Women Founders: Celebrating Their Success

According to recently published research, startups with all-female founding teams raised just 2.2 percent of all venture capital in the first eight months of 2021, a lower share than any of the previous five calendar years, while teams with male and female founders raised 11.7 percent of the total^.1

Morgan Stanley’s Multicultural Innovation Lab is striving to change that. Since its inception in 2017, our in-house startup accelerator—which provides access to capital, curated content and powerful networks to early-stage technology and technology-enabled companies led by women and multicultural entrepreneurs—has had twelve women alums raise $1 million or more in venture capital, including Reham Fagiri, co-founder and CEO of AptDeco, an online platform that connects buyers and sellers of quality pre-owned furniture, and Lisa Skeete Tatum, founder and CEO of Landit, a personalized career-pathing platform aimed at increasing the success and engagement of women in the workplace.

It’s an achievement reached by only about 2,300 women in this country in 2019²—and only 289 Black and Latina women as of February of this year,³ nine of whom are represented in our $1M+ club. Here’s a bit more about a few of these remarkable women and their companies.