Women-founded companies have been historically underfunded. According to a Crunchbase report released earlier this year, only three percent of invested dollars went to women-only companies in 2010, and the percentage remained the same in 2019. 

In response to this funding situation and recent events, Princeton Entrepreneurship Council launched an initiative to support more underserved and underfunded populations in entrepreneurship. To lead this initiative, PEC partnered with the Princeton Women’s Network to hold the Princeton Women Founders Startup Showcase on July 30th.

After an overwhelming response to the call for applications, 20 companies made the shortlist for the inaugural women-focused event. From this shortlist, six companies presented at the Startup Showcase in front of close to 300 highly engaged attendees online. 

The theme of “feeling great” arose from the selected startups, in order of appearance:

Feeling great through eating great healthy food: Latin Goodness Foods (a.k.a. Mas Panadas), is a “real food to fuel life in the fast lane” company founded by Margarita Womack *09.

Feeling great through monitoring physical health: PyrAmes (founded by Xina Quan *86) produces wearable blood pressure monitoring devices that are non-invasive, continuous, comfortable, wireless and easy-to-use, to enable timely personalized information for neonates and patients of all ages. 

Feeling great through buying clothes that fit great: BODS (founded by Christine Marzano ’07) uses real-time gaming technology combined with AI to enable effortless creation of accurate, customer avatars and high-quality fit visualization for personalized, sustainable, interactive e-commerce shopping. 

Feeling great through peace of mind with our beloved pets: Fursure is a pet insurance broker (founded by Catherine Dennig ’15).

Feeling great through fast, straightforward student loans: Funding U (founded by Jeannie Tarkenton ’92) levels the playing field for Gen Z consumers who need access to education loans and other credit products.

Feeling great through promising cancer treatments: Concarlo Holdings is a precision medicine company developing diagnostics and therapeutics to transform outcomes for drug resistant cancers (founded by Stacy Blain ’89).

After enthusiastic audience questions in the Q&A section and investing of fictional “TigerBucks” via the Pre app, Fursure received the highest TigerBucks investment. 

Looking ahead: Princeton Entrepreneurship Council, along with the Association of Black Princeton Alumni, the Association of Latino Princeton Alumni, and Princeton Alumni Angels, is holding the Princeton Underrepresented Minority Founders Startup Showcase on September 10th via Zoom. Applications from Princeton underrepresented minority founded or led companies are being accepted until Sunday, August 16th.