Understanding the Potential of Female Founders in Blockchain

The most diverse companies are now more likely than ever to outperform less diverse peers on profitability. Diversity wins and here are a few trending women in WEB3 leading the way.

The blockchain is inherently inclusive. “Permissionless” systems do not require middlemen or gatekeepers to grant access to their services. Decentralized finance (or DeFi) improves transparency and security in transactions and increases accessibility and equality for all who participate. This gives underrepresented communities a unique opportunity to circumvent established practices and forge their own way forward.

But even with increased access and participation, female-led companies pulled in less than 3% of venture capital funds in 2020 and a similar amount in 2021. Among the top crypto companies, only 4% have female founders. This flies in the face of proven data that more diverse teams are actually more profitable and effective.

The Harvard Business Review reported that women are now ahead of men in resilience, self-development, and initiative-taking. And anyone paying attention can see the massive impact women are having in the world of crypto.

A popular response to this type of research is that women would be hired more if they truly did make less and were more effective. But is that a logical response? Over 90% of startups fail and we’re struggling through an economic downturn globally and a massive slump in crypto. Most of the largest companies in the world are profit-seeking conglomerates that are poisoning the planet and the people on it. People don’t always make good decisions. Maybe it’s time to start listening to the data and thinking differently.

The Power of Community Building

One important advantage women have in Web3 is their ability to build communities. Blockchain technology not only supercharges the potential to build communities, but community building is essential to many projects in the industry.

For example, More Women in Crypto is a project that is based out of Tulum that creates a space for women to discuss innovative tools, technologies, and new profit and shared-ownership models enabled by blockchain tech.

This includes hands-on training for topics like trading and launching projects. They meet in person and on Zoom calls every week to help learn from each other, share information, and collaborate on projects. The founder Francesca Martina understands the importance of coming together and rebuilding traditional business culture fresh based on collaboration and shared values.

Female Leadership in the Era of Web3

There are plenty of examples of female leadership in Web3, beyond female-focused communities. FLUIDEFI, for example, is woman founded and women led. FLUIDEFI is a powerful platform that provides traders and financial institutions near real-time data aggregation & analytics, portfolio modeling, management, and trading signals for hundreds of thousands of decentralized financial (DeFi) digital assets.

Leading as CEO is Lisa Loud whose previous experience includes working at industry titans Apple, Oracle, and PayPal. FLUIDEFI’s Global Head of Marketing is Audrey Nesbitt, a passionate leader with over two decades of marketing experience, founder of a crypto marketing agency, restaurateur and a core member of the global, non-profit educational hub CryptoChicks.

"Whether you want to go all-in on DeFi or you're still sitting on the bench trying to decide whether it makes sense, you can't get past step one of that process without FLUIDEFI." Austin Hubbell, CEO Coinsilium Crypto

A young entrepreneur and new to the NFT scene is Nissrine Saidi, an electrical engineer and the founder of Green Mining NFT. Growing up in Morocco, she got to witness the effects of climate change on people’s livelihoods from an early age. She believes that the switch to sustainable energy could be the only way to protect the planet and sustain humanity.

Green Mining NFT aims to build a community that supports the cause and believes in the importance of practical solutions that go a long way. Green Mining will be mining crypto using electricity generated from solar energy in Africa and will grow to provide sustainable and affordable energy to African businesses and consumers. Nissrine sees Web3 as an opportunity to build a diverse and inclusive foundation and redefine the work culture that hasn’t always been in favor of women.

Another mover in the NFT space is Kay Chua Ginsburg. Kay was part of 3iQ’s executive team that IPO-ed the 1st Bitcoin Fund on Toronto Stock Exchange and also developed one of the first multi crypto-asset OM funds in 2017. Prior to this, she spent time as a trader for a $160M quantitative ETF portfolio.

Kay is now focused on blockchain and NFTs and is a co-founder of a venture called PERCS. The PERCS team is exploring the collision of brands (blue-chip or upcoming) & DeFi focusing on NFT minting, its use case, and leveraging its utility. Their long-term vision is to make NFTs useful, and in the interim, focus on bridging eCommerce and EVM-based NFTs. PERCS has done NFT drops for Anheuser Busch Inbev (Budweiser, Goose Island, D Wade), Robert Mondavi, and Superplastic, among others.

CryptoChicks started with two software engineers and friends Elena Sinelnikova and Natalia Ameline walking through the mazes of blockchain technology and deciding to help other women to navigate them.  Now it is an international non-profit with members, events, and chapters in 56 countries, helping thousands of women around the globe to learn and invest in blockchain and build new careers and businesses.

CryptoChicks in particular has been around since the infancy of Web3, working around the globe with governments and industry titans.

Leading the way for CryptoChicks is founder Elena Sinelnikova, a crypto entrepreneur based in Toronto. Sinelnikova has been involved in varying capacities at numerous blockchain and DeFi startups and has a passion for educating within the space.

Top Woman in Blockchain and NFT Pioneer Tracy Leparulo has been at the forefront of building communities for leading blockchain projects including Ethereum, Bitcoin, Polymath & Zytara since 2013.

Tracy has been contributing to the growth of the NFT ecosystem since its inception. In 2017 she organized Ethereum’s largest Hackathon ETH Waterloo, where Cryptokitties launched. As the founder of Untraceable Events and founder of the Blockchain Futurist Conference the largest and most high-profile blockchain & cryptocurrency event in Canada, Tracy is one of the earliest formidable women to enter the space. June of 2021, Tracy enjoyed hosting a fireside chat at Bitcoin Miami with boxing legend Floyd Mayweather.

Focusing On Diversity For The Future Of Web3

In the public eye, DeFi has a current reputation of being crowded with crypto bros hawking NFTs with eye-popping price tags. A number of female-led and female-focused organizations may soon change that. One of the potential windfalls of the wide adoption of Bitcoin is empowering through finance those communities and demographics who have been somewhat left behind in the wealth growth over the past 100-odd years.

Female representation still has a long way to go, but female-focused groups and the powerful leadership skills of women at DeFi companies are doing a great job of closing this gap while we’re still on the ground floor of Web3 opportunities.