#52 Varsha Rao

Varsha Rao #52 CEO, Nurx By day, Varsha Rao runs Nurx, a drug-delivery company that’s raised $113 million in funding to date. On the side, she moonlights as an angel investor, using her operational knowledge and wealth of connections to support entrepreneurs, especially female founders. She’s backed Athelas, a unicorn patient-health-monitoring startup; Codi, a flexible-office-space provider; and Sequel, a leak-preventing tampon-maker, which all have female co-founders. “I founded a startup during the late-’90s dot-com era when it was rare for women to do that,” said Rao, whose online beauty retailer, Eve.com, sold to Idealab for $110 million in 2000. “So I know firsthand some of the particular challenges women face when fundraising and operating in a world that’s still pretty male-dominated.” Before Nurx, Rao worked as the chief operating officer of Clover Health and served as the head of global operations for Airbnb during its rocket-ship-growth stage from 2013 to 2016. Source: businessInsider