In the pre-dotbomb days, there was Ravisent, which made DVD decoder software and hardware, they were later acquired by ST Micro. Yes, the main founders were 2

In the pre-dotbomb days, there was Ravisent, which made DVD decoder software and hardware, they were later acquired by ST Micro. Yes, the main founders were 2 guys, but a lot of women were involved in the early days (when there were less than 25 employees), including the woman in her 40s who ran the procurement and scheduling for the hardware line; a senior VP in charge of all marketing who had previously been at ATT and Toshiba; and over half the sales team was composed of women. There was ArsDigita started by Phil Greenspun, Jin Choi and Tracy Adams, IIRC. I will sort of waffle a little bit here, in that there are many successful businesses I know of that are not on the going-public or being-acquired track. I will freely admit that I know of less "basic research" type companies that have women founders.