Latest news with #FemaleFounderCollective
Forbes
29-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Designer Rebecca Minkoff Goes From Fashion To The Food World
It's well-known in entrepreneurial circles that women-founded and led companies receive less funding compared to their male counterparts, and a new food-focused accelerator called SeedHer seeks to make a dent in that statistic. SeedHer emerges out of the Female Founder Collective, a women's entrepreneur group co-founded in 2018 by fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff and serial entrepreneur and angel investor Ali Wyatt. Female Founders Collective has approximately 25,000 total members, including its exclusive dues-paying members. As the collective has grown, it's also worked to formalize and professionalize its offers even further, said Wyatt. Approximately two years ago, the Female Founder Collective started to curate around more specific industries with six cohorts a year to allow founders a better chance to network and bring in partnerships and resources that would appeal to different cohorts. This is in addition to its existing consulting marketplace platform, The North, where founders can contact advisors directly. But its latest venture with SeedHeris, geared towards food and beverage founders. SeedHer originated from a few facts, including the lack of funding for female-led businesses, the low margins for food startups that deter entrepreneurship and growth, and the fact that women are the 'chief nourishment officers' in their households, said Wyatt. Female-founded companies secured $38.8 billion in venture funding in 2024, marking a 27% increase from the previous year. However, this rise came amid a 13.1% drop in deal count, while all-male-founded companies experienced a higher 33.2% growth in deal value with a smaller 7% decline in deal count, according to Pitchbook's 2024 US All In: Female Founders in the VC Ecosystem report. 'What tends to happen, and we don't see this with their male counterparts, is they don't have a relationship at Walmart [or similar] that keeps them on the shelves,' said Wyatt. 'We want founders to have the phone-a-friend concept where they can call their [expert] friend and ask them questions at these pivotal points along the way that will get them out of trouble and allow them to keep growing.' SeedHer features a 12-week course includes eight 'masterclasses' and community meetings with mentors in partnership with Kellanova's Pure Organic brand. Kellanova was formerly known as Kellogg's. There will also be coursework for founders that can be integrated into business practices, like re-examining existing margins and changing the unit economics. The idea is that it's not incremental work or skills they're gaining, but instead substantial enough to help them with immediacy. SeedHer applications opened on May 29 and applicants should have a minimum $500,000 in annual revenue, and applications will be judged by the FFC and Kellanova Pure Organic teams. Approximately 15 startups will be chosen. The program culminates with a Demo Day in November. On the Demo Day, the panel of experts will provide insights and feedback to founders. 'While FFC built a movement around collective support, SeedHer is a next step in providing select female founders in food and beverage with more direct resources, mentorship, and funding pathways to help them grow their businesses,' she said in an email. 'At the end of the SeedHer accelerator, we want founders to leave with practical insights, strategic direction, and stronger industry connections to help them scale.' The creation of SeedHer comes at a time of change for the snacking industry. Consumers have been interested in healthier options for some time, ranging from high-protein options currently in vogue to less processed products. Health officials have raised the U.S. population's awareness over ultra-processed foods and potential negative health consequences, while petroleum-based synthetic food dyes as received federal scrutiny. FFC and Kellanova Pure Organic came together to work on SeedHer after Minkoff crossed paths with Leslie Serro, vp of sweet snacking at Kellanova and connected on the topic of entrepreunialism. Kellanova did invest an undisclosed sum as a premier sponsor to SeedHer, but is not providing grants to participants, said Serro. Serro said she plans to bring in Kellanova leaders to speak with and mentor SeedHer participants, including marketing, financing and retail. She said the major painpoints identified include entering retail, managing supply chain and scaling up the business. 'As we go through different stages of our life, we see different things,' she said. 'The Female Founder Collective, and these entrepreneurs see things differently, are pushing boundaries, and are looking for new solutions.'
Forbes
07-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Seven Years In, The Female Founder Collective Remains A Cornerstone For Women Business Owners In A Rapidly Shifting Market
The Female Founder Collective's Rebecca Minkoff and Alison Wyatt at Female Founders Day, March 2025 In 2018, Alison Wyatt reached a turning point in her career. Working at a Girlboss, she was helping create programming and educational content for ambitious women trying to succeed within the corporate world, but Wyatt noticed a trend at their events. "At each Girlboss Rally, we held an event for founders called the Startup Studio, and every year, it would sell out within 30 seconds," Wyatt says. "This was at a time when the number of female founders starting their own businesses was rising every single year to the point where almost 2,000 women started a business per day in the United States." At the same time, Wyatt was considering having another child but was concerned about how to fit a newborn in with her demanding career. "I didn't want to be at my desk from 8-5 without feeding them or going to their sports games," she says. "Like a lot of these women, the whole notion of the corporate world no longer seemed to fit for me." Countless women at these events shared Wyatt's concerns. They were creating their own businesses after corporate glass ceilings pushed them to do so. But through the process, they found ways to build wealth while prioritizing work-life balance and redefining success on their own terms. 'They all had the ability to create the future we all wanted to see,' Wyatt says. 'This was the way women were going to get richer faster - not by waiting for that predicted 100 year time horizon to reach gender parity in the workplace.' Around the same time, Wyatt vividly remembers watching fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff walk off the stage at Cannes Lions, directly into the bathroom of the Female Quotient Lounge. Minkoff sat down on the floor and began unapologetically pumping milk for her newborn. 'I remember thinking it was such a power move,' Wyatt says. 'It made me realize we can design the life we want to have.' It was that moment of inspiration that led Wyatt to reach out to Minkoff. In September 2018, they created The Female Founder Collective, a powerful, high-impact network and education platform designed to help women build wealth, scale their businesses, and offer access to content, learning and capital. Renowned for her eponymous fashion brand, Minkoff recognized the challenges of navigating the fashion industry as a woman founder herself. But her drive to create the Female Founder Collective was born from another motivation. "The fashion industry is lonely as a founder. It's not known for people wanting to support each other,' she says. 'Plus, I wanted to expand beyond fashion. Getting to know other founders and bonding over the nuanced nature of being a woman in business selling something, there needed to be a community for these people.' The Female Founders Collective launched during Fashion Week in September 2018. The next day, Minkoff was shocked to find more than 3,000 membership applications on the website. The overwhelming response confirmed what she had sensed all along: an incredibly strong demand for a community to support women entrepreneurs across a wide range of industries. Teaming up with Wyatt, the duo was able to create the community Minkoff wished she'd had when initially starting her own business, with the goal of giving new founders access to the resources she lacked in the early days of her career. Today, the FFC has grown into a thriving community of 25,000 founders, spanning industries from beauty to healthcare to tech. Most of their early supporters, including prominent founders Aurora James, Zanna Roberts Rassi, Michelle Cordeiro Grant and others, are still part of the network today. 'I remember that first year, seeing (the FFC) logo stuck to every window and on every website of a female led business,' says Cordeiro Grant. 'It was just so beautiful and we were so hopeful about where the world was heading.' 'Fast forward to today, and women like myself now on our second startup up,' she continues, 'Now we're able to share the hardest and most fulfilling elements of what we do, from building businesses from concepts to ones that are now having a true impact on the world. It signals how much more change is yet to come.' Despite their many successes, the recognition, and the thousands of satisfied members, the journey hasn't always been easy. Originally, the organization was able to offer a free membership model sustained by brand partnerships with companies like Visa, SAP, UBS, Capital One and others. 'We tried to live on brand partnerships,' says Minkoff. 'And then Covid hit.' The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a steep decline in partnership and brand dollars. To keep the company afloat, Wyatt and Minkoff were forced to shift to a paid membership structure. 'Transitioning the message from 'this is free' to 'you need to pay for this' was scary,' says Wyatt. 'It went smoothly but didn't scale fast.' At the time, they charged members $500 a year to join their paid networking community: The 10th House. Since then, membership costs haven't increased much, now at $695 per year. Now, the 10th House has 2,000 paid members with the broader Female Founders Collective community at around 25,000. The duo has also been forced to navigate shifting cultural sentiment like the rise and fall of the 'Girl Boss,' the backlash to calling women business owners 'female founders' and more. Throughout it all, Wyatt and Minkoff have remained committed to their original mission: helping women grow their businesses, keeping members engaged and delivering impactful programming. In 2024, Allison Pellerano-Rendon made the decision to leave her corporate role and launch design & creative agency The Collection Atelier. She says joining The 10th House helped her connect with women who were, 'navigating similar entrepreneurial challenges with unwavering support and genuine camaraderie.' Pellaro-Rendon cites the weekly opportunities for connection through small group events, interactive webinar-style chats with executives and more established founders as the specific resources that have been invaluable to her agency's growth. Legacy planner Noelle McEntree explains that joining the group finally gave her the confidence to finally put the word 'founder' in her LinkedIn profile after creating her company, Legado. 'It was nice to have a community where we could commiserate about the over-glamorization of VC capital and women's infuriating lack of access to it,' McEntree says. Her frustrations are warranted. Women-owned businesses in the U.S. still receive less than 2% of venture capital funding, a number that has remained stagnant over the past decade. That's one of the reasons why, in November 2023, the FFC introduced an annual retreat, The NETTE, tailored for founders focused on venture capital. The event focuses on education around securing growth-stage capital, navigating business exits, board management, organizational development and more. The Nette Retreat 2024 Next month, they plan to expand this group by introducing The CabiNETTE for mature founders that are further along in their journeys. The group is designed to support those who generate $5 million or more in revenue or have raised the equivalent in venture capital. 'The NETTE is like your cabinet of advisors,' Minkoff explains. 'It also means your safety net. So you don't have to be nervous about failing because there will be people here to catch you.' Minkoff and Wyatt still host their marquee event, Female Founders Day, every year, which is open to members and non-members alike. This year's event, held on March 13, had over 500 attendees. While big-name speakers like keynote Sarah Blakely (of Spanx and Sneex fame) delivered inspiration on the mainstage, the core programming focused on practical workshops, covering everything from mastering PR and media outreach to optimizing CRM platforms. 'We want to make sure attendees walk away with the skills and tools they need,' says Minkoff. 'They get to choose their own path and programming throughout the entire day. It's also a great reminder of what we offer our members, whether they're part of the free community, a paying member or part of this new group of founders farther along in their journey.' Cynthia Kalfa attended her first Female Founders Day this year. As she prepares to launch Ondine, a new line of stylish sun protective apparel, she says the summit made her feel more connected to other women founders who, like her, are just getting started. "Entrepreneurship can feel isolating especially when you are a solo founder, but events like this remind me that there's an incredible network of women who truly want to support each other,' she says. 'The connections I've made here go beyond business. I love hearing not only about people's wins, but their struggles and strategies. It's refreshing.' Through their unwavering commitment, relentless drive, ability to pivot and a deep belief in the power of community, Minkoff and Wyatt have not only stayed true to their original mission, they've sparked a movement. Wyatt still remembers those early conversations from her former corporate life, the ones she had with women leaving the stability of the corporate world to find new ways to build wealth and create their own success. That's why, seven years later, she and Minkoff remain committed to continuously redefining what's possible for women business owners, creating a future where inclusion, equity, and opportunity aren't the exception, but the rule.
The Independent
05-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Real Housewives of New York star explains why she's leaving after just one season
The Real Housewives of New York has been hit with a shock departure as one headline-making star has revealed she won't be returning for a second season. Handbag designer Rebecca Minkoff, 42, faced backlash last year when she pulled a pregnancy prank on her castmates. She then pretended that she wasn't sure if her husband, Gavin Bellour, was the father. The Real Housewives franchise follows a group of affluent and glamorous women as they experience the dramas and power plays of everyday life. Minkoff joined the show in 2024 for its 15th season, but has said she is now wanting to 'reprioritise' her life and won't be continuing with it anymore. '2025 is a new beginning for me and with current events in the world, I am reminded the importance of family, friends and community now more than ever,' the businesswoman wrote in a post on Instagram. 'The last month has given me new perspective on wanting to focus on my wildly amazing four kids, my supportive husband, my business of 20 years, the Female Founder Collective, my podcast and MY BOOK.' She continued: 'As much as I have learned along the way with this franchise and fans, I want to reprioritise the things that mean the most to me: designing, giving back, supporting women and raising my family. 'I am truly grateful for the experience, the friendships and the fans that have been part of this RHONY chapter. Time to turn the page.' Speaking to Elle last year, Minkoff explained that she joined the show because she was thrilled by the uncertainty it promised. 'I said to my husband the day I signed on, 'I can predict our life if we don't do this, but I can't predict our life if we do, and that's exciting,'' she said. 'When thinking about it, I was like, 'The only way I can do this is by being me.' And if no one likes that, then I get voted off the island. I have to go in there holding true to everything I've built, otherwise I look like a fraud on both sides, and you don't know who I am and you lose trust. 'It is not lost on me that there's a huge irony in that, but I think there's a way to play in that, too. You've met my friends [on the show] who have things to fight about. Do you need another person doing that? Or would it be nice to have someone being like, 'Can't we all just get along?''
