Women save the world from victoria’s secret, neurodegenerative diseases, and more
Hi friends,
The only woman that won something this week was Sansa Stark —it’s been an unfavorable one for the rest of us. We’re using this edition of 4CJ to highlight some incredible women-owned companies that make us excited for the future.
In 2009, two recent college grads with less than $100 dollars in savings and almost no experience in PR decided to start a firm in the big apple. Their names are Mallory Blair and Bianca Caampued; the 20-something “small girls” got really good at Tumblr just as influencer marketing was coming of age. Instead of sending press releases to giant mailing lists, they raise brand awareness by starting hashtags like #instahusband (for Task Rabbit) and giving out free shoes to famous sneakerheads (for a GE and NASA collaboration). All of their campaigns feel extremely cool and personal. Today, they “steer a team of many talented taller people” and help out companies like Google, Sweetgreen, and Outdoor Voices.
They’re hiring interns (NYC, LA) and a PR director (NYC).
“Dame Products was founded by smart women with the purpose of making phenomenal sex toys.” And that about covers it: Dame is an awesome company that isn’t mincing words. Five years ago, they set off to close the pleasure gap (the fact that women only orgasm about 39% of the time during sex, compared to 91% for men). They started out by making prototypes with quarters and rubber bands and eventually raised over 500k via crowdfunding. The appeal is that Dame feels modern and friendly in a world where you probably still feel either guilty or grimy or confused when you buy a sex toy. Their products are minimalist, ergonomic, and have delightful names like Pom, Fin, and Kip. They also really lean into Call Me by Your Name-esque apricot symbolism.
They are hiring a part-time summer design intern for what looks like an incredible gig as well as a more experienced content marketer. There is also an opportunity to join their research community, Dame Labs, as a product tester.
Drug discovery is a billion-dollar, decades-long process of trial and error: traditionally, incomplete medical hypotheses are tested one-by-one in a wet lab. UCLA PhD dropout Alice Zhang formed Verge to radically improve this process by combining lab work with modern machine learning. Her company uses computational genomics to build a “scalable drug discovery engine” that “automates the discovery of cures” for “every human disease, personalized for each patient.” The premise is jaw-dropping and Zhang will tell you about it without batting an eyelash. Right now, they mainly focus on neurodegenerative conditions like ALS and Alzheimer's; they’re in the process of building and mining huge genomic databases to identify disease signatures. At this pace, the company is going to release its first drug before it buys a domain name: their website URL is still https://alice-zhang-7vg5.squarespace.com/
They’re hiring research associates (entry level), biostatisticians, statistical geneticists, and more.
Modern bra sizing was invented in the 1930s, back when the corset was the undergarment of choice. Someone decided that letters would be used to represent “how pendulous the breasts were...not their volume,” and someone else decided that band measurements would be based on the “ideal female body,” which has to do with the relationship between hip size and waist size (source). It is no surprise that 80 years later, in 2012, one woman named Heidi Zak owned 12 bras but found that none of them fit. She decided to build her own. Today, ThirdLove classifies bras by style (how you want your boobs to look) and breast shape (how your boobs look on their own) and half sizes (for more granularity): a whole bunch of things no one had ever thought of before. They offer nude for every skin tone and spend time raising awareness about breast cancer.
Thirdlove needs creatives, copywriters and CX associates in San Francisco.
See you next week.
Love,
Your Caring Parents
(Dana & Lea)
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