46 products everyone loves that come from female-founded startups

Dagne Dover is the women's handbag company we can't stop talking about — they just get work bags, weekend bags, and backpacks so right. Cofounders Melissa Mash, Deepa Gandhi, and Jessy Dover are now the CEO, COO, and creative director, respectively, of the company that is holding its own against Coach, Michael Kors, Kate Spade, and Tory Burch for the attentions of working women.

The founders come from UPenn's Wharton School and the Parsons School of Design and have retail experience from Coach and Club Monaco, backgrounds that certainly translated into their stylish and functional bag business.

Harvard Business School classmates Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss started Rent the Runway after noticing Hyman's sister didn't want to spend a lot of money for a dress she would wear only once to a wedding. The company rents out designer clothing for a fraction of the retail price and aims to change the meaning of the ownership of luxury experiences.

Founded in 2009, the company now has 9 million members, 600 designer partners, and brick-and-mortar locations in five major cities. It's also expanding past apparel into home textile rentals with a West Elm partnership, which launches in summer 2019.

Noura Sakkijha is a third generation jeweler who comes from an industrial engineering background and later earned her MBA from Ryerson University. Sakkijha always wanted to work in jewelry and brought her own twist to jewelry product design in 2013 with Mejuri, a brand that offers contemporary and everyday fine jewelry at accessible prices.

Sakkijha aims to create a trend of women buying jewelry for themselves rather than waiting for it to be gifted by someone else. The designs are simple and pretty, but the company stays fresh through frequent product drops and limited-edition collaborations. It has also thrived thanks to more authentic and organic exposure like word-of-mouth.

After founder and CEO Kat Schneider became pregnant and had difficulty finding vitamins that didn't contain questionable ingredients, she decided to build her own: vitamin subscription startup Ritual. She says she's not only selling the vitamins themselves, but also the important habit of taking them. It certainly helps that she purposefully designed the pills and packaging to be visually appealing.

Schneider's vision to make women's health more transparent has attracted $40.5 million in venture capital funding and a cult-like following most vitamin companies can't boast. In 2018, it introduced its second product, a women's prenatal vitamin.

Jackie Kim is an MIT grad and skin-care obsessive who wants to make skin care more accessible. Maelove's lineup of $28-and-under products — including the cult-favorite Glow Maker Vitamin C serum and hydrating Night Renewer night cream — are just that.

To reach this rare breed of affordability and effectiveness, she worked with a team of scientists and doctors to dive into the research of what skin-care ingredients really work, used artificial intelligence techniques to scan existing product reviews, and cold-called hundreds of people who worked at the luxury brands she admired.

The beginning of Heidi Zak's journey with ThirdLove is one many women can relate to: she was frustrated by everything about bras, from the shopping process to the fit and poor quality. She created ThirdLove, which prioritizes fit and comfort through its Fit Finder Quiz, Breast Shape Dictionary, and half-cup size solutions.

The go-getter attitude that landed her positions at McKinsey, Aeropostale, and Google is evident in her approach to grow the brand, which has partnered with department store giant Bloomingdale's and raised $68.6 million in venture capital funding.

Moms, Harvard Business School grads, and Primary cofounders Christina Carbonell and Galyn Bernard met while working at the now-shuttered Quidsi (parent company of Diapers.com) and commiserated over the surprising difficulty of shopping for their kids. Despite doing their kids' shopping for more than 12 years, they still didn't have a go-to place to find affordable basics.

Busy parents can't thank Primary enough for simplifying the shopping process and ensuring their kids' closets are always stocked with quality clothes.

Size-inclusive fashion brand Universal Standard, which has collections of minimalist essentials for an unprecedented size range of 00 through 40, has a unique policy that reduces the anxiety of shopping: its Universal Fit Liberty (UFL) allows shoppers to exchange pieces from its core collection if their size fluctuates within a year of purchase.

The company is founded by Alexandra Waldman and Polina Veksler, who realized one day while shopping together that they couldn't find stylish clothing at the same stores. Their friendship evolved into a partnership that pushes the boundaries of inclusive fashion.

This Stanford MBA grad and former director at Tiffany & Co. began taking glaze-making classes and researching the ceramics, flatware, and glass industries after she moved to San Francisco and couldn't find quality, affordable tableware options for her home. Kathryn Duryea's vision was to make the daily ritual of setting the table beautiful and sophisticated — it shines through in Year & Day's curated collection of semi-matte ceramic dishes and sturdy flatware and glassware.

In just over a year, it's been a direct-to-consumer hit, selling out of product on four occasions and experiencing average revenue growth of 40% per month. You can shop individual products or create a complete set on its site.

With Lola's 100%-organic cotton pads and tampons, cramp-care products, and sexual-wellness products (all available in kits and subscriptions), Jordana Kier and Alex Friedman are opening up the conversation about women's health.

What started as a conversation between the Wharton and Columbia business grads ("what's really in our tampons?") is now a successful online startup with $35.2 million in funding. It's making periods better for everyone, not only those with privileged access, and has donated 1 million tampons to women in need since 2015.

If you suffer from acne, you need to talk to Ju Rhyu, founder of Hero Cosmetics and the woman behind one of our go-to acne-banishing products. She's spreading the good word about hydrocolloid patches to clear out pimples and boost your confidence overnight with her bestselling, highly effective Mighty Patch pimple stickers (and the newer, "invisible" version can be worn in public).

From Kraft to American Express to Samsung, she's worked with innovative consumer companies galore and now leads one of her own.

My weekend brunches are hardly as productive as Bouchra Ezzahraoui and Sophie Kahn's, the friends and Princeton grads who founded NYC-based fine jewelry startup AUrate based off a conversation about the uninspiring, unaffordable state of jewelry today.

Ezzahraoui and Kahn left jobs at Goldman Sachs and Marc Jacobs to pursue their idea to make beautiful jewelry — and a positive impact while they're at it. AUrate sources its materials from ethical partners, uses 100%-recycled gold, and donates a book to a child in need for every purchase made.

After working as a director and senior merchant at Victoria's Secret, Michelle Cordeiro Grant wanted to create a new experience and point of view in the lingerie category, one that delivers simple, quality products and reflects the healthy, confident, and beautiful women wearing them. In 2015, she founded Lively, a brand that blurs the lines of lingerie, active, and swim.

Its comfortable bra, swim, and activewear products are tackling the $13 billion lingerie category largely dominated by Grant's former employer.

Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki are two of the three founders of genetic testing company 23andMe. The direct-to-consumer company uses small spit samples to create over 70 reports about your health, bodily traits, and ancestry. A former health care investment analyst with a degree in biology from Yale University and current CEO of the company, Wojcicki is fascinated by the mysteries of the genome and what it can reveal about the human body.

She wants to help solve a bottleneck in healthcare, which is not knowing enough about predispositions to diseases, with the huge data set that results from over 5 million genotyped 23andMe customers.

Katrina Lake is the founder and CEO of Stitch Fix, an online personal styling service for men and women. As an associate at The Parthenon Group, Lake was inspired by a department store client she worked with and later joined a venture capital firm in hopes of finding the future of retail. When she didn't find that company, she applied to Harvard Business School and started working on the idea for Stitch Fix during her second year there.

The first Stitch Fix order was shipped out of Lake's apartment in 2011. Just six years later, she took the company public. In the 2018 fiscal year, it reported $1.2 billion in revenue and currently has $122.4 million in venture capital funding.

Founder and CEO Ariel Kaye made it her mission to offer high-quality, affordable sheets and inspire a community around sleep, wellness, and a comfortable home after returning from a trip to Italy. She was unsatisfied with bedding products that couldn't compare with those she experienced in her hotel in Italy and launched Parachute in 2014 with an assortment of bedding essentials.

Her career in brand development and advertising gave her the insights into purchase behavior and consumer trends necessary to now boast a 4x year-to-year growth rate and 40% repeat customer rate. The company also recently took a large step beyond texiles by launching a mattress.

In starting Pinrose, Stanford Graduate School of Business classmates Erika Shumate and Christine Luby had a vision to make high-quality fragrance a playful, effortless, everyday experience for the modern millennial. Shumate's research on synesthesia and the psychology of smell helped inform the brand's Scent Personality Quiz, which gives you personalized perfume recommendations.

Lead investors in Pinrose include Bonobos cofounder and former Trunk Club CEO Brian Spaly, and the brand is now available at top retailers like QVC, Birchbox, Sephora, and ipsy.

Another Stanford Graduate School of Business alumna is Mariam Naficy, founder and CEO of Minted, a design marketplace that sells crowdsourced creations (such as greeting cards) from independent artists. In 2007, Naficy saw parallels between the rise of Internet bloggers creating good content and the potential for designers to do the same.

Though the company initially struggled, it has since raised $297.1 million in capital and is home to an international community of designers from nearly 100 countries.

In 2011, Carly Strife helped found the popular monthly dog treat subscription box service that has since expanded into original content creation, an online marketplace, and mobile apps under the brand Bark. Strife utilized her experience from her time as a New York City operations manager at Uber to get new vendors on board with BarkBox, and is now COO of the company.

Strife and her cofounders recognized the connection between a owner's desire to please their pets and a dog's need for variety in play and food. They succeeded in capturing that connection and business exploded in 2012.

Lynda is an online learning platform that offers almost 6,000 courses in photography, development, business, web design, and video, and is part of the movement toward democratized education. Lynda Weinman, a self-taught web and motion graphics designer, originally started the site at the age of 40 with her husband Bruce as a way to communicate to the students in her very successful web design class.

The site's courses now serve students and employees from over 10,000 organizations. In 2015, Weinman sold Lynda to LinkedIn for $1.5 billion and currently ranks as No. 55 on Forbes' list of America's Richest Self-Made Women.

Before becoming a cofounder and the CEO of Zola, a startup that is reinventing the wedding registry and planning experience, Ma was the chief product officer of Chloe + Isabel and general manager of Gilt Taste. Her extensive experience in product management has helped guide the success of Zola's retail business as well as its iOS and Android apps.

Ma told the Stanford Graduate School of Business (where she received her MBA in 2006) in an interview that her goal is to become a builder of great tech companies. With over 500,000 registered users and $140.8 million in venture capital funding, Zola looks like it will be one of those companies.

Cofounders Karla Gallardo and Shilpa Shah met while touring prospective business schools, and while they ultimately did not attend the same school, they reconnected over their shared vision to create a lifestyle brand with a "fewer, better" philosophy. Cuyana is that minimalist fashion brand and focuses on women's essentials, like dresses, outerwear, and leather goods.

The company has opened brick-and-mortar locations in San Francisco and Los Angeles as well as popup shops around the country.

As former vice presidents of global marketing at L'Oréal, Sarah Lee and Christine Chang were the only two employees with expertise in both the Korean and American markets. This unique perspective put them in the perfect position to launch Glow Recipe, a place where beauty enthusiasts can find the best curation of K-beauty products.

The company has found huge success with its own products, like the best-selling Watermelon Mask and Moisturizer and is bound to continue the pattern of hits as Lee and Chang continue introducing K-beauty-inspired innovations with American audiences.

Amanda Zuckerman's frustrating dorm room shopping experience before she entered her freshman year at Washington University in St. Louis inspired her and her mom Karen to start Dormify, the one-stop shop for affordable and stylish small space decor.

Amanda's understanding of and proximity to college students, combined with Karen's creative and strategic advertising skills, makes for a business that college students with an eye for design can't resist. Dormify has also partnered with large retailers like Macy's and American Eagle to offer exclusive collections and has licensing agreements with national sororities to produce additional merchandise.

This Dartmouth grad is a cofounder of design studio Linjer, which makes minimalist Italian and Turkish leather goods and watches. After her boyfriend and cofounder Roman Khan had trouble finding a high-quality, affordable, and no-logo leather briefcase for work, Chong stepped in to design one instead.

Chong knew they were onto something when their initial Indiegogo campaign raised $185,000 in 2014. Her response to the rise of trendy, but wasteful fast fashion is paying off: In 2016, sales were projected to be $5 million and patient customers sat in six-month-long wait lists for their bags.

Claire Mazur and Erica Cerulo met as undergrads at the University of Chicago. They married Mazur's experience in arts management and fashion and Cerulo's love of telling stories in the print publishing world to bring the creations and stories of new designers to the forefront on their site Of a Kind.

Mazur and Cerulo are motivated by the desire to support new designers, create an engaged community of both designers and shoppers, and foster an environment for people who shop as much for the experience as they do for the product. Since Of a Kind's launch in 2010, they have featured over 350 up-and-coming designers.

Hailing from backgrounds in investment banking, venture capital, and fashion e-commerce, Nina Faulhaber and Meg He noticed there was little innovation in everyday fashion. Faulhaber is a former competitive gymnast and He is a certified yoga teacher, and both wanted that comfort from activewear in the clothing they wore every day.

ADAY's simple "wardrobe of the future" uses technical fabrics (e.g. breathable, thermoregulated, cooling, stretchy, offers UV protection), aims to be seasonless and versatile, and is sustainable so you can cut down on the wasteful pieces in your closet.

You might recognize interior designer Nicole Gibbons from her appearances on HGTV or the Oprah Winfrey Network. Now, she's the founder of Clare, a startup that's reinvigorating a oft-ignored category: paint. Paint doesn't excite many people — in fact, the overwhelming process of shopping for it probably scares most — but it's a $155 billion global industry that's actually ripe for disruption.

Gibbons believes in the creative and transformative power of color, and is helping you believe in it, too by offering safe and eco-conscious paints in a small variety of curated colors, as well as paint supplies like brushes and rollers.

Oars + Alps founders Mia Saini Duchnowski and Laura Lisowski Cox realized they were onto something when they exchanged stories about their husbands relying on their wives' expensive creams and cleansers or chemical-packed men's products to treat their skin after a day of outdoor activities like rowing and cycling.

Their combined resumes are impressive, with education from MIT, Harvard Business School, and Brandeis, and jobs at NASA, Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg TV, Digitas, AOL, and Facebook. Such versatile expertise has lent itself to creating the best all-natural skin products for men. The company recently raised $1.3 million in a seed round of financing.

AYR, which stands for All Year Round, originated as a part of Bonobos and spun off in 2015 as an independent company led by Jac Cameron, Maggie Winter, and Max Bonbrest.

Cameron was a senior denim designer at Madewell and global denim director at Calvin Klein, while Winter had worked in merchandising at J.Crew for seven years, and together they brought this fashion expertise to create focused collections of high-quality pieces like jeans.

As its name suggests, the brand makes clothing essentials made for any season of the year, and consumers are responding. When they first launched the brand in 2014, their jeans sold out in two days. You can currently find AYR in real life in New York City and Los Angeles.

Hyper-popular beauty brand Glossier was born out of founder and CEO Emily Weiss' blog "Into the Gloss," where she profiled the beauty routines of women like Bobbi Brown and Karlie Kloss. As the site fostered a large and engaged community of readers, it made sense to utilize the knowledge and opinions of these readers to craft products they would actually buy.

Weiss understands the importance of staying connected with the brand's dedicated fan base and the customer-centric approach has translated into extraordinary demand (read: 10,000-person wait lists) for Glossier products.

Rosie O'Neill is one half of the sweetest couple you'll ever meet. She and her husband Josh Resnick founded Sugarfina, the gourmet candy company that has adults embracing their sweet tooths again. Their idea for a gourmet candy boutique came out of a third date and resulted in $40 million in revenue in 2017 alone.

Coming from marketing for Barbie at Mattel, O'Neill infuses the same playfulness and creativity into Sugarfina's offerings, which are sourced from all over the world. Online or in store, you can create your own Bento Box of sweet treats as a fun gift and shop fun limited-edition collections.

The average American woman wears a size 16. One-third of US women wear plus-size clothing, yet it remains difficult to find stylish plus-size options. Founder and CEO Christine Hunsicker sought to help this underserved market with Gwynnie Bee, an online women’s clothing subscription service for sizes 0 through 32.

The company works with more than 190 brands and has shipped out more than 3 million boxes of clothing. Hunsicker says she is increasingly looking at boutique brands that align with Gwynnie Bee's business of making women look good and feel confident.

At first glance, Catbird looks like your typical indie jewelry boutique in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Unlike any old neighborhood shop, however, it made more than $10 million in revenue in 2016. Founder Rony Vardi is a former graphic designer who loves creating and selecting jewelry, and helping customers find that special piece, be it the brand's popular stacking ring or a wedding ring.

Catbird maintains its timeless vibe because Vardi doesn't pay attention to trends. Instead, she thinks long term and focuses on creating high-quality pieces with intrinsic value.

Birchbox was launched in 2010 by Harvard Business School classmates Hayley Barna and Katia Beauchamp, who envisioned a better way to shop for beauty products. The company sends monthly boxes with samples of beauty products to its subscribers, and the full-size versions of those products are available to purchase in its shop.

Barna and Beauchamp began by sending cold emails to the presidents and CEOs of well-known beauty brands to seek partnerships, only to be met with resistance about Birchbox's unprecedented concept. Today, the company has an additional BirchboxMan brand, more than 1 million subscribers, 800 brands in its shop, and an $86.9 million valuation.

Founder, CEO, and chief creative officer Carolyn Rafaelian is from Rhode Island, once the costume jewelry capital of the world and where her family began its foray into jewelry manufacturing. Her company Alex and Ani, named after her two eldest daughters, doesn't only sell bangles and charms. Through Rafaelian's leadership and artistic vision, it sells positive energy for consumers who want to share their personality through what they wear.

The Paper Store, Harvey Nichols, and Saks Fifth Avenue have all carried Alex and Ani bangles, and in 2012 the company also began licensing deals with Walt Disney, NFL, national sororities, and the US military. Rafaelian has a net worth of $1 billion and is No. 18 on Forbes' list of America's Richest Self-Made Women.

Founder Urska Srsen's passion for and expertise in sculpting brings a unique perspective to the world of product design. She leads design, production, and manufacturing at her Y-Combinator backed startup Bellabeat, a wearable and app that helps you track your steps, sleep, and period. It can also predict and manage your stress.

In an interview with Nordic Startup Bits, Srsen said being an entrepreneur is "a very creative process that demands everything you’ve got to give; knowledge, ideas, time, sweat and love. Much like creating art does." The process is paying off: The company has sold 700,000 Bellabeat Leaf devices and opened four offices worldwide.

Favored by official royalty figures like Meghan Markle as well as pop royalty icons like Lady Gaga, Sarah Flint's eponymous shoe brand is all about style without sacrificing price or comfort. She received her fashion and footwear design education from Parsons, FIT, and Arsutoria in Milan, as well as stints at Diane Von Furstenberg and Proenza Schouler.

Though you used to be able to find her flats and heels at traditional department stores, she made the decision to go online-only, which has allowed prices to drop from a range of $495 to $1,200 to a range of $195 to $725.

Shelley Sanders, founder of glitzy jewelry brand The Last Line, has held many roles related to shiny jewels: head designer, creative director, and even "secret diamond concierge." Today, the Parsons grad leads the company that hopes to be the one and only place you shop for fine jewelry.

Her bold and confident voice translates to eye-catching options galore, from simple stacking rings to playful rainbow earrings. Thanks to weekly drops of 14k gold and precious stone pieces, you'll always have something new to lust over whenever you're looking to add to your collection.

Emily Sugihara has always considered herself a creative, but it was while working as a fashion designer at a large company that she realized she needed a more hands-on role. In 2007, she combined this itch for creative control and the personal frustration of finding a nice reusable bag into Baggu.

More than 1 million of Baggu's colorful nylon totes have been sold to date, and it's not only because they're cute. Impressively, these durable, lightweight bags can hold up to 50 pounds of stuff. In addition to these signature bags, Baggu also sells backpacks, purses, and travel bags made from leather and canvas.

Madison Reed is named after founder Amy Errett's daughter. The online hair care company focuses on hair-color products made from ingredients you can feel good about, meaning they're free from ammonia, phthalates, PPD, and other harmful ingredients.

Prior to Madison Reed, Errett was a partner at Maveron LLC and True Ventures, so it should be no surprise that her current venture is especially skilled at raising capital ($121.1 million as of March 2019). She has also served on the boards of several organizations, including GLAAD and Common Sense Media.

Material cofounder Eunice Byun is a rare female figure in the male-dominated world of cooking, food, and kitchenware. She and her cofounder David Nguyen are food lovers first, and this basic passion for sharing great meals inspired them to start a company that helps them make these meals.

Its sleek and sharply curated kitchen essentials, bundled into a variety of sets, look beautiful and perform beautifully as well, rightly earning their spots on our countertops. The company recently brought on cookbook author Alison Roman as an advisor and continues to release new products to improve your cooking experience.

Just like Sephora houses tons of beauty brands for you to shop and discover, Bandier collects more than 50 premium activewear brands under one roof. Jennifer Bandier founded this destination for stylish fitness apparel in 2014, introduced a boutique fitness studio in 2016, then launched four private brands in 2017.

Bandier is a former music industry executive who managed groups like TLC and nurtured new talent. Though she has shifted to the fitness world, some of those same skills, like having an eye for the next big "act" (or brand), still apply.

Experiences at online startups Rent the Runway and Primary helped whet Gabby Slome's appetite for direct-to-consumer retail. After her rescue dog began gaining weight eating traditional dog food, she began taking more notice of what was going in the pet nutrition space and co-founded Ollie, an all-natural dog food delivery service.

Her love for dogs and determination to tackle the $29 billion pet food industry are paying off. More than 5 million of these human-grade, vet-approved meals, which are tailored to your dog's needs and preferences, have been delivered since 2015.

Having earned her bachelor's in art history, an MBA from Columbia, and experience as an art buyer for Ralph Lauren, Abigail Cook Stone set off on her own to marry her loves of art, design, and fragrance in candle startup Otherland.

They're one of our favorite candles to gift not only because of their luxurious, long-lasting fragrances but also because they're works of art themselves. In a direct-to-consumer world that leans towards minimalism, Otherland isn't afraid to stand out from the pack with its detailed, whimsical, and colorful designs.