The majority of women entrepreneurs aren’t building software – they’re quietly launching and scaling the breakout consumer brands that will define the next decade, without a cent of venture capital (VC).
According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2022/23 Report:
- Less than 3% of women globally are building in ICT/tech sectors.
- Nearly 50% of women founders are in wholesale/retail, with one in three operating in traditional consumer sectors like food, fashion, beauty, and home.
Why the gap exists
VC was designed for Software as a Service (SaaS): blitzscaling, recurring revenue, low churn. But that formula breaks when applied to consumer – especially brands built by women. These brands:
- Scale on margin, not burn
- Cultivate loyalty, not just followers
- Create emotional resonance, not just engagement
- Serve real customers, not speculative forecasts
- Laser-focus on social-first, story-led, purpose-driven growth
Calling out the entire capital stack
It’s not just venture capital that is misaligned. The entire financial ecosystem is fundamentally outdated – built for a different era and failing to keep pace with how modern consumer businesses, especially women-led ones, are actually built.
Consumer brands don’t scale on equity alone. They thrive on working capital, inventory financing, revenue-based lending and credit facilities that match the rhythm of today’s commerce. But when it comes to women-owned consumer brands? They’re routinely labelled “unbankable.”
Why?
Because the risk models and underwriting frameworks still rely on industrial-era thinking measuring collateral, not community. They overlook brand heat, consumer loyalty and digital traction in favour of balance sheets and assets.
In Australia, post Royal Commission reforms have only deepened this divide. Banks, already conservative, became even more risk-averse, doubling down on rigid, traditional metrics while ignoring how modern brands grow. Credit officers are more likely to greenlight property development than a profitable beauty brand with a 10k waitlist.
The capital system ignores creators powering modern commerce
- SaaS gets venture.
- Property gets asset-backed loans.
- But a beauty brand with 70- 80% gross margin, repeat purchase rates and cult traction? She gets told to bootstrap.
- And a content creator turning her audience into income with real engagement and brand value? She’s invisible to the funding system.
Creators aren’t being left behind – they’re actively ignored.
While traditional capital chases outdated models, a new class of creative entrepreneur is building brands, monetising audiences, and shaping the future of commerce in real time. These women are turning influence into income, story into scale, and community into conversion.
Take our recent F5 feature on Victoria Minell of Recipes by Victoria – a powerhouse creator with over 3.5 million followers and a thriving revenue generating business.
And yet, the capital stack looks the other way.
Let’s be clear: the creator economy is no longer niche – it’s the new front door to discovery, loyalty, and purchasing behavior.
Creators are launching brands, moving markets, and reshaping entire categories.
They’re not just influencing buying decisions – they’re building businesses.
And yet? No one is building capital products for them
Underwriting models can’t assess community trust, engagement, or brand equity. Venture won’t touch them unless they wrap it in a SaaS layer. Banks and lenders don’t know how to evaluate “influence” – only inventory.
It’s a blind spot with massive upside.
This isn’t just misalignment. It’s a systemic failure to evolve and women are being locked out of the entire capital stack. Not because their businesses lack value or momentum, but because the system wasn’t built to see it.
Women are quietly building empires
In the shadows of VC hype cycles and outdated credit models, women are building cult consumer brands with real traction, real customers and real profit – not projections.
While venture capitalists circle the same SaaS decks and banks and lenders cling to legacy credit frameworks, female founders are scaling, reinvesting, and in many cases exiting successfully.
These women are on the floor with their teams. In their DMs with customers. In the lab with their next product. Designing for profitability not burn.
This is where innovation lives. In the margins of capital markets. In the blind spots of traditional finance.
And it’s time those who hold the purse strings started paying attention because these founders aren’t waiting to be discovered. They’re already winning.
- Jane Lu (Showpo): $100M+ annual revenue, 100% owner.
- Jessica Sepel (JS Health): From blog to $600M+ vitamin empire.
- Zimmermann: Market stall to luxury label; 2023 PE acquisition at AUD 1.5B.
- Julie Stevanja (Stylerunner): Built, sold in 2019, now founded Wrapd.ai.
- Irene Falcone (Nourished Life): Pioneered clean beauty e-commerce; sold in 2017.
VC just doesn’t speak the language
Women-owned consumer brands win because they understand the emotional economy. They design for resonance, listen to their audience, and grow profitably.
But traditional investors ignore them because they don’t fit the SaaS spreadsheet. Instead of asking about TAM and multiples, the more important questions:
- Are there waitlists and sellouts?
- Is the brand earning buzz and UGC?
- Is there cultural momentum and community velocity?
- Are they growing with real margin, not “marketing fumes”?
To back the future, look where women shop
Invest where your daughter, your wife, your sister, your team spends money. That’s where the next wave of iconic, profitable brands is emerging.
The next billion-dollar brands won’t be blitzscaled, they’ll be built by women, fuelled by purpose, and powered by real customers.
F5 Collective exists to fix this. We’re building capital that gets behind these brands and the women building them. Let’s speak the language of culture, community, and real commerce.
- Tracey Warren is CEO & Bree Kirkham, COO, of venture capital firm F5 Collective.
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