Top 20 Internet Female Entrepreneurs
Online Business Ideas
Are you looking for an online business idea? If you need to get some inspiration, read this article and find out what the top 20 female Internet entrepreneurs (in alphabetical order) have been up to. Let me know if I have left anyone out of the list.
Amanda Marcotte
Venture: pandagon.net
Amanda Marcotte runs pandagon.net, a blog that focuses on American politics and feminism. Described by leading publications as provocative and filled with profanity, her blog is widely popular.
Angela Benton
Venture: BlackWebMedia.net & Blackweb20.com
Angela Benton is an African American online entrepreneur. She has built an enviable portfolio of sites focusing on new media and technology since 2007. The flagship site is blackweb20.com. Angela has advertisement contracts with big names such as BET, AOL and NBC.
Alexa Andrzejewski
Venture: Foodspotting.com
Alexa Andrzejewski owns and runs the unique foodspotting.com, a website that helps people find out where they can enjoy a specific type of food. The site has an iPhone app that has been downloaded over 100,000 times.
Arianna Huffington
Venture: Huffingtonpost.com
Well known in media circles, Arianna Huffington is a syndicated columnist and author. She co-founded huffingtonpost.com in the 1990s. It grew to become one of the largest online news sites. She recently sold it to AOL for $315 million dollars. Huffington remains the president and editor-in-chief.
Ashley Qualls
Venture: whateverlife.com
Ashley Qualls is a 17 year old American Online entrepreneur from Michigan. She began her website, whateverlife.com, as a hobby in 2004. The website mainly provides HTML tutorials and MySpace layouts to young people in her age group. Ashley boasts of big ad clients such as Verizon Communications.
Caterina Fake
Venture: flickr.com & hunch.com
Despite a lack of technical IT skills, Caterina was one of the first entrepreneurs to appreciate the power of web 2.0. She started flickr.com in 2004 and a year later sold it to Yahoo for $30 million. Later in 2009 she launched hunch.com to leverage on the newly discovered power of crowdsourcing. Hunch.com currently enjoys over 2 million page views monthly.
Catherine Cook
Venture: myyearbook.com
Catherine Cook began myyearbook.com at the tender age of 15. The website now has over 3 million members spread out in all corners of the globe and annual sales are in the seven figure range.
Cyan Ta’eed
Venture: Envato.com
Envato is the brainchild of Cyan Ta’eed and Collins Ta’eed. They founded the company in 2006 and are based in Australia. Envato operates online marketplaces for digital goods as well as a large network of educational blogs focusing on creative skills.
Eileen Gittins
Venture: blurb.com
Eileen Gittins co-founded blurb.com in 2005. Blurb is a POD (print-on-demand) publishing service. The site’s membership has grown in leaps and bounds with revenue reported to be in the seven figure range.
Elaine Wherry
Venture: meebo.com
Elaine Wherry and Sandy Jen co-founded Meebo.com in 2005. Elaine holds a Degree in Symbolic Systems while Jen holds a Degree in Computer Science. They are both alumni of Stanford University. Meebo is a browser based instant messaging service with over 200 million users.
Erin Jansen
Venture: netlingo.com
Erin Jansen is an online entrepreneurship veteran having run netlingo.com, an award winning website, since 1994. She has also authored the book, “NetLingo: The Internet Dictionary", one of the foremost authorities on Internet terminology.
Gina Bianchini
Venture: ning.com
Gina Bianchini co-founded ning.com in 2005 together with Marc Andreessen. She served as CEO until March 2010. Before founding Ning she worked at CKS Group and Goldman Sachs in various positions. Ning.com currently enjoys 65 million unique monthly visitors.
Mena Trott
Venture: MoveableType, Typepad.com. LiveJournal.com & Vox.com
Mena Trott and her husband founded Six Apart Inc in 2001. Through this company they developed several blogging platforms which have proven highly popular with the masses. The most popular of this is TypePad.
Rashmi Sinha
Venture: slideshare.net
Rashmi Sinha got bored of working in a lab and made a leap of faith in the tech arena. Her first venture was Uzanto Consulting which then saw her launch slideshare.net in 2006. Slideshare is hugely popular with the academic community where members can share work and make comments.
Gina Trapani
Venture: lifehacker.com
Gina Trapani is a well known blogger, writer and web developer. She is best known for her blog, Lifehacker, which she launched in 2005. In addition to running this blog, she also co-hosts popular net casts and has published three books. In 2009 she was named as one of the Most Influential Women in Technology by Fast Company.
Heather Armstrong
Venture: Dooce.com
Heather Armstrong runs the witty blog dooce.com. She explains that the name was derived from her persistent failure to spell “dude” correctly during Internet messaging chats with co-workers.
Justine Ezarik
Venture: justin.tv
Justine is a 27 year (as at 2011) old Los Angeles Internet entrepreneur. Her career was launched after she made a video about her 300 page iPhone bill from AT&T in 2007. Her videos on Justin.tv now receive more than 25 million views monthly.
Lisa Stone
Venture: blogher.com
Lisa Stone founded Blogher.com in 2005. The site has a reach of over 15 million women through online visitors, publishing networks and conferences.
Natalie Sara Massenet
Venture: net-a-porter.com
Natalie Sara Massenet grew up in Paris before returning to Los Angeles in 1976. She launched net-a-porter.com, a women’s fashion goods website, in 1998. In early 2010, she sold her shares in the business to Richemont, a Swiss Luxury Goods maker, for an estimated $77 million. She is currently working on a similar venture for men.
Penelope Trunk
Venture: brazencareerist.com
Penelope Trunk has written about careers for most of her adult life. She has a keen interest in the lives of people vis-à-vis their work. Her blog, brazencareerist.com, enjoys thousands of daily visitors.
You can also see the list of top 20 Internet Male Entrepreneurs.