ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE FEMALE FOUNERS 250

SUCCESS often breeds success-but triumphs also arise out of necessity. Consider that Airbnb, Uber, and Rent the Runway started during the Great Recession. In many ways, the past year was defined by similar tumult. While the U.S. never technically entered a recession, the retrenchment in investment and ad spending paired with the psychological-if not direct-toll of tech layoffs yielded tough times indeed. But female founders are nothing if not resilient, and their achievements defied the conditions they faced, giving us cause to expand our list to 250 of them. They're not ranked, but they are organized around themes. In the pages that follow, you'll find snapshots of courage from women who've overcome trials-such as keeping the internet running in war zones, coping with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, or facing personal crises. You'll also learn how this year's top female founders grew their collective 2023 revenue to more than $8.86 billion, raised $6.2 billion in funding to date, and kept it together not just to survive, but to thrive.

- CHRISTINE LAGORIO-CHAFKIN, JENNIFER ALSEVER, HANNAH WALLACE

MICHELLE ZATLYN

Co-founder, president, and COO of Cloudflare

Leading Through Tough Times

AImost immediately after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel that led to the war in Gaza, another battle was brewing. Hackers first went after the Israeli internet with DDoS attacks, deluging websites that provide critical alerts and information to civilians. Cyberattackers then went after Palestinian sites, too-particularly in the banking sector.

Michelle Zatlyn, 44, was on the virtual frontlines. Within 12 minutes of the initial rocket assaults, the San Francisco-based company she co-founded, Cloudflare, detected and began mitigating attacks from hackers, presumed to be state actors, as well as civilians and so-called hacktivists, according to legal experts. In the weeks that followed, the company, which provides cybersecurity services to about 20 percent of the world's websites, automatically identified and stopped DDoS attacks that amounted to five billion site requests.

For Zatlyn, taking sides in the conflict wasn't an option. "Whether sites were run by Palestinians or Israelis, we said, 'Hey, if you need cybersecurity, we are here to help you,'" she says. "Organizations, schools, governments were under attack; our employees were onboarding them in a very quick fashion and making sure that they could securely stay online."

The company has for years applied its "better-internet" mission to giving away its services to groups in need; it runs three major internal programs that help protect and provide free security to schools and humanitarian aid organizations, among others. Together, they guard more than 2,900 web properties, and Cloudflare estimates it has invested $48.5 million in the initiatives over the past six years. But the team's effort in the past year had never felt more urgent.