Everything I Learned About the New Rules of Capital at the Girlboss Convention

Earlier this summer, the girlboss was back in the Hamptons, but not quite as we knew her. At Montauk Yacht Club, where the docks became home to Camp FFF for a couple of days, entrepreneurs traded war stories over panels, games of tug-of-war and dinners curated by chef-in-residence Alison Roman.

Now in its seventh year, Camp FFF is an annual, invite-only retreat hosted by Anu Duggal, who founded the early-stage venture capital firm Female Founders Fund in 2014. It brings together female founders and executives for a program designed to move beyond the 2010s-era playbook of relentless growth and examine the business landscape as it stands today. This year’s gathering included Tory Burch, Mielle Organics founder Monique Rodriguez, The Wing and The Six Bells Inn founder Audrey Gelman, former Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Radhika Jones, and Ghia founder Mélanie Masarin.

At Montauk Yacht Club, Camp FF hosted games of tug-of-war.

In March, I asked whether the girlboss was making a comeback, inspired by the many figures synonymous with the first wave who have since begun new chapters. In the months since, Emma Grede, the entrepreneur behind Good American and co-founder of Skims, embarked on a high-profile press tour for her book Start With Yourself, while Yesteryear, a bestselling novel about a tradwife influencer who wakes up in the 18th century and is forced to confront the reality of the life she has been selling online, became a cultural touchpoint for a growing backlash against the opposing archetype. Meanwhile, a recent report by the Women’s Entrepreneurship Institute, showed that women own approximately 14 to 15.7 million businesses in the US, representing around 40% of all enterprises.

Yet the investment landscape remains challenging. Female-only teams continue to receive a fraction of available venture capital: just 2.3% of total VC funding in the US, while in the UK, around 2p of every £1 invested goes to female-founded companies. Moreover, the legacy of the growth-at-all-costs mindset that defined the 2010s has left many first-time female founders reassessing what it takes to build a company, and whether today’s investment landscape can offer a more sustainable path forward.

What, then, does the next era of women in business actually look like? If the first girlboss generation was defined by scale, personal mythology and breaking into male-dominated spaces, what defines girlboss 2.0 in a market where access to capital is trickier, consumer expectations are harder to meet, and founders are being asked to build with sharper business fundamentals?

Those questions shaped conversation throughout Camp FFF. Across the two-day summit, founders gathered for roundtables, talks, and panels exploring topics that span integrating AI into growing businesses, to the realities of building a second-time venture. “I mentor a lot of women who call me and say their investors are putting them under pressure. It’s really stressful, and a lot of them have had to do things they wouldn’t normally have done, like opening more retail locations or making other decisions just to hit numbers. Eventually, that catches up with you if you’re not doing it for the right reason,” says beauty industry titan Bobbi Brown and founder of Jones Road Beauty, who was also in attendance to present Tory Burch with the Female Founder of the Year Award, after being honored last year. “You don’t want to jump out of an airplane when you’re an entrepreneur. You have to take some leaps, but you also have to not be stupid.”

Tory Burch in conversation with Anu Duggal.

This market correction that has taken place in recent years has shifted the conversation away from growth-at-all-costs toward profitability and durability, while coinciding with a technological shift that has concentrated investor appetite. “What’s happened is that the market has effectively split into two categories: AI and non-AI. The reality is that if you’re building an AI company, there’s an enormous amount of capital available, as long as the idea works and you have the right pedigree,” says Duggal, now on her fourth fund, with a total of $140 million under management. “There’s a lot of money chasing those businesses. If you’re brave enough to build a company outside AI, then you need a plan to operate without relying on massive amounts 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.”

Gregg Renfrew delivered the summit’s keynote panel.

Today, the ability to build a direct relationship with customers is changing that equation. Where brands might have historically relied solely on wholesale distribution or traditional gatekeepers to prove demand, new companies can now identify their audiences, test products, and build communities faster than ever before.

“We’re seeing smaller companies that own their customer relationships and generate far more profit than we used to think possible,” says Meghan Asha, founder of BrandSchool, a platform that equips emerging and established brand leaders with the tools to build enduring consumer businesses. “I don’t think we’re necessarily going to see as many billion-dollar businesses. The 80-20 rule will still apply — there will always be a handful of huge companies that dominate. But alongside them, I think we’ll see lots of smaller empires that might generate £50-100 million but are incredibly efficient.”

Beyond technology, investors are also reassessing the value of businesses built around real-world consumer behavior. “With our fourth fund, we’re investing in what we call the IRL economy — businesses that are almost the opposite of AI, bringing people together through community, nostalgia, and real-world experiences,” says Duggal of Female Founders Fund.

Michelle Cordeiro Grant and Amy Francome.

That means moving away from the aspirational models that defined the earlier startup era and toward products that become embedded into everyday routines. “Consumer brands are coming back, but in a much healthier way,” she adds. “They’re becoming part of people’s everyday rituals. It’s not about aspiration in the same way fashion once was; the businesses that make the most sense today are the ones that solve real problems and become part of people’s daily lives.”

Historically, talking about an exit strategy felt almost antithetical to the founder mythology that defined the startup boom. The prevailing narrative was to raise aggressively and pursue exponential growth. Now, as capital markets mature, founders and investors are becoming more pragmatic about what a successful outcome actually looks like.

“The question I always come back to is: who buys this?” says Duggal. “Because only about 10% of companies go public. The vast majority of successful companies are acquired, so if that’s the reality, then I should be able to ask you that question in our first meeting. It used to feel almost taboo. People would say, ‘I haven’t thought about that, because I’m building this forever.’ But we’re not necessarily in that world anymore.”