Her Hustle got an exclusive first look at Lumeria, the YC S26 startup developing what its founders describe as an “Oura Ring for your skin.” Its first product, the LumoScope, slides onto a phone’s camera and uses UV, RGB, and polarized light to reveal what is happening beneath the skin’s surface. Paired with Lumeria’s app, it tracks changes, identifies potential causes of breakouts and dryness, and learns how someone’s skin responds to products, habits, stress, and environmental factors—replacing skincare guesswork with personalized data.
Lumeria’s founders bring deep experience to solving this problem. Maryanne Alhallak started her first biotech company in high school after watching her diabetic grandfather struggle to understand the nutritional content of his food. After winning major innovation competitions and continuing the company at Berkeley, she sold its blueprints to a healthcare company while still in college. Anthea Guo has spent years building impactful communities and technologies across China and Berkeley, from creating initiatives that helped women in rural China attend school to co-founding Berkeley’s computational biology organization. Together, they are combining their expertise across health, AI, and beauty to give people more agency over their skin.
Lumeria will publicly launch on August 11, but Her Hustle readers can get in early: preorders are officially open today for $199, down from $329, through August 16 only. Use code herhustle at checkout for an additional $10 off—the exclusive code expires in two weeks. Preorder your LumoScope here, follow Lumeria on Instagram, X, YouTube, and LinkedIn, & join the waitlist at lumeria.skin to receive future product updates and offers!
Sarah O. Kalil, Co-Founder, President, and CEO of CoreMap, a medical technology company developing personalized atrial-fibrillation mapping tools, raised $37M in Series C financing led by Medtronic.
Kaitlyn Albertoli, CEO and Co-Founder of Buzz Solutions, an AI platform helping utilities inspect and manage critical energy infrastructure, raised $20M in Series A funding led by S3 Ventures, with participation from GoPoint Ventures, HearstLab, and Blackhorn Ventures.
Madhulika Mukherjee, Co-Founder of Delightree, an AI operating system for franchise and multi-location businesses, raised $25M in funding from Innovius, Accel, Timber Grove Ventures, and Emergent.
Hanna Roos, Founder and CEO of Aavalynx, an AI-powered risk and capital-management platform for enterprise dispute resolution, raised £1.5M in Pre-Seed funding led by Omega Ventures, with participation from Two Ravens and other investors.
Iskra Lawrence, Co-Founder of Saltair, a skincare-inspired body-care and fragrance brand, received an undisclosed majority investment from TSG Consumer to support its retail and e-commerce expansion.
Grace Li, Co-Founder and CEO of The Intelligence Company, the company behind the crowdsourced AI benchmarking platform Design Arena, raised $7.9M in Seed funding led by Index Ventures, with participation from Conviction, A*, and Valkyrie.
Yi Larson, Founder and CEO of Expedition Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech developing therapies for inflammatory and respiratory diseases, raised $115M in Series B financing led by General Atlantic, with participation from RA Capital, Vivo Capital, Sofinnova Investments, Novo Holdings, Forbion, and others.
Garima Luthra, Co-Founder of Vaaree, an AI-powered home décor and furnishings marketplace, raised $6.6M in Series A funding co-led by Hero Enterprise and Cap Alpha Ventures, with participation from Peak XV Partners’ Surge, PeerCapital, All In Capital, Better Capital, and OTP Ventures.
Forum Ventures Operating Partner Olivia O’Sullivan on the rise of audience-first founders: some founders are raising capital on the strength of massive social followings before they have meaningful revenue. But she argues that virality is only valuable when it reflects genuine customer understanding, since followers and engagement do not automatically translate into paying customers.
Twin sisters Danielle and Leah Cohen-Shohet have built one of the newest female-founded AI unicorns. Their company, formerly GlossGenius and now Genius AI, raised $44 million at a $1.15 billion valuation and is expanding from beauty and wellness software into AI infrastructure for the broader in-person service economy.
Feminai CEO Karny Ilan on why she has stopped leading investor conversations with terms like “FemTech” and “women’s health”. She says those labels can cause investors to underestimate the size of the opportunity, so she now leads with market size, economics, scalability, and the business case instead.
• Genius AI (Danielle Cohen-Shohet & Leah Cohen-Shohet) – Creative Direction, Software Engineering, Engineering Management, IT Engineering, Growth Marketing, Brand Marketing, Product Marketing, People Operations, Recruiting, Product Management, Sales, GTM Operations and Strategy & Operations (New York City, San Francisco, Remote U.S. & Remote Toronto)
• Andera (Tinah Hong) – Founding AI Engineering and Product Engineering Leadership (On-site in San Francisco)
• Function Health (Pranitha Patil) – Product and Content Design, Software Engineering, AI Engineering, Data Engineering, Healthcare Operations, Nursing, Product Analytics, Brand Marketing, Workforce Strategy, Recruiting, Finance, Product Management, Partnerships and Product Security (Remote across the U.S.)
• Passionfroot (Jennifer Phan) – Go-to-Market, Sales Leadership, Growth, Creator Partnerships, Marketing, Product Engineering, Client Deployment, Creator Programs and Finance (New York City, Berlin & São Paulo; Hybrid)
• ORiS - Space (Anna Mauro) – Hardware Design, Mechatronics and Controls, Communications, Space and Defence Business Development, AI and Operations, Systems Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, HR, Electronics, Detection and Tracking, Thermal Engineering and Optical-Photonics Engineering (Torino)
• imagi (⚡️Dora Palfi & ⚡️Beatrice Ionascu) – Founding Full-Stack Engineering focused on backend systems, AI safety, infrastructure and security (On-site in Stockholm)
• Cascade (Hannia Zia & Joana F.) – Founding Engineering and Pre-Construction/Civil Engineering (On-site in New York City)
• Furbnow (Becky Lane) – Product Design and Open Applications (London & Remote)
• Flourish Health (Dr. Natalia Birgisson, MD) – Mental Health Therapy, Therapy Leadership, Adolescent Mental Health Guidance, Operations Leadership and Growth (Remote & Hybrid in Topeka)
• Antares (Julia DeWahl) – Finance, Government Affairs, Manufacturing, Machining, Quality, Testing, Mission Engineering, Nuclear Operations, Nuclear Engineering, Software and Firmware Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Supply Chain, Materials Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and People Operations (Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. & Idaho Falls; On-site and Hybrid)
• Spur Intelligence (Riley Kilmer) – Integrations Engineering, Customer Success, Content Marketing and Marketing Programs and Events (Remote across the U.S. and U.K.)
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I hope you enjoyed this newsletter, Hustlers!
Love,
Daniela