseball League, Chief, Mixlab, Intramotev

City: Boston

Palmer specializes in backing women founders at the seed stage, and cofounded XFactor Ventures in 2016 with support from Flybridge Capital, where she is also a venture partner.

Palmer is also a founder and managing partner of Boston Legacy FC, a team in the National Women's Soccer League. She told Business Insider that after sourcing the opportunity in 2022 and collaborating with the lead investor and the team on hiring, marketing, real estate, and fundraising, Boston Legacy FC kicked off its season to 30,000 fans in March.

Prior to investing, Palmer was the cofounder and CEO of Dough Collective, a marketplace for women and diverse makers that was acquired by Ivy Market Collective (IMC) in 2021.

26. Lan Xuezhao

Founder and managing partner, Basis Set

Select investments: Quince, Scale, Sakana, OpenArt, Tigris Data

City: San Francisco

Xuezhao began investing in AI long before it became the hottest sector in the tech world. The former Dropbox executive was one of the earliest investors in Scale AI, the AI training platform that received a $14 billion investment from Meta last summer.

Xuezhao told Business Insider that Basic Set, the venture fund she founded in 2017, was constantly building with AI. The fund even has an AI partner named Pascal, whose bio sits alongside Xuezhao's on Basic Set's website.

27. Alexa von Tobel

Founder and managing partner, Inspired Capital

Select investments: BrightAI, Good Inside, Suno, Duckbill, ShopMy, Solace Health, Teamshares, Habi

City: New York

After founding fintech company LearnVest and exiting with an almost $400 million acquisition in 2015, von Tobel later launched Inspired Capital in 2019.

She led Inspired's investment in BrightAI, a physical AI infrastructure startup, in 2025. The AI company raised a $51 million Series A round co-led by Inspired and Khosla Ventures.

"The investment is a direct expression of a thesis I've been building around Physical AI," she told Business Insider. "The most consequential AI applications of this decade will live not just in software, but in the physical world. Power grids, water systems, and industrial infrastructure represent some of the largest underleveraged data opportunities."

28. Steph Korey Goodwin

Cofounder, Charmspring

Select investments: Allara, Create Wellness, Veracity, Lovevery, WellTheory, Devotion

City: New York

Korey Goodwin, the cofounder of luggage brand Away, is one of the few women to build a venture-backed startup valued at more than $1 billion. Since stepping down as chief executive, she has used her influence to back and elevate a new generation of founders, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds. Her investments include WellTheory, an autoimmune care company that recently raised a $14 million Series A round led by General Catalyst.

Her latest company, Charmspring, makes a visual routine board designed to help children anticipate what comes next and build age-appropriate skills.

29. Jen Rubio

Entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist

Select investments: Kalshi, Liquid Death, Ramp, Sanzo, ShopMy

City: New York

Rubio is a rare entrepreneur who can traverse the cultural zeitgeist, moving easily between tech, politics, and the art world, where she's made a name for herself as a collector and philanthropist.

Since stepping back as executive chair of Away, the luggage brand she cofounded, she's turned her operating prowess toward mentoring founders. Her past investments include Liquid Death, the canned water brand last valued at $1.4 billion, and the $32 billion fintech darling Ramp.

30. Mar Hershenson

Founding managing partner, Pear VC

Select investments: DoorDash, Vanta, Quadric, Cardless, BioAge, Federato, Vals AI, Bobyard

City: San Francisco and Menlo Park, California

Hershenson, who is originally from Spain, earned her PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford and cofounded three startups over 13 years in mobile commerce, enterprise software, and semiconductors. She brings operational and technical expertise to Pear VC, the early-stage firm she cofounded in 2013.

Hershenson told Business Insider that one company she's spent a lot of time on recently is the legal AI startup August, which she first met through PearX, the firm's pre-seed program, and which has now grown its customer base across five continents.

31. Lu Zhang

Founder and managing partner, Fusion Fund

Select investments: You.com, Otter.ai, GrubMarket, vCluster, Wand AI

City: Palo Alto, California

Zhang invests at the earliest stages across AI and deep tech. One recent highlight is Eridu, which builds next-generation networking technology for data centers. She worked closely with founder Drew Perkins on shaping the idea, market, and early product — and the company emerged from stealth this year with an oversubscribed Series A of over $200 million.

32. Nisha Dua

Cofounder and managing partner, BBG Ventures

Select investments: Spring Health, Starface, SuperCircle, HopskipDrive, Nara Organics, Peak Health

City: New York

After stints at law firm Blake Dawson, Bain, and AOL, where she ran strategy across 13 brands, Dua cofounded BBGV with Susan Lyne in 2014.

Now deploying BBGV's fourth fund, Dua has backed breakout companies including Spring Health, Zola, Starface, HopSkipDrive, Topline Pro, Supercircle, and Canela Media.

She also founded BUILT BY GIRLS, connecting more than 20,000 young women with tech professionals.

33. Heather Redman

Cofounder and managing partner, Flying Fish Ventures

Select investments: MightySignal, Boltive, Reclaim.ai, Picnic

City: Seattle

Redman began her career as an executive and general counsel at a series of digital and new media pioneers, including Getty Images and Atom Entertainment.

She cofounded Flying Fish Ventures, which invests in early-stage artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotics companies, in 2016, and the Seattle-based fund has gone on to invest in a string of AI-native startups, including Axiom, Simular, and Latent Labs.

Redman also serves as a board member for the Seattle branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and as a part-time advisor to the University of Washington College of Engineering.

34. Rudina Seseri

Founder and managing partner, Glasswing Ventures

Select investments: Basetwo, Iris Finance, Reprise, Ship Angel, Verusen

City: Boston

Long before ChatGPT became a household name, Seseri was backing machine-learning startups on the conviction that data-hungry startups would shape the next era of software.

The Glasswing Ventures cofounder has built a record of spotting founders poised to upend industries from enterprise security to computing. More recently, the firm has notched a pair of significant exits: Snowflake acquired the data-engineering company TensorStax in February, and Google bought the image-generation startup Common Sense Machines in January.

In November, Seseri announced the close of over $200 million in capital commitments for Glasswing's third fund, its largest to date.

35. Ruth Foxe Blader

Managing partner, Citrine Venture Partners

Select investments: Lemonade, Kaiko, Burnbot, RockRose Risk, Starmoire

City: New York

Foxe Blader has spent decades working in tech, both building companies and investing in them. She co-founded a new fund, Citrine, earlier this year, which focuses on fintech and AI. She also recently co-founded and invested in two startups — RockRose Risk, an AI-powered insurance broker, and Starmoire, an AI fashion resale marketplace.

She likes to get hands-on with portfolio companies: helping Starmoire explore using AI robots for their warehouse operations.

36. Ellen Levy

Founding managing director, Silicon Valley Connect

Select investments: Cache Financials, Soxton, Manas AI, Mercy Bioanalytics, Credo.ai, Blockstream, Its Electric

City: Menlo Park, California

Once dubbed the most connected woman in Silicon Valley, Levy facilitates relationship building between the San Francisco tech community and the rest of the world.

In addition to holding that position since 2007, Levy has made angel investments in dozens of startups in AI, automation, and biotech. She started her career in the corporate world and has completed stints at PwC, Apple, Stanford University, and LinkedIn, where she was vice president of strategic initiatives.

37. Varsha Rao

Angel investor

Select investments: Grow Therapy, Commure, MatX, Sanas AI, Observo, Qualified Health, TextQL

City: San Francisco

Rao's career has seen her work as a founder, CEO, and executive. She founded e-commerce site Eve.com in the late 1990s, worked as Airbnb's Head of Global Operations from 2013 to 2016, and most recently was CEO of telehealth platform Nurx, which was acquired by Thirty Madison in 2022.

Now an angel investor and part-time executive partner at Flare Capital Partners, Rao is focused on identifying the most promising early-stage consumer tech and healthcare startups. She told Business Insider that the most memorable company she had supported in the past year was TextQL, an agentic data platform, helping them expand into the healthcare sector.

38. Julia Lipton

Founder and managing partner, Awesome People Ventures

Select investments: Function Health, OneBrief, Writer, Nooks, Ambience

City: Austin

Lipton's early-stage fund, Awesome People Ventures, invests in AI, healthtech, wellness, and software companies. The fund has an impressive roster of investors in its fund, including Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon.

One of Lipton's bets, AI medical scribe startup Ambience raised over $200 million in funding in 2025 at a $1.25 billion valuation.

She previously founded Soundboard, a consulting firm for Silicon Valley CEOs, and also held growth and product roles at OneMedical and Quixey.

39. Lily Lyman

Managing partner, Underscore VC

Select investments: BusRight, Goldcast, Herald, Hi Marley, Slang.ai, Tetrascience

City: Boston

Lyman has become one of the Boston investors founders most want in their corner. She's known for rolling up her sleeves to help portfolio companies recruit top executives and raise later funding. Her super-connector status has even earned her a nickname: the Kevin Bacon of tech, for her seeming six degrees of separation from just about everyone in the industry.

Lyman made early bets on Goldcast, a content-creation company that was recently acquired by Cvent for $300 million, and Slang.ai, a developer of virtual phone agents. In February, that company announced a $36 million Series B funding round led by US Venture Partners.

40. Janet Bannister

Founder and managing partner, Staircase Ventures

Select investments: Biossil, Fillip Fleet, Una

City: Toronto

Bannister founded Staircase Ventures in 2023 as a firm focused on backing Canadian early-stage startups. She was a managing partner at Real Ventures prior to founding Staircase.

Staircase was the first investor in Biossil, an AI biotech startup, and helped support the company in its earliest stages, Bannister told Business Insider. She connected the company with leaders at university hospitals and advanced discussions needed to secure Biossil's commercial rights to a vaccine platform, she added. After investing, the company went on to raise additional financing from Founders Fund and OpenAI.

In addition to capital, Staircase offers its seed-stage founders resources like CEO coaching, peer support groups, health and wellness resources, financial advisors, and a stipend to spend on family matters.