There were a lot of factors at play during that time: lofty promises made by brands that pledged to change the world and achieve equality—and were then confronted with the realities of capitalism; the tensions of the months that followed George Floyd’s murder; the difficulties of the early pandemic; employee and investor pressure; and, yes, genuine leadership issues. Media coverage built these founders up—but then contributed to their fall. I should know; I was writing about these founders through all of it. Besides the three founders who have launched new ventures in recent months, Away’s Steph Korey and Refinery29’s Christene Barberich were some of the others to be swept up in this trend.
But it’s been five years, and I think it’s time to say: these founders deserve another shot.
But the solution isn’t for these women to disappear from public life forever. “The wave of women founders who resigned in 2020—I think it satisfied a cultural appetite, but it sort of left a vacuum,” Gelman told me when I reached out for her thoughts last week. “Particularly these women who were great at building product, creative, and doing things no one had ever done.”
These founders, though, had to be ready to come back too. For now, Gelman’s endeavor (which started with a store in Brooklyn) resembles a traditional small business more than a globally expanding venture-backed startup, although she’s hinted at the potential for more hotels. She calls the through-line between the Wing and the “country kitsch” Six Bells a form of “world-building,” the creative side that originally set the Wing apart from other co-working spaces and private clubs. “Getting to build something new with more maturity and self-awareness—it takes time to properly absorb the lessons from a first company,” Gelman says.
And the question is: will things be different this time? Personally, I think they will. Structurally, some things haven’t changed. Women-only founding teams still get around 2% of VC dollars, and that stat has actually shrunk in recent years.
But culturally, a lot has. With the rise of TikTok, social media has become less glossy—allowing founders to share a more authentic view of their experience from the start, rather than a picture-perfect version that then gets torn down. Founders have more resources to respond quickly to any scandals and speak directly to their audiences. There are more ways to build a brand than fully depending on the founder as the face of it. Five years later, there’s an entire generation of Gen Z consumers that wasn’t really paying attention last time around and doesn’t carry millennials’ 2010s startup baggage.
Within the startup world, there’s less pressure to achieve growth at all costs—which led to some of the challenges for this era of companies. The Wing raised more than $100 million during its life, and Outdoor Voices had raised about $60 million by 2020. More disciplined running of businesses, with an eye to profitability, yields more responsible leadership.
And, of course, there’s a growing frustration with the reality that men have been forgiven by the public for much, much worse than needing some management coaching—just take a look at the White House. The rise of the manosphere has made women hungry to see other women’s success again.
There will still be challenges. Founders aren’t perfect, and female founders are no exception. Consumers will get mad about something, employees will have complaints, and things will go off the rails sometimes. “I’m hopeful that … we can normalize challenges, and ideally, these challenges that come up and people may feel sensitivity around are things that can be worked through, versus causing founders to have to depart the company,” Haney says.
On the whole, it can only be a good thing for women to be building, without fear, in public again. This generation of founders deserve another chance—and all women deserve to see that one failure isn’t the end.
