Kathryn Minshew, Alex Cavoulacos, Melissa McCreery made our list.  Women are (relatively) few and far between in the tech industry. 

They make up less than 10% of venture capitalists, and they leave the industry at twice the rate of men, according to a recent study by the Kauffman Foundation. 

There's also a shortage of women pursuing engineering, particularly software engineering. 

But the women who do choose to enter the tech industry in one way or another are doing incredibly important work. 

Over the last couple of weeks, Business Insider accepted nominations for the most important women 30 years old or under in tech.  We combined those nominations with our own research to give our readers a definitive list. 

We were truly blown away by the number of young, successful women in the tech industry.  These women hold a variety of roles in the industry: founder, CEO, engineer, venture capitalist — you name it.