Meet Five Women Who Turned Their Ideas Into Apps, And Helped Change The World

Where would we actually be without our smartphone apps? The world has changed, and apps have the potential to make our lives better, safer, more connected, more fun, more informed, more fabulous 

Have you ever thought ‘Woah, if an -XYZ- app existed, that would be super dope/life-changing!’? It could be about absolutely anything; from cafe-hopping, to photo editing, to tracking our fitness and health, to finding the nearest junk food when you’re hungover, to saving lives, to augmenting our wardrobe reality, to easily accessing info while travelling. 

Samsung want to give young women the opportunity to change the world with their app concepts with their Adappt Big Ideas: Girls In Tech competition. (Yeah ladies, there’s also dope prizes if your idea for an app is a winner.)

To inspire ya’ll, here’s five app development entrepreneuHERs (*badoom tish*) who saw a gap in their respective markets, and realised that they could change lives with their ideas. Number six on this list could be you – see the bottom of this article to enter. 

Komal Ahmad says that excess food wastage “is literally the world’s dumbest problem.”

Feeding Forward allows companies, event planners, caterers etc. to donate any excess food to homeless shelters and soup kitchens with the click of a button. The company requests a pickup of the excess food they currently have; then one of Feeding Forward’s drivers come and pick up the delivery, and drive it to the shelter that has requested help. It’s the Uber for feeding the unfortunate – such a simple idea, which is saving lives.

“This happens to a lot of women. At tech events, there’s always 5 to 10 minutes of hardcore questions from all the technology men who don’t believe in the product or that we have the chops to handle it. They’ll tell us, “This already exists, haven’t you heard of AR (augmented reality)? Your product has no value.” But we have value: Preexisting AR works with flat pieces of paper and soft surfaces. We print on a hard, curved surface. Nobody in the world is doing that. We are the first. These guys don’t want to believe that there’s something fun or novel we can do with technology. They don’t think tech has values for girls or for beauty. But we can do anything! We just have to take the keys to the car and figure it out ourselves.”

Every person that menstruates should give Clue a go at some point in their life. It’s not pink and flowery; it’s smart, well-designed, and can help you keep track of why you’re PMS-ing so hard, or even if you’re trying to fall preggo. It helps you learn about your own body, and the science behind your cycle. 

The CEO, Ida Tin, created the app after experiencing side effects from a birth control pill, and being shocked by the fact that her doctor could not suggest any other contraceptive/family planning options for her – because there weren’t any. She realised that while technology and apps had advanced so far, fertility and birth control had barely advanced at all – so why not mix them two together?

She also believed that women in tech are much needed to equalise the scales and make the area bigger for women, saying this to The Mary Sue: “Go take up some space, make your voice heard and don’t hold back. The world needs you, and all the other women need you to pave the way.”

“Self doubt is completely made up in our heads pretty much all of the time. Mindfulness gives you the power to separate those thoughts from reality, which is so incredibly empowering… I find it really empowering being a woman. I think, and this is in general terms, women have historically been better at compassion and gratitude and those sort of softer emotions and combining that now with strength and confidence and pushing through self doubt and all of those things, I think it’s incredibly empowering.”

Wolfe is a total badass. She refuses to be determined by the infamous Tinder lawsuit that happened between her and ex-partner (who she co-founded the app with), and now she is a successful female CEO at age 25. After the lawsuit, she realised that dating apps were created purely for men in mind – so she created Bumble, a dating app that is safer for women. The layout and concept is similar to Tinder; however, only the woman can strike up conversation. This lowers the risk of receiving unsolicited pornographic images or messages – if that’s not life-changing, we don’t know what is!