💸 Women paving fintech's transformation
Founders Factory Startup Bulletin #49
This is the Startup Bulletin—written for founders, by founders. Each month we bring you a round-up of startup and investment stories, key learnings from founders, and insights from the Founders Factory team.
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The gender finance gap is real.
Women are less likely to hold bank accounts, they’re less insured, women-owned businesses are less likely to get access to credit. Despite radical transformations over the last decade, women still have worse access to financial services than men.
You can trace a clear link back to the underfunding of women-led fintech startups—receiving around 2% of VC funding. This is leading to fewer women-led companies, with fewer women-oriented (or at least, personalised) financial products on the market. How can fintech promise to widen access to finances to all, when half the population is so underrepresented?
To mark International Women’s Day this week (March 8th), we’re taking the opportunity to highlight four women entrepreneurs who are leading the way in fintech’s transformational decade.
Also in today’s newsletter:
Highlights from the Founders Factory portfolio
What we’ve been reading this month
Opportunities in tech
💸 Four women transforming fintech
Solving financial advice’s data problem
⭐️ Nicky Sevel, CEO & co-founder of Woven
It’s not so much a case of whether AI can disrupt wealth management—it’s more a case of how. Data is the major blocker here, given that most advisors work with fragmented or incomplete data siloes and therefore can’t properly leverage data.
This is the problem that Woven is solving, with founder Nicky Sevel at the helm. Nicky’s career has seen her bridge roles across wealth management, from financial planning to solution designing. Woven is in fact her second business in the space, having previously founded Neeshe, aiming to democratise financial advice to financial advice for women.
The business was recently named in Sifted’s 14 Wealthtech Startups to Watch.
You can listen to her recent appearance on the Women Talking Money podcast here
Disrupting data collection & upgrading the gig economy
⭐️ Lindsay Forster, CEO of Shepper
Lindsay Forster leads Shepper, the smart asset checking business. The concept is simple: their community of ‘Shepherds’, now numbering over 200,000, completes tasks set by organisations (consumer, media, real estate, etc) ranging from data collection to asset checking to quality testing.
The business has quickly become a thriving community enabling people to earn flexible, extra income, as well as provide support and training to others on the platform.
Lindsay describes the opportunity she sees attached to Shepper: “At the centre of all this, we’re trying to help our Shepherds succeed personally and professionally. Working for Shepper doesn’t require any specialist skills or qualifications: we give all the training in our app to get them started.”
Read our profile of Lindsay, alongside Shepper founder Carl Ameln
Providing financial coaching for all
⭐️ Alisha Chowdhury, CEO & founder of Kiro
Personal finance advice is ordinarily the preserve of the super wealthy. Advice for young millennials and gen Zs, meanwhile, is few and far between—anything that does exist is largely online and can be hard to decipher or trust.
“Over 75% of Gen Z say they’re stressed about their personal finances. Most turn to friends, family, or social media platforms like Reddit for financial guidance, but these sources often lead to poorer economic outcomes,” Alisha said in an interview with Poets & Quants.
That’s what drove Alisha to found Kiro, the first AI-powered financial coach aimed at connecting young adults to personalised financial resources. Their partnership model sees them offering Kiro’s white-label solution to credit unions, building societies, and pension providers, ensuring that customers have 24/7 access to a financial coach within their existing platforms.
Bringing due diligence on-chain
⭐️ Cindy van Niekerk, CEO & founder of Umazi
Umazi is a startup that uses distributed ledger technology to accelerate corporate identity verification and due diligence for cross-border trade and working capital optimisation. It’s designed to reduce the time and cost of verifying partners, suppliers, and other corporate entities.
Cindy founded the company off the back of her experience of consulting for the banking industry, having managed projects at the likes of JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, and Barclays. One experience stood out to her: “The bank, like all the others I previously contracted at, distributed communications to their clients to help them become compliant with the latest regulation. One client sent us a photo of his desk with the comms strewn across his desk. I was taken aback by the lack of client consideration.”
The aim is to enhance trust, transparency, and compliance across financial services.
Read last year’s IWD newsletter:
📚 What we’ve been reading this month
Don’t Call It Deep Tech (Cantos Ventures)
The Humane AI Pin never had a chance (The Verge)
Vibe Coding: The New Way We Create and Interact with Technology (Patrick Chan via AI Monks)
🚀 Highlights from the Founders Factory community
Shop Circle announced a $60M Series B as they look to advance the next generation of e-commerce software. The round was led by US firm Endeavor and Italian fund Nextalia
Claro AI, who helps SMEs deploy small language models from unstructured data, closed €650K in pre-seed funding
Matnex announced their partnership with Veridien to launch the world’s largest and most advanced supercomputer for material discovery, backed by investment from the likes of Samos Investments, Ada Ventures, and MDOne, among others
Metalchemy won the PITCH trophy at Web Summit Qatar. The nanotechnology startup builds in antibacterial properties into food packaging, aimed at reducing food waste
Vycarb were named in Forbes’ list of 5 Environmental Startups Leading the Way in 2025, highlighting their technology for water-based CO2 removal and storage
Opportunities
💼 Roles
Founder & CEO at Project Delorean (reimagining insurance infrastructure with AI)—we’re looking for an entrepreneur-in-residence to lead strategy and build of our latest Aviva Venture Studio project
Tech Co-founder & CTO at Regeno (financing transition to regenerative agriculture)
Tech Co-founder & CTO at MietMagie (neobank for renters)—must be based in Germany
See you next month 👋
Interested in reading more of the same insights? Check out the Founders Factory blog, and previous newsletters.