Hottest female founders in tech to watch out for

Hailed by TIME as a tech pioneer who "will change your life" and as a Davos hero by Business Insider, de los Pinos helps advance the fight against cancer. She's the CEO and co-founder of Aura Biosciences, which is working on "the development of nano-delivered drugs" that are engineered for precise targeting, immune system evasion, and efficient cellular uptake," particularly for cancer treatments, read more

Lee is the co-founder of Polyvore, a social fashion site where users can curate wardrobes by assembling products from across the web, then share these virtual ensembles with other users. Prior to joining the startup, Lee worked at Google for four years. As a product manager for Google Maps, she helped launch a variety of features like embeddable maps, multipoint driving directions, and real time traffic routing. After falling in love with Polyvore's prototype in 2008 (and winning its Halloween contest), she decided to heed advice from her former boss, Marissa Mayer, to, as Lee wrote in her blog, "always take the more challenging, more risky path." read more

Pahlka launched Code For America with hopes of bringing innovation and technology to city government. The non-profit, which was inspired by Teach For America, develops open-source software to help solve community problems -- like letting parents and students use GPS data to check school bus schedules. Prior to CFA, Pahlka worked in public service at two non-profits. She said in an interview with the Case Foundation, "[O]ur goal isn't to run the organization more like a traditional business, nor to help government run more like a business. We want government to run more like the Internet." read more

Zatlyn, a recent Harvard Business School grad, co-founded website protection service CloudFlare in 2009 after stints at Google and Toshiba. The company, which promises to "supercharge" small-to-medium-sized sites by improving page load speed and amping up security, channels 250 million unique visitors through its network and is being used by over 50,000 websites ranging from personal blogs to Fortune 500 companies to governments. read more

Hartz is the president and co-founder of online ticketing service Eventbrite, a startup founded in 2006. In June, Eventbrite launched an free iPad app called "Eventbrite At The Door," which allows last-minute concertgoers to purchase and print tickets on the spot, and earlier this year it was nominated for a Webby Award. The five year-old startup is growing quickly: it has raised about $80 million so far, and is on track to sell $400 million worth of tickets this year alone read more

 

Breazeal is an associate professor of media arts and sciences at MIT, where she created the Personal Robots Group at the school's Media Lab based on her passion for robot research and education. She has helped develop some of the world's most famous robotic creatures, from robotic flower gardens to Leonardo, the "the Stradivarius of expressive robots," to a dexterous robot that was named one of TIME's 50 best inventions of 2008. Breazeal also sits on the Science Channels' advisory board.read more

Dillon, a Founder Labs graduate, was an IT consultant with Accenture and worked at Procter & Gamble before taking the helm at her startup House of Mikko. She crafted the beauty website on the values of positivity, empowerment, and inner beauty: essentially, the site operates as digital one-on-one beauty-counter help. It recommends personalized beauty products -- like volumizing shampoo for limp hair -- based on a user's profile, as well as product reviews from "like-typed" women. read more

Fake first made a name for herself in 2002 when she co-founded the photo-sharing service Flickr, which was sold to Yahoo in 2005 and recently announced that 6 billion photos had been uploaded to the site.

She continued her startup streak by co-founding Hunch.com, a site that makes recommendations based on a user's interests and seeks to develop what it calls a "taste graph." On June 20, Fake announced she would be pursuing a new endeavor on her personal blog: "We are building something consumer-facing, something social ... for optimal founder-market fit." (And, as TechCrunch noted, Fake has also left Hunch."=) Fake is chairman of the board at Etsy and on the board of directors read more

 

 The online retailer One Kings Lane functions much like flash-sale sites such as Gilt Groupe and Rue La La, but instead of handbags and couture, the site offers mostly unsold inventory from designer home decor companies at up to 70 percent off. One Kings Lane's one million-plus subscribers receive daily e-mails with discounts on luxury furnishings, from throw pillows to armchairs. She was recognized as one of Fast Company's "most creative people in business" in 2011 and, before launching One Kings Lane, was a "founding member" of the digital team at NBC.read more

 Lolapps is a social games and apps publisher that allows users to create their own quizzes and games, as well as send gifts on platforms like Facebook. According to Lolapps, over 1 million user-generated applications have been created, the company's games attract over 100 million users each month, and Lolapps' Ravenwood Fair has ranked among the top 10 games on Facebook.

Chang co-founded Lolapps in 2008 and is now the head of products. Previously, she held positions at Adobe's Advanced Technology Lab and BitTorrent. read more