Women entrepreneurship has been a talking point for the longest time, and those who have seen their dreams through are the real inspiration. It’s International Women’s Day, a day to celebrate women achievers who set new standards in their respective fields every day.

While the challenges are many, women entrepreneurs are taking the plunge to build scalable start-ups. The women here on the list are the leaders in the SaaS industry who have overcome obstacles and created empires, setting the bar high for the competition out there. 

Melanie Perkins - Canva

What began as a side hustle in 2013, turned into a full-fledged business for Canva co-founder Melanie Perkins.

The young founder started the company in Australia in a bid to make design accessible to all - be it for logos, business cards or presentations. Fast forward five years, and she was making the headlines as one of tech’s youngest female CEOs. 

With the support from some amazing investors, she expanded Canva’s team in Australia and around the world. Under her leadership, Canva has won hundreds of thousands of loyal users across 190 countries. 

Katherine Kostereva - Creatio

Katherine Kostereva is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Creatio. Prior to founding Creatio, she was the CEO of two other software companies where her role included sales, marketing and delivery leadership.

Katherine has steered Creatio to deliver its low-code platform to customers worldwide. 

At the helm of company success, Kostereva has led the way for women in SaaS and her leadership style continues to inspire developers, investors, and consumers alike. In fact, she was named to the top 50 Women Leaders in SaaS of 2021 by The Software Report(TSR).

Edith Harbaugh - LaunchDarkly

Edith Harbaugh is the co-founder and CEO of LaunchDarkly and a serial entrepreneur and software executive with extensive experience building technology products from scratch.

As a woman in tech, she founded LaunchDarkly, a feature management platform that helps software teams develop better software by flagging features to eliminate risk from the dev cycle. Before founding LaunchDarkly, Edith spent her career in software development and product management. 

She's authored thought leadership blog posts and podcasts on continuous delivery, software trends and DevOps issues. If you ask us, you can think of her as a superhero. 

Laura Behrens Wu - Shippo

As the CEO and Co-founder of Shippo, Laura Behrens Wu has helped countless small business owners and e-commerce entrepreneurs get the tools to ship out their orders at a low cost.

Shippo is a SaaS company that offers a simple API for businesses to use to simplify logistics and lower shipping costs. This makes it easy for businesses of all sizes to connect with multiple carriers like DHL, FedEx, etc. 

Now that she has taken her idea from whiteboard to reality, her personal mission is to make global trade as easy as sending an email. 

Hande Cilingir - Insider

Co-Founder and CEO of Insider, Hande Cilingir is an expert in global growth and business development. 

At Insider, Cilingir oversees operations with an emphasis on building strong company culture. She leads day-to-day operations at Insider, managing the company culture by emphasizing transparency, communication, and cooperation across all areas of the business.

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In the year 2020, Crunchbase ranked Cilingir as one of the top three female CEOs outside of the U.S. Among her notable accolades, she was also granted the most successful Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award by Microsoft.