Rebecca Minkoff and Alison Wyatt’s Fight to Power Women Founders in a Tougher Era

Women founded nearly half of all new businesses in 2024, up from just 29 percent in 2019—a 69 percent jump that marks a five-year high, according to payroll platform Gusto. Over the past seven years, the Female Founders Collective has been working to meet this moment, with a mission to support, develop and elevate women-owned companies at every stage. Co-founded by fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff and Alison Wyatt, former Girlboss president and Goop’s chief revenue officer, the collective was built to offer what many women entrepreneurs say they lack: real community, practical education and access to capital.

Part-membership network and part-impact organization, the collective connects female founders to each other while also offering more structured support through two key initiatives: the 10th House, an expert-led advisory and education platform, and the North, a foundation that provides cash grants alongside resources, tools and programming to help members grow and scale their businesses. Today, the FFC counts roughly 25,000 members, nearly half of whom are women of color.

Last week, Minkoff and Wyatt brought that community together at Industry City in Brooklyn for their annual Female Founders Day summit. This year’s theme, “Metamorphosis,” focused on how female founders move through three stages—Build, Become and Breakthrough—as they grow their companies and their leadership. More than 500 women entrepreneurs, operators and investors spent the day in sessions on funding, leadership and sustainable growth.

Observer spoke with Wyatt and Minkoff about their paths as founders, the challenges women entrepreneurs face today, how the FFC has evolved, and what it will take to get more women-led businesses past the million-dollar mark.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you walk me through your journeys as founders and how those experiences have shaped how you build businesses today?

Wyatt: I grew up in the media world, working for Elle and InStyle magazines. When I went to Elle after InStyle, it was on the digital side—it’s like the age of A.I. for us now, where “digital” was this new thing and nobody knew quite what to do with it—so they gave it to me, this 24-year-old girl, to figure out how to monetize it. It ended up doing so well that it became a major revenue driver for the magazine. I kept getting elevated, which was exciting, but then we reached a point where we had no more inventory to sell, so I started building a network.

Long story short: I ended up at Refinery29 in that process, which was very much a startup. Working there introduced me to the startup world because when I got there, we had one phone line, were in a basement, had card-table desks, and had a lot of large cockroaches as our office mates. That was my foray into the startup world. It started at $200,000 [in annual revenue] and went all the way to $65 million when I left. I helped build out the revenue team, then went to Goop.

Minkoff: I never identified myself as a female founder. I was just going about it. But I realized around 2017 or 2018 that there weren’t many of us, and that for those who are here, it’s very lonely. Then, when you look at corporate America, there’s wage inequality. Some people would say. “There’s no difference in the founder of this, founder that,” but I was like, “Yeah, there is. I’m a female founder.” Defining that and realizing that this is a broken system we’re trying to navigate signals that we want to change it. But 2017 and 2018 were really when I realized we were a species going extinct.

How did the idea for the FFC first take shape, and what problem were you both most determined to solve with it?

Wyatt: Rebecca and I met at a panel in the early days. I saw her at Cannes Lions, sitting on the floor of the bathroom in the ladies’ lounge, pumping. I thought to myself, “That is so cool. You literally just came off my panel, and you’re sitting there on the ground pumping,” which in a corporate setting was so unheard of. It made me think this is what the world needs to look like—to have choices be that free, and have women feel that free, where they can determine their own path to success, whatever that looks like.

We met then, but it wasn’t until after I was at Girlboss [the media platform founded by Sophia Amoruso that provided community and resources for women’s businesses] and saw that female founders made up the largest portion of our audience. They would come to our events, and we had this place called Startup Studio [a collaboration between Girlboss and Uber that offered digital and real-life resources to support emerging women entrepreneurs], where we taught purely entrepreneurship-type courses. These women were so hungry for more, and I felt there needed to be something dedicated to education.

When Rebecca launched Female Founder Collective as this big campaign later, I reached out to her, and together we came up with this concept of community at the foundation, and then ultimately education. Community is great, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you need clarity in your business and real transformation. The goal was to bring together this whole ecosystem.

Minkoff: At the beginning of 2018, I had my third baby. I went on maternity leave when I was outgoing, we hired a CMO [for her fashion brand], and for the first time, we hired a creative director. When I got back to the office, a lot of my functions were being absorbed by these two women, and I still had day-to-day involvement, but it wasn’t as granular as it should be, so I had some time on my hands. Maybe I should start speaking on panels, but I couldn’t measure the ROI from talking because did you go out and make more money because I said something? I don’t know. How do I sense that? How do I feel that? So I had a small event at our store with about 18 people, and I made everyone share something vulnerable about their business. That was cathartic, and I needed that, and I said there needs to be a community.

Like any designer who’s going to launch something, I’m like, “Campaign! Lights!” At the time, my PR assistant, Elisabeth [now the FCC’s head of operations], and I put together a campaign. We did research on female founders, which was impossible to find. It was hard to know who had a woman-owned business. We found 10 and put together a shoot. I pitched the idea to IMG, which puts on Fashion Week, and they had me host a panel with Bozoma Saint John and other women-owned businesses to launch it. We had a campaign to launch and a static web page built by my then-PR assistant. It was overwhelming. There were 3,000 emails and inquiries. Ali and I had met before, and a couple of months later, she reached out and said she wanted to build this with me. It was kismet.

What did the early days of FFC look like, from the first campaigns and events to realizing there was demand for something bigger? How has your annual summit evolved in terms of scale, focus and the kinds of support you’re able to offer?

Wyatt: The first year, it was in one venue, and there were like 100 people, and we had about 80 different workshop opportunities, but it wasn’t under key themes. Over time, Female Founders Day has evolved into a focus on how to implement the ideas [they learned from the summit] in their businesses. We wanted to make it an achievable set of actions that founders can implement immediately in their businesses.

We have four different stages now. One is leadership and development — everything from what their role is as a founder to where they’re going to spend most of their time as they start to build a team, answering questions like: How do I build a team? What do organizational structures look like? How do I hire and retain people? The second is around course marketing. If they have a product, they have to be able to bring it to market. Funding is another important one because there are so many different ways to fund. There’s the narrative that VCs are the only way to go, and that’s what a lot of people chase because you see it in the headlines. We wanted to make sure we were portraying all the different opportunities out there for founders to take on, because you don’t need VC investment to grow. The final one is around operations. How are they running their business on a day-to-day basis?

We created these categories so they could come and learn four key things in each business area, and we added general inspiration to bookend it so people are excited about the opportunities and can dream a little bit.

Minkoff: We have a for-profit and a non-profit component. This year’s event is an example of what our nonprofit puts on, but we also give grants as part of that. So for the LA fires, we raised about $250,000 to give out grants to women-owned businesses that had gone under due to the fire, and we did a women in tech grant in partnership with a big tech company. When we do have those funds, we deploy them, and we don’t just give them the money; we support them with advisors and a network, because you need all three. Our membership continues to grow, and we have this event as a retreat, we have a summit, we have a lot of things, and now it’s like all over the U.S. If you ask people at this event, some of them have flown in [to New York] from Australia, Singapore, everywhere.

Looking at the current landscape, has the environment for women entrepreneurs become tougher, and what specific challenges are you seeing female-led businesses grapple with most?

Wyatt: More women are starting businesses than ever. We have seen that a lot of times, women start businesses without a plan. They know they have the capability, they know they’re talented, they know they want to create their own destinies, but they’re not quite sure about the brass tracks for starting the things they need to know.

There’s also not necessarily a financial plan in place to set those goals or benchmarks for achieving profitability, so many of these businesses shutter, as only 4 to 5 percent of businesses founded by women reach $1 million in revenue. We’re aiming to change that.

Minkoff: The percentage of venture capital that goes to women founders has gone down from 2 percent to 1.3 percent. We fill that hole with alternative forms of capital. We’ve had workshops on purchase order financing, inventory financing, and IP financing. Their business will grow more slowly, but that’s not a bad thing. That’s what your margin has to be to grow slowly and to build a business that’s also far more stable for when there is a tariff or crisis. We’re trying to future-proof those ones that think they can’t get funding.

What concrete advice would you give to women building companies right now?

Wyatt: You need to pick the right partner in life. A lot of people talk about the partner that you have in your business, but the fact of the matter is, women and men should talk about this, too. For women, they might be married to somebody who’s making a lot more money than they are. So then their time becomes much less valuable, and their ability to commit fully to their business becomes challenging because their partner also needs their time at work. If they end up having kids, there needs to be that conversation around who’s taking care of things.

The other thing I would say is that more women need to ask for help. They need to ask for an introduction. They need to be willing to say what they need and not be shy about going to get it, because you cannot be shy and you can’t hold back. You absolutely need help in building a business and creating a plan.

Minkoff: Don’t get into this if you think it’s easy. Don’t be disillusioned. We’ve all been disillusioned. This is not going to be easy. This is going to be some of the hardest work, and at the end of the day, the busy stops with you. Just be aware of what you’re signing up for, and love what you do so much. Like Camille Moore said [during Female Founders Day], she doesn’t work a day in her life because she loves what she does.