From the Ground Up

According to a recent study from Fundera by NerdWallet, women now make up nearly half (44 percent) of Seattle’s self-employed business owners. Despite this impressive statistic, women-owned startups often face significant challenges when attempting to secure capital. While venture capital is one of the best-known ways to fund a business, it doesn't always offer the best path to success. It often comes with tradeoffs such as loss of control and equity dilution, and in 2024 only 1 percent of women-led companies received VC funding. Self-funding, on the other hand, can be a powerful alternative, allowing entrepreneurs to maintain full control of their companies and make decisions independently. In this bonus episode of From the Ground Up in partnership with Chase for Business, Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business and Shelia Winston, a Seattle-based Senior Business Consultant at Chase, explain how self-funding can be a powerful alternative for growth that can also put founders in a stronger position to weather uncertainty. Listen as Walter and Winston share insights on the evolving economic climate and how women founders can avoid the VC bubble and find long-term success.

Lucy Guo, the youngest self-made female billionaire and CEO of Passes, shares her entrepreneurial journey from AI to consumer ventures. She reflects humorously on her billionaire status, highlighting the challenges of launching a platform for creators inspired by models like OnlyFans and Patreon. Guo emphasizes the complexities of monetizing creator content while facing ethical dilemmas and the importance of human judgment in AI. Her transition from a B2B environment to consumer engagement reveals the tough roads of startup culture and innovation.

Flashback to the 1990s: Beanie Babies are all the rage, everyone’s doing the Macarena, and, chances are, you have at least one fanny pack. Al Gore is a prominent voice spreading awareness of the looming disaster of climate change, and consumer sentiment is shifting in favor of wanting to help save the planet. Stores such as Whole Foods are starting to experience exponential growth, introducing to climate-conscious customers organic foods and ethically sourced products. Fair Trade is becoming both a rallying cry and a stamp.  Paul Rice is the founder of Fair Trade USA, which he launched as a nonprofit in 1998. It became a certification body for products that meet a set of sustainability and human rights qualifications in how they work with international suppliers on everything from coffee beans to fish to cotton.   But what’s changed since the ’90s is that customers are increasingly voting with their dollars. And companies have taken notice. That’s according to one founder who’s been at the heart of persuading companies to purchase sustainable products from abroad for decades. “The data is clear in terms of consumer preferences, especially Gen-Z and Millennials, and their expectation is that brands will not harm,” Paul Rice tells co-host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin on this week’s From the Ground Up podcast. “I mean, no one wants to think that there’s sweatshop labor in their clothes or child labor in their chocolate.” Rice would know. He created the Fair Trade Certified label and ran his nonprofit of the same name out of Oakland, California, for 26 years. He stepped down from his chief executive role in September of last year. What he’s done since, he tells Christine, is think a lot about his organization’s legacy, work, and future. In April, he published the distillation of those thoughts in his first book, Every Purchase Matters: How Fair Trade Farmers, Companies, and Consumers Are Changing the World. In it, he explains how the 11 years he spent building a network of farms in Nicaragua inspired him to create Fair Trade USA to apply change on a bigger scale financially, by helping large international companies incorporate it into their supply chains. “What we’ve seen over the last 20 years is real growth in this market and a chance for us to encourage companies to do more through our purchasing decisions,” he says. There are few fiscal reasons not to, especially if brands are thinking long-term, Rice says. “I think smart entrepreneurs today are incorporating this thinking from the very beginning into how they develop their product lines and how they develop their supply chains,” he says. “And there are tons of resources. This is not hard anymore.” Back to the question of tariffs, Christine asked Paul about the Trump administration’s rapidly shifting tariffs—and what they mean on the ground not just in the United States, but on farms and at suppliers around the world that engage in international and fair trade. It’s not good. “Tariffs are bad for sustainability because if you’re a Mexican farm owner or a Mexican factory owner, and you now have a huge tariff placed on you, you’re going to have to cut costs to try and make your product more viable in the U.S. market,” Rice says. “What’s going to be on the chopping block, probably that new worker housing dorm that you are going to build or those energy-saving investments that you’re going to make. So sustainability investments are going to be impacted by the whole tariff issue.” Additional research and information: To read Inc.’s coverage on Paul Rice:Fair Trade Founder Paul Rice on What U.S. Businesses Lose in a Trump Trade War Read Paul Rice’s Book: Every Purchase Matters How Fair Trade Farmers, Companies, and Consumers Are Changing the World

Before Teslas started popping off the line in 2011, few EVs were on roads. Recently, the terrain has become far more crowded. Teslas aren’t sharing the road just with major automotive companies that make their own EVs, but with smaller operators that are gaining ground as well. Christine reminded me of a new company called Slate, led by Chris Barman, who, like Diana, clocks in at 5 feet, 2 inches. But unlike Diana, Barman is a car industry veteran—and one to watch. And then there’s Rivian, the Irvine, California, electric vehicle maker that’s ascended in America’s consciousness—particularly in the wake of Tesla owner Elon Musk’s efforts at the Department of Government Efficiency to dismantle the federal government. Amid the Tesla takedown—which is seeing some Tesla owners reportedly trading them in for Rivians—the latter car company is having a moment. Still, electric vehicles are expensive. And the lack of an affordable option for consumers has been the key barrier to the proliferation of EVs. “The biggest limiting factor today is lack of choice,” R.J. Scaringe, Rivian’s founder and CEO, told Diana on the latest episode of From the Ground Up. But that’s starting to change. Scaringe says his electric car company is gearing up for the launch of not just one but two new EV models, the R2 and the R3. (And yes, dependably, Diana made an R2D2 joke.) He also mentioned the about-face among suppliers. Rather than being laughed out of meetings—which he says actually happened early on with investors—Scaringe, today, says he’s able to negotiate better terms with suppliers. And with that, Scaringe says he’s able to bring the R2 to market with a price tag of $45,000. The R3 should be even less expensive. The jury is still out about how tariffs will affect Rivian and its broader industry. For the time being, at least, the sun appears to be shining on at least one EV carmaker.   Additional research and information:To read more Inc. coverage about Rivian:Is Rivian Going Big on AI? A New Board Member Suggests Ambitious Plans Rivian-Backed Startup Raises $105M to Launch Affordable Micro Vehicles Rivian to Introduce Hands-Free Driving System This Year Visit Rivian Automotive

Connie McDonald and Pam Weekes of Levain Bakery were pioneers in the cookie industry. And their journey from owning a neighborhood bakery into running a nationally revered brand would take 30 years. The first inflection point came in 1997, when Amanda Hesser wrote in The New York Times that Levain made "the largest, most divine chocolate chip cookies in Manhattan." Following that, their business grew rapidly, with lines forming around the corner from their original location. In 1998, they launched a website to capitalize on their newfound success, and over the next decade, the mail-order business for Levain cookies grew by 1,600 percent. By the early 2000s, investors began to show interest as well. Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom recently sat down with Weekes and McDonald to discuss their friendship, their business relationship, their early venture into e-commerce, brand and store expansion, and—perhaps most important—why their cookies weigh in at a hefty six ounces. Additional research and information: To read more Inc. coverage about Levain Bakery:Why Levain Bakery’s Co-Founders Let Their Company Rise Slowly  How Top Entrepreneurs Pick Perfect Store Locations The female founders behind Van Leeuwen Ice Cream, Levain Bakery, and Glowbar share their playbooks for retail expansion.Visit Levain Bakery

The online deception economy is rife with romance scams, financial fraud, and even violence. In just four years, $75 billion has been lost to pig butchering scams, where fraudsters use fake identities, like the scammers who infamously posed as Brad Pitt. In the U.S., one in 10 dating profiles is estimated to be fake, and with advances in AI, falsified information is even more difficult to detect. In this custom episode, host Abigail Bassett sits down with Kalie Nitzsche, founder and CEO of Fuzzy, and Jaqi Saleem, founder and CEO of Qualified Digital, to learn how these two visionary female founders are leveraging the power of collaboration to create revolutionary technology to solve this global issue. Discover how their new brand empowers everyone to stay safer online.

As the Trump administration closes out its first 100 days, significant changes have taken place. The Small Business Administration has cut at least 20 percent of its workforce, while Trump has tasked the agency with managing student loans. Meanwhile, the IRS is in turmoil, as some 7,000 employees have been laid off, and it’s at risk of losing tens of thousands more. In addition, we have witnessed a resurgence in cryptocurrency, and surges and flip-flops in tariffs, and we are beginning to see the impact of Trump’s trade war with China on the global economy.Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom recently hosted a roundtable discussion with senior staff writer Jennifer Conrad, policy correspondent Melissa Angell, and staff writer Brian Contreras to share the latest updates from their reporting during the first 100 days.Additional research and information:To read more Inc. coverage on Trump’s first 100 days:Trump’s First 100 Days of Tax Policy: A Lot of Ideas—and WaitingFirst 100 Days of Tariffs: Who’s Hit Hardest—and What Could Come Next? To read the latest articles from our panelists:Visit Jennifer ConradVisit Melissa AngellVisit Brian Contraras

Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of Kind Snacks, is perhaps best known for his appearances on Shark Tank. But much of his focus these days is on expanding his Builders Movement, the initiative he co-founded that aims to bring together “builders” from around the world to help replace extremism with practical problem-solving. Lubetzky is trying to counter the political polarization that is taking over our culture and discourse, and to build better communities by promoting compromise and efforts to find common ground among people who disagree. Inc. editor-at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin spoke to Lubetzky about Shark Tank, his investment firm Camino Partners, his business philosophy, and how Builders Movement got started. He told From the Ground Up: “We need to bring a builder’s mindset to all conversations by relying on curiosity, compassion, creativity, and courage.” He said that, while founders, and leaders, are important to the process of change, it’s an anti-authoritarian movement that he’s trying to spur. “There’s no chance we’re going to change things in a community, let alone across the world, with a centralized model,” Lubetzky said. “We need a distributed model where everyone, everyone here is empowered to bring change to their own communities.”Additional research and information: For more Inc. coverage of Daniel Lubetzky, read:Daniel Lubetzky, Founder of Kind Snacks, Joins ‘Shark Tank’ Billionaire Daniel Lubetzky’s Simple Strategy for Overcoming Toxic Divisions To learn more about the Builders Movement, visit its website.Visit KIND Snacks

Over the past 13 months, venture capitalist Arian Simone has been tested. A federal court case against her Fearless Fund, which backs under-resourced entrepreneurs such as women of color to ensure they have the support they need to succeed in business, became one of the most closely watched anti-DEI lawsuits in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action. Those months of litigation meant substantial costs for Fearless Fund, including the loss of two-thirds of its team and stymied fundraising efforts. That's not to mention the emotional toll on Simone and her remaining team. However, in September 2024, the case was settled and she remains optimistic despite the continuing challenges facing DEI.As part of our 2025 Female Founder’s series, Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom sat down with Arian to talk about her upbringing, the federal court case, and how to pursue a mission-driven venture. She even spoke about her family’s relationship with civil rights legend Rosa Parks.  Additional research and information: Inc.’s 2025 Female Founder ListTo read more on Arian Simone:How Arian Simone Overcame Her Greatest Fear and Helped Entrepreneurs of Color Fight Another DayTo learn more about Arian Simone Visit

Former finance executive Cate Luzio founded and self-funded the professional-network platform Luminary in late 2018 with the mission to uplift, upskill, and propel women and allies forward through all phases of their professional journeys. Luminary is a gender inclusive B2C and B2B global professional education and networking platform. Today the company has more than 15,000 members globally across 30 countries and leads more than 20 workshops, programs and events each month in person and virtually. Not only did Cate appear on our Female Founders list in 2019 and 2021, but in 2024 and this year she also joined our Female Founders board of advisers and helped review the 2025 list. Our hosts, Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom and Inc. editor-at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, sit down with Cate in a special roundtable discussion to wrap up our Female Founders 2025 series. They chat about the state of women in entrepreneurship, why women are the masters of bootstrapping, and how founders–and we as a culture–can look beyond funding for metrics of success. During the roundtable chat, Cate highlights some of the founders who stood out to her this year, including LTK’s Amber Venz Box, Chelsea Hirschhorn of Frida Baby, Rosanna Berardi of her eponymous immigration law firm, and Beleaf Medical’s Mitch Meyers. Cate shares some of their inspiring stories, which cross many business sectors in historically male-dominated industries such as tech, engineering, and climate. She says these women entrepreneurs are changing the pattern, and are “saying, ‘No, I'm in this, and I'm building amazing companies to change the world.’” Additional research and information: Inc.’s 2025 Female Founder ListRead more about Cate at Inc.com: There’s a boom in female founders right nowCate Luzio on the Female Founders 2021 List of 100Visit: Luminary**and a correction at minute 32:34 Cate says LTK's cofounder and president's name is Amber Benz Vox. Her name is Amber Venz Box.