Beta Boom's Comprehensive Guide for Female Founders

Inspiration for Female Founders

Thinking about starting a startup but not sure how to take the first step or if you should even take that step, we’ve got some handpicked podcasts, books, and influencers to both inspire you and also give you a realistic view into what it’s actually like to launch and grow a startup company.

Now updated for 2024!

Podcasts that Feature Female Founders

How I Built This – Hosted by Guy Raz. Stories about innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists—and the movements they built.
Women Who Startup – Hosted by Lizelle van Vuuren and Krista Morgan. The podcast celebrates, connects, and empowers women who startup, women founders, women who code, women in tech, and women entrepreneurs
Being Boss – Hosted by Emily Thompson & Cathleen Shannon. Described as a podcast for creative entrepreneurs, freelancers, and side-hustlers.
Goal Digger Podcast – Hosted by Jenna Kutcher. The podcast shares productivity tips, social media strategies, business hacks, and inspirational stories to help you design your dream career.
Women Taking the Lead – Hosted by Jodi Flynn. Podcast for women looking to make an impact, created to inspire ambitious, go-getting women to overcome self-doubt so they can lead with confidence, integrity and a sense of humor.
Girlboss Radio – Hosted by Sophia Amaruso. Sophia interviews boundary-pushing women making their mark who share the lessons they’ve learned along the way
Glambition Radio – Ended in 2023. Hosted by Ali Brown. The podcast has powerful interviews with top entrepreneurs, thought leaders, business builders, and catalysts of change.
Bossbabe Podcast – Hosted by Natalie Ellis and Danniel Canty. The podcast shares the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving goals and learning how to balance it all.

Books by Successful Female Founders

Shark Tales: How I Turned $1,000 Into a Billion Dollar Business – By Barbara Corcoran. Shark Tank investor and real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran details her rise from penniless waitress to wildly successful entrepreneur, offering advice for female founders.
#GIRLBOSS – By Sophia Amoruso. The Nasty Gal founder shares her rags-to-riches story to empower people considering entrepreneurship. It promotes experimenting, learning, and just doing.
Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder – By Arianna Huffington. The Huffington Post founder and CEO of Thrive Global explains how to reach for the stars while still staying sane and healthy.
Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person – By Shonda Rhimes. The successful and highest-paid showrunner on television shares how she went from terrified introvert to cultural powerhouse by saying yes to everything that scared her for one year.
Mistakes I Made at Work: 25 Influential Women Reflect on What They Got Out of Getting It Wrong – By Jessica Bacal?. Jessica Bacal brings inspiring moments and realizations from high achieving women who discuss their biggest screw-ups and how they recovered.
A Good Time to Be a Girl – By Helena Morrissey. Morrissey is unusual, and her book is essentially against pigeonholing women; and why people who don’t fit the mold should be valued for that, rather than forced to conform. She encourages women to just do what suits them and stop worrying.
She Means Business: Turn Your Ideas into Reality and Become a Wildly Successful Entrepreneur – By Carrie Green. This is a great book for those who have business ideas but are not sure which are the steps to follow and how your vision can take shape.
The Glitter Plan: How We Started Juicy Couture for $200 and Turned It Into a Global Brand – By Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor. The book tells the making of the clothing brand Juicy Couture from making maternity jeans on the floor of a one-bedroom Hollywood apartment to launching collections on the runways in Paris.
Why Didn’t Anybody Tell Me This Sh*T Before: Wit And Wisdom From Women In Business – By Marcella Allison. The book is a collection of over 60 letters from women who know what it takes to run a business, from solopreneurs to multimillion-dollar success stories.
Women Who Launch: The Women Who Shattered Glass Ceilings – By Marlene Wagman-Geller. An inspiring book for female founders that tells a history of the most influential women in business, narrating the stories of how they achieved lasting success

Successful Female Founders to Follow on Social Media

Get inspiration and insights from other female founders that have been in your shoes and created massively successful businesses.

Sara Blakely – Founder of @spanx and Sneex, became the youngest female self-made billionaire in 2012.

Insta- sarablakely
Linkedin- Sara Blakely

Morgan Debaun – Founder and CEO of @blavity Inc, is also an investor and small business advisor.

Jasmine Crowe – Founder & CEO Goodr. Passionate Award-winning tech & social entrepreneur.

Alexa von Tobel – Founder of @LearnVest and @InspiredCapital. Financial Advisor and Investor.

Tiffany Dufu – Founder & CEO of @TheCru, author of Drop the Ball, and ‘catalyst-at-large’ of women leadership.

Insta- @tdufu
Linkedin- Tiffany Dufu

Mandela Schumacher-Hodge Dixon- Founder & CEO of @FounderGym, startup trainer and advisor, investor.

Insta- @mandelash
X- @mandelaSH
Linkedin- Mandela Schumacher-Hodge Dixon

Karlie Kloss– Founder of klossy and @kodewithklossy, Supermodel and Entrepreneur. Passionate about helping girls learn tech.

Ashley Stahl – Entrepreneur, Author, Speaker and career coach. Host of @YouTurnPodcast

Esosa Ighodaro – Co-Founder, Black Women Talk Tech, Co-Founder Nexstar, Co-Founder, CoSign. Serial Entrepreneur and Tech Enthusiast.

Insta- @anythingbutsoso
Linkedin- Esosa Ighodaro

Kathryn Finney – Founder & CEO @digitalundivided. Investor @GeniusGuild. Author, Investor and Businesswoman.

Sophia Amoruso – Founder & Author of @GirlBoss. Investor @TrustFund. Business Advisor and Investor.

Rachael Hollis – Founder & CEO of @theholliscompany. Author, Motivational Speaker and Blogger

Insta- @msrachaelhollis
Linkedin- Rachael Hollis

Jessica Alba – Founder of the Honest Company and Honest Beauty. Actress and Businesswoman.

Launching and Growing Your Startup

If you’re ready to build your product and start your startup, these resources for female founders and all founders are for you. Below you’ll find video series, podcasts, and books that we hand-picked to help you get started.

Video Series About Launching and Growing Your Startup

Kauffman Founders School – The channel offers online educational resources dedicated to entrepreneurship to give founders the skills and tools to build their ideas into something big.
YC Startup School – The channel by Y Combinator is a mix of video and podcasts that focus on lessons in the YC startup school. It’s a great resource and inspiration for any startup founder.
Sunny Lenarduzzi – The channel, a mix of video and marketing tips, is about branding, business and being your own boss.
500 Startups – The channel by venture capital firm 500 Startups provides lessons, interviews from founders and demos from their cohorts with an aim to help entrepreneurs create successful companies.
Google for Startups – The channel provides a startup community and helps startup businesses with the best of Google’s products, connections, and best practices.
Lean Startup Co. – The channel is a mix of interviews, discussions and lessons that aim to help founders learn to manage extreme uncertainty the startup way.
How to start a Startup – The channel provides lengthy comprehensive lectures on how to start a startup. From before the startup, building a team, execution, legal and accounting basics among others.
Slidebean – The channel, by Slidebean provides startup101 content for founders on funding, developing pitch decks and company forensics.
Raw Startup – Hosted by Heini Zachariassen, the channel covers relevant subjects for entrepreneurs based on Heini’s experience building Vivino, the world’s largest wine app, from ideation to exit.

Podcasts About Launching and Growing Your Startup

Masters of Scale by Reid Hoffman – A podcast about how companies grow from zero to a gazillion.
The Tim Ferriss Show – A high ranking business podcast that extracts tactics, tools, and routines from world class performers that can be applied by anyone.
Mixergy – Startup Stories with 1000+ entrepreneurs and businesses. The podcast also gets successful founders to teach courses available on subscription.
Traction: How Startups Start – A podcast about how to grow startups from zero to early results for early stage entrepreneurs. It interviews successful founders who tell stories of how they started- before funding, co-founders or products.
Lean Startup – An inspiring podcast about entrepreneurship, product development, and modern management.
Startups For The Rest of Us – A startup podcast for SaaS company founders looking to launch and grow their startup.
The Full Ratchet – A podcast for startup founders that focuses solely on Venture Capital and the startup funding process from A to Z.
Rocketship – The podcast interviews entrepreneurs and founders and discusses startup and growth strategies in detail.
The Sales Hacker Podcast – The podcast is a great resource for go-to-market startup teams that discusses the latest in sales tips, tactics, and strategies from thought leaders in the tech sales space.
The Growth Show – This podcast by HubSpot focuses on driving growth–growth of business, an idea, and even teams.

Books on Launching and Growing a Startup

These books about launching and growing startups are useful for female founders and all founders.

Lean Startup by Eric Ries – The lean Startup is one of the core business books that revolutionized the business startup environment. A must-read for every startup founder.
Startup Owners Manual by Bob Dorf and Steve Blank – This book provides detailed, step-by-step instructions on building successful, scalable, profitable startups. It is taught at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and many other leading universities worldwide.
Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters – The book by paypal co-founder Peter Thiel, focuses on how to build companies that create new things to create a monopoly, not competition. It emphasizes that successful people find value in unexpected places, and not from copying what successful founders have done, but learning from them.
Disciplined Entrepreneurship by Bill Aulet – The book shows how to create a successful startup through developing an innovative product. It breaks down the necessary processes into an integrated, comprehensive, and proven 24-step framework that any industrious person can learn and apply.
Traction by Gino Wickman – Traction teaches about ‘The Entrepreneurial Operating System®,’ a practical method for achieving the business success you have always envisioned. It shows the secrets of strengthening the six key components of your business, identifies simple yet powerful ways to run your company and teams towards more focus, more growth, and more enjoyment.
Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh – What separates the startups that get disrupted and disappear from the ones who grow to become global giants? Blitzscaling. Going from one to one billion –as quickly as possible!The book focuses on how to navigate the necessary shifts and weather the unique challenges that arise at each stage of a company’s life cycle.
Obviously Awesome by April Dunford – The book is about how to break through the noise of a crowded market. It shows you how to find your product’s “secret sauce”—and then successfully connecting your product with consumers who want it.
Hooked by Nir Eyal and Ryan Hoover – The book explains the Hook Model—a four-step process embedded into the products of many successful companies to subtly encourage customer behavior.
Explosive Growth by Cliff Lerner – The book, by Cliff Lerner, offers a rare behind-the-scenes look inside a fast-growing startup that created the first online dating app and grew to 100 million users. It holds nothing back while detailing the highest highs and lowest lows of what it’s really like to run a startup.

Thanks for checking out our Giant Guide for Female Founders. Please feel free to reach out to let us know what else you’d like to see. Email us at hello[at]betaboom.com.

Also, check out our Beta Boom New Pattern Magazine that shares stories and insights on founders (including many female founders), who don’t fit the traditional Silicon Valley pattern, who have navigated many challenges on their path to success. Sign up for the newsletter below.

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