The girlboss lost. Here’s why these female founders won

These millennial founders of fast-growing, venture-backed startups were all, at one point or another, described as “girlbosses.” But one by one, they’ve left their companies, often in a shroud of bad press about their poor management skills. Emily Weiss was arguably the last one standing. But even her reputation is under attack. In a new tell-all book Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss’s Glossier, writer Marisa Meltzer peppers the narrative with unflattering details about her privileged background and mercurial leadership style.

It wasn’t always like this. When Sophia Amoruso popularized the word in her 2014 memoir, #Girlboss, it was meant to be a term of empowerment. Her hope was to inspire young women to launch startups at a time when most founders were men. In the years that followed, a cadre of female entrepreneurs arose, building groundbreaking businesses—along with a cult of personality. They appeared on the covers of business magazines, spoke at big conferences, and garnered large followings on social media.

But being a highly visible female founder turned out to be a double-edged sword. It could help accelerate the brand’s growth, but it could also be weaponized, leaving these women open to attacks that male founders rarely face. It began with Amoruso herself, who left Nasty Gal in 2017 in the midst of bankruptcy. The others left the businesses they founded in the years that followed.

A story that isn’t often told is that there were many other female founders from the same period who chose a less public path as they built venture-backed startups. They include Gregg Renfrew, whose brand, Beautycounter, was acquired for $1 billion in 2021 after eight years. There’s also Sali Christeson, who launched the suiting label Argent; the three founders of the bag startup Dagne Dover; the cofounders of Cuyana, a minimalist, sustainable womenswear brand; Katerina Schneider of the supplement brand Ritual; and many more.

These founders aren’t household names, and being more private has sometimes made it harder for them to land venture funding or garner attention in press. But it has also spared them some of the arrows flung at their more prominent counterparts. Ultimately, all the women I interviewed argued that the first generation of girl bosses helped create a path for female entrepreneurs, but the next generation of founders shouldn’t feel compelled to follow their playbook. “Yes, the girlbosses came under attack, but they also proved that they could build successful businesses,” says Renfrew. “Now we need to figure out what the next iteration of female leadership is going to be.”

The making of the girlboss movement

All the female founders I interviewed for this piece don’t want to be associated with the term “girlboss.” “‘Girlboss’ has become such a pejorative,” says Christeson, who founded Argent in 2015. “But what Sophia was trying to do was to create a hack for women who wanted to survive in the patriarchy.”

The so-called girlbosses that emerged in the mid-2010s created women-centric, millennial-oriented startups and used their own personalities to help boost the business during a moment when female founders were far from the norm. Today, only 10% of Fortune 500 companies have female CEOs, even though women make up 47% of the workforce. Female founders only get 2% of venture capital. (And, tellingly, if a woman cofounds a company with a man, her odds of getting funding increases to 16%.)

Most male founders of the same era didn’t feel the need to build public-facing personas. The founders of Warby Parker, Allbirds, WeWork, and Everlane, for instance, generally don’t have a substantial social media presence. We don’t know what their spouses or children look like. They are unlikely to share their skincare regimen or mention their personal insecurities or troubles on social media. “I think consumers want authenticity and like to see the face behind the brand,” says Christeson. “But we demand so much more from women: we feel entitled to see them as moms, we want to see their outfits. It says something that men don’t feel that they need to put themselves out there for their brand to succeed.”

Some founders were particularly adept at leveraging social media to build their personal brands, including Weiss, Gelman, and Amoruso. Others used traditional media to put themselves out into the world. Korey, for instance, appeared on the cover of Forbes and Inc., and spoke frequently on panels.

But in the background, there were many other female founders who didn’t garner as much attention. It wasn’t always by design. In her book, Meltzer points out that there was a level of privilege to being a girlboss: “The breathless girlboss narratives . . . [involved] a mediagenic woman, often young, conventionally pretty, thin, fashionable, connected, and white. . . .”

Some female founders coming up at the time simply did not have the same fluency with the media—or the desire for fame—that the girlbosses did. Christeson, for instance, only created an Instagram profile six years ago, and has made a total of 17 posts in that time. Looking back, though, she regrets not being more public. “I just didn’t use social media because I’m naturally a very private person,” she says. “But this was probably a mistake. At the time, there were rewards for founders who were really willing to put themselves out there. As a founder, I think it’s really irresponsible to decline opportunities that could help your brand.” 

Renfrew, of Beautycounter, also says she saw the value in what this group of women were doing with their public profiles. But she was older than these millennial founders, and didn’t have the skills or interest to model herself after influencers. (She’s now in her mid-50s, while most girlbosses are heading into their 40s.) “I’m not the most creative,” she admits. “I can’t take the perfect photograph. At the company, we sometimes discussed with our social team whether I should do more in social media, but it was also on the back burner. It just wasn’t a big priority.”

But while Renfrew did not invest in engaging with Beautycounter’s end consumer, she did prioritize being accessible to her employees, and the 50,000 ‘brand advocates’ who sell the products in their communities. “I was really focused on how I could be a great leader to them, rather than being a leader in the eyes of the rest of the world,” she says.

Cultivating a persona as a founder was also time consuming. Besides being inherently skilled at it, women like Amoruso and Weiss have to take artful photos of themselves, think about their outfits and makeup, and engage with followers. Melissa Shin Mash, one of the three founders of bag brand Dagne Dover, says she simply didn’t have the bandwidth to take on that additional workload, especially in the difficult early days of starting a business. Some investors even suggested they put themselves out in the world more. “Investors would say, ‘It’s really amazing what Emily Weiss is doing, with her 800,000 followers,’ Mash says. “But I would think to myself, ‘She spends a lot of time creating content around it.’”

While being more public could have possibly helped these founders snag more funding for their businesses or attract more consumers, having a more muted profile may have also spared them from the many attacks that took down the girlbosses. “I probably avoided some of the fallout a lot of the founders we’re talking about experienced,” says Christesen. “It was much easier to tear them down, and it is much harder for these women to make a comeback when they fail.”

Ultimately, many of these female founders were knocked off their pedestal by stories about their management practices. Amoruso and Korey were both accused of creating toxic work environments. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, Aflalo and Gelman were accused of enabling racism at their companies. These accusations were serious, and their companies’ mistreatment of workers was unacceptable. But it’s also true that these scandals were made worse by the fact that they contradicted the public image these women had cultivated.

What comes after the girlboss?

To Renfrew, the toppling of the girlbosses was heartbreaking because it meant there were fewer role models for entrepreneurial young women. And it is partly what has inspired her to be more forward on social media. As the CEO of a beauty brand, she’s familiar with influencer culture and the image of perfection that Instagram stars often sell. She’s more interested in portraying an accessible version of female leadership. (And it appears to be working: She now has 70,000 followers on Instagram.) “I have a nice life,” she says. “But I want people to see that I grew up with financial challenges, worked many jobs, and had divorced parents. I want women to see me as relatable enough that they can do what I did.”

Refrew also believes that it is important to model a version of female leadership that isn’t tied to niceness. She believes that many of the girlbosses were unfairly criticized for being unlikable, partly because it contradicted their public persona. In her case, Refrew has a very direct way of speaking; she says what she thinks and is decisive, even when her decisions are unpopular. “Women are held to a different standard than men,” she says. “Men leaders are perceived as strong and powerful when these display these qualities but women are perceived as tough. You can be empathetic and reasonable, but as a leader, you also have to be decisive and that means you can’t make everyone happy.”

Meanwhile, Mash, from Dagne Dover, argues that perhaps it was never wise to cultivate a cult of personality around a founder. She points out that a company is always a collective endeavor, and the persona of the girlboss placed too much pressure on a single individual to represent the brand. This meant that if that figure faltered, the brand would also take a hit, and vice versa. By contrast, Mash and her two cofounders have always shared the burden of building the business. “It’s inherently collaborative,” Mash says. “It’s a good message for women to see. You don’t have to do it by yourself, you can build a team and win together.”

While the term girlboss has become a joke, or worse, an insult, Renfrew wants us to look back at these female founder kindly. “The girlbosses paved the way for the next generation of business leaders,” she says. “All their hard work over the last 10 years helped women have confidence that they can take a chance and build a successful business. Now it is incumbent on us to figure out how to keep the movement going.”