The promise of Web3, a vision of the internet built on blockchain, has reinvigorated an entirely new generation of investors and consumers. It is the next internet revolution where every platform, organisation and digital economy is being decentralised.
However, as with many other industries presently, the Web3 universe is dominated by men and investments in female founders are still bleak. According to a recent report from cryptocurrency marketplace Gemini, women make up just 26 per cent of Web3 investors. Additionally, as evidenced by ownership of bitcoin (BTC-USD), the premier digital currency, women make up less than 15 per cent of Bitcoin investors. In crypto, the landscape is even worse, with only five per cent of crypto companies being led by women, according to a recent estimate.
Angela Walch, research associate at the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies shares with Reuters, “As crypto becomes more mainstream, it is important to have diverse perspectives in creating and running the systems so that better decisions can be made.”
This systematic way and imbalance in the Web3 sector is a missed opportunity for investors since women-led startups come with a high stake in betting on good change. At e27, we are giving the spotlight to some inspirational female founders and influencers who are going against odds and breaking the bias in the world of crypto, NFTs and the metaverse.
Also Read: Breaking the bro code: How women are taking over the Web3 world in Asia
Krista Kim
Contemporary artist and founder of the Techism movement, Krista Kim’s work explores the concept of digital consciousness. Kim’s working process is described as creating “metaverse realms that uplift humanity”. She views the metaverse as a development to create new environments with a progressive culture beyond real-world divisions of race, gender, religion, politics and geography.
Kim wants more female leaders in the evolution of Web3. “The more empowered women are in Web3, the more evolved and peaceful the world will become as a whole as women will create alternate worlds in the metaverse that changes world culture, co-creation, collaboration and decentralisation.”
Wan Wei Soh
As an advocate of open-source movements, Wan Wei Soh founded IKIGUIDE Metaverse Collective (IMC), an open metaverse with a mission to empower promising individuals and groups to become leaders in new digital spaces and believes that NFTs are the key building blocks to the open metaverse. Soh is also one of the founding team members of the dWeb Southeast Asian node.
Maddy Bergen
“The funding gap between male and female-led ventures worldwide is still far from close to being equal. While women have proven their ability to become successful in business, they are still forced to face hurdles such as societal expectations and lack of representation, capital, and support, resulting in fewer entry points for women to break through into strong business networking opportunities.”
Being a VC Analyst, Maddy Bergen realised the underrepresentation of female entrepreneurs and felt inspired to do something about it, which is how Angel Alliance was formed. Angel Alliance is a Web3 initiative empowering female entrepreneurs by providing them with grants, exclusive access to resources to scale their businesses, and connecting female founders. Bergen is the CEO and Co-Founder of Angel Alliance.
Faye Yang
In the last couple of years, the influx of attention and investment in the NFT space has proven there is vast interest not just in digital art, but specifically in the unique value proposition of digital scarcity and verifiable ownership.
Also Read: The 27 Web3 startups in Singapore that show crypto is more than Terra Luna and stablecoins
Faye Yang, the Founder of Unschul and Artworks.vc is a passionate advocate for the conduit between art and technology. “So how do we get the masses involved with art and truly democratise the industry? It likely isn’t with NFT, as crypto is hardly a mass-market product. But from NFT, we learned that more people would be excited about art as an investment product. Money speaks louder, fact of life. Penny stocks have their places too.”
Iris ten Teije
Co-Founder and CEO of Koia, Iris ten Teije is excited about the prospect of communities joining together and democratising access to capital. Linking NFTs to real-world assets, her start-up is a platform for people to buy, trade and collect fractions of iconic assets.
Teije tells Yahoo! Finance UK that “as trillions of dollars of value will be created in Web3 over the next decade, I want women to benefit from that as much as men to get closer to true gender equality.”
Priscilla Koukoui
Priscilla Koukoui is deeply involved in Web3 and XR technologies. Koukoui is the Co-Founder of the NFT Factory, a unique space to discover NFTs, connect with the ecosystem and build projects in the Web3 for entrepreneurs, artists, corporates, investors and the general public.
Koukoui is also the Co-Founder of Power Women NFT, a women-led fully doxxed initiative to empower business women in Web3. A community to connect, educate and learn, match with opportunities and jobs.
She lives for her next big exploration and is a big enthusiast for ensuring the use of tech for good. “Technologies are just a tool. They can be used for good or bad, like any tool. The ‘Why’ is important and needs to stay in mind when we decide to download a new app or create one.”
Cecily Mak
Cecily is the Chief Operating Officer at Blockdaemon, a leading independent blockchain infrastructure provider. A deeply experienced operator, investor, and advisor to a number of start-ups and organisations across tech, blockchain, media, and wellbeing, her background in strategic partnerships, fundraising, revenue generation, adaptive planning, and talent optimisation provides companies insights on ways to excel in dynamic contexts.
Cecily is a hands-on advisor to a select set of phenomenal start-ups and organisations working to make the world a better place. Known for helping leaders realize their potential, she has played a key role in the raising of hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital, multiple successful mergers and acquisitions, and the building of several household-named companies, often behind the scenes, all while keeping the big picture in mind.
Also Read: Gobi Partners, Ozora Yatrapaktaja launch US$10M seed fund for women-led Indonesian startups
Katie Mitchell
Katie Mitchell is the Global Head of Policy and Engagement at Crypto.com, the world’s fastest-growing cryptocurrency platform where she is building and leading the diplomatic and advocacy corps to ultimately shape Web3 policies across the globe. Mitchell’s career has been guided by a passion for channelling the power of technology to drive social impact and change.
“We are at a crucial moment in ensuring governments around the world craft policies and regulatory frameworks that capture the promising potential of Web3, while ensuring sustainable, inclusive, and equitable economic growth. Crypto.com believes in democratising access to financial services, data, and identity – and I’m thrilled to build a team that partners with the public sector globally to unlock more economic opportunity through cryptocurrency, ” said Mitchell.
Janine Yorio
Janine Yorio is the Chief Executive Officer of Everyrealm, the gateway to the metaverse with a background in private equity and in real estate. Everyrealm is a metaverse holding company with holdings in 27 metaverse platforms, over 4,000 NFTs, an e-sports gaming guild and an esports league. Everyrealm also operates Realm Academy, the premier online educational campus in the metaverse.
Yorio’s “superpower is her ability to turn wildly creative visions into financially-feasible realities.” She says one of the most important things to understand about developing in the metaverse and making NFTs is that these products need communities.
Nat Wittayatanaseth
Nat Wittayatanaseth’s life centres on democratising access to tools to help people improve their growth potential. She deeply believes that financial access and literacy are some of the best tools and leverage to improve one’s life.
After having ended her career as a venture capitalist to embark on a startup journey by joining an early-stage crypto company, Wittayayanaseth is now the Head of Strategy at Alpha Venture DAO, a community of daring individuals who aspire to shape the future of Web3 by reinventing how dApps are built, contributed, and owned.
“At the end of the day, what keeps you going is your inkling of possibilities, an inkling that this may actually work, and you’re super excited about what could happen if it works.”
Also Read: Breaking the bro code: How women are taking over the Web3 world in Asia
Outside of work, Wittayantanaseth is an active angel investor in fintech and crypto startups and has built Frontier Fintech Podcast to serve as a platform for founders to share stories and inspire next-generation founders.
Natalie Johnson
Natalie Johnson is the Founder and CEO of Neuno, a marketplace showcasing digital fashion and is hoping to change the way luxury brands do business.
Her mission is to harness the full potential of fashion technology while paving the way towards sustainability in fashion through sartorial innovation, moving the industry towards better and more circular models of distribution.
Jaime Schmidt
Jaime Schmidt is the Co-Founder of BFF. The decentralised organisation is an emerging community that supports women and non-binary people in receiving their share of knowledge, opportunity and financial rewards in Web3.
In just about a month, the community grew to 14,000 members. The group has 70 founding members including Gwyneth Paltrow, Tyra Banks, Julia Hartz and Mila Kunis.
Schmidt states there is a need for more diverse voices at the forefront of Web3 as it is “critical for innovation, mass adoption and social good”.
Emily Yang
Emily Yang is one of the world’s biggest NFT artists and a member of the prolific investment group PleasrDAO, a collective of DeFi leaders, digital artists and early NFT collectors.
Yang famously created the ‘Crypto vs Wall St’ Fortune Magazine cover and has collaborated with Steve Aoki and Sotheby’s to launch a fund in supporting upcoming female artists. The 27-year-old also made the list of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for Art and Style in 2022. For Taiwan-born Yang, the Web3 community is still very inclusive and the platform serves as an important change for females in having an equal space and voice.
Katherine Ng
Katherine Ng is the Head of APAC Marketing for TZ APAC, the leading Asia-based blockchain adoption entity supporting the Tezos ecosystem. Previously, Katherine was the Global Marketing Head for Liquid.com, the world’s first global cryptocurrency platform regulated in Japan, that provides high-performance trading and exchange services for digital currencies. She currently sits on the Board of the Association of Cryptocurrency Enterprises and Start-ups Singapore (ACCESS).
Also Read: Women in tech: It’s time to reframe the conversation
“For mainstream adoption to soar, creators and enterprises alike will certainly do well to localise crypto offerings in the notoriously fragmented market of Asia. The exponential growth that the crypto ecosystem is experiencing in Asia, along with the developments the industry has seen since Bitcoin’s emergence 13 years ago, are certainly causes for celebration as we enter a new year. As we look ahead, we can expect to see boundless iterations of novel use cases and blockchain continuing to shape our world in a multitude of innovative ways.”
Ida Mok
Ida Mok is the Co-Founder and President of Women in Blockchain Asia (WIBA), where she is building, raising and empowering a generation of Asian women builders, thought leaders and policy drivers in the blockchain space through active and supported participation in projects, education and funding opportunities.
Allyson Downey
Allyson Downey is the Co-Founder of Meta Angels, an NFT community that “harnesses metaverse relationships to unlock real-life opportunities”.
“We wanted to build out something that brought everybody to the table, regardless of their life experience to date, as long as they share the same core values of generosity of spirit, transparency and a belief in getting other people into the room.”
Downey believes there is still an opportunity to set a foundation for equitable gender representation within Web3. She adds that investing in developing an ecosystem that includes more female founders is an economically clever move.
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