The new rules of capital
Three forces are reshaping the founder landscape: the rise of AI, the evolution of the creator economy, and a transformation in how consumer companies are scaled and distributed.
“Women should absolutely be using these [AI] tools and thinking about how they fit into their professional lives every day,” Duggal tells me over an iced coffee after field day. It’s a big topic of conversation throughout the retreat, having sat in myself at the roundtable lunch hosted by Vita Mallela, founder of Flock AI, a generative AI platform helping brands rethink the way they create product imagery.
Discourse around the “girlbossification of AI” has become pointed, as figures including Reese Witherspoon encourage women to embrace AI tools, and Sheryl Sandberg — whose “lean in” philosophy became synonymous with the original girlboss era — announces that her organization is now focusing on closing the AI gender gap. Critics are concerned whether a technology designed to increase efficiency could inadvertently create another era of individual pressure, where women are once again encouraged to solve structural challenges through personal productivity.
For Duggal, however, the opportunity is clear: for founders who have traditionally faced barriers to capital, AI offers the possibility of building faster with fewer resources. “You don’t need as much capital anymore,” she says. “I think it’s going to unlock an entirely new generation of creative, talented founders.” At the end of the panels, Duggal announced the launch of her newest business venture, Voices, a speakers bureau built exclusively for female founders and operators. “I built the Voices website using Claude [AI]. We gave it to a designer afterwards to make it look beautiful, but I built the first version in about two hours.”
That shift has particular implications for female founders, many of whom have historically built businesses in consumer categories that were overlooked by traditional venture capital. Beauty, fashion, wellness and lifestyle companies were often dismissed as less scalable, despite their ability to create deep consumer loyalty and generate significant revenue.
“Speaking specifically about consumer businesses, it’s incredibly difficult to build a brand today purely by bootstrapping,” says Gregg Renfrew, founder and CEO of clean beauty brand Beautycounter, who delivered the summit’s keynote panel on her experience buying back the company she founded after it entered foreclosure following its $1 billion acquisition by The Carlyle Group. “The stakes are high, competition is fierce, and consumers expect everything. They want incredible content, strong social channels, an outstanding customer experience, sustainable packaging, and high-performing products — they want all of it, and they want it immediately.”
