8 Fearless Millennial Women Who Founded Their Own Companies

The many badasses of our generation are pretty evident at this point. We are a generation that carves our own path and doesn’t care who watches us do it. One of the major defining aspects about our generation is that we want to be our own bosses; we want to work under our own terms, which leads to us either winging it and creating our own jobs as we go (which sometimes fails miserably but hey we try).

This is all probably a side effect from the fact that when Millennial students were graduating college and had no job perspectives in sight. We had to get creative. We had to adapt to the situation around us. It was sink or swim for a while and we are still seeing the effects of that in more subtle ways, like badass women starting their own companies when the going got tough. Here are a couple of them, so get ready to take some pointers because these women know how to get shit done and create a better place for women everywhere.

Sarah Adler and Mackenzie Barth


Founders of Spoon University, a website created to highlight college food. The site is described as an “everyday food resource for our generation,” and it basically helps college students figure out what the hell to cook, eat, and prepare while living on their own. The site has chapters which means each campus has a chapter with location specific articles. The company is highly involved with the Food Network and takes over their Snapchat every Saturday (my fave day on the Food Network Snapchat) for Spoon Saturdays. These two women created a place for the helpless college students who were dying of starvation. Pretty legit.

Catherine Powell


Catherine founded NKD magazine her junior year of high school. Let me repeat, this chick was like 16 and she just up and started her own magazine about music and celebrities. This chick is getting the big names too. Past covers have included stars such as Emily Osment, Kelsea Ballerini, and Camilla Luddington-and that’s just since February. Like, come on, this chick is casually hanging out with celebrities and musicians on the reg for her job, which she created for herself. What else could spell out badass millennial?

Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin


The Skimm is a daily news site dedicated to give the news in a faster and smarter way. The two girls meet while studying abroad when they were in their twenties and bonded over their passion for the news. They parted ways but met back up years later while working back in New York and Chicago. At this time, they had mastered the art of storytelling and teamed up to give the world a fast, easy way to get their daily news. They have a founding story that seems more like a rom-com than real life, but I am so glad it brought us quick news at our fingertips.

Hayley Barna and Katia Beauchamp


If you don’t know these names, you will definitely know their company: Birchbox. Birchbox is a monthly subscription box that mails you samples of the latest beauty products for you to try out for yourself. Their idea was to create a way to allow girls to try products without buying the full-sized product and spending their whole paycheck on a product that they have a 50/50 chance of actually liking. With Hayley and Katia’s company you can try a bit of everything and then go buy the full-sized products of the samples you love. The company just had its second birthday and now has operations in five different countries. If this isn’t women working to help out other women, I don’t know what is.

Michelle Shahparast


Since you are on this site, you need to know who this kick ass chick is. She is the CEO and co-founder of Unwritten and is responsible for changing the lives of thousands of college students across the globe. She created our lovely website her sophomore year of college and basically built it from the ground up. She has brought 150+ writers worldwide together to create a team that acts more like a family than co-workers. And it shows. Everyone on the team just wants what is best for each other and the site as a whole. Now, three years after she created the site, she works full-time at Refinery29 and still runs the site. Total and complete badass.

These Gen-Y women all threw on their heels, kicked the guys to the side, and did what they were passionate about in the most badass and dedicated ways imaginable. They became their own bosses, organized thousands of other members of their company, and are taking the world by storm. In my opinion at least, they are the definition of a badass girl boss. Keep doing amazing things ladies.

Featured image via Catherine Powell


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