What's the secret of their success? Summer camp

“I’m so craving a retreat from my day-to-day life where I actually get to connect with other women that are dealing with a lot of the same things that I am,” Vanessa Torivilla, who founded Goldbelly, the international gourmet food delivery service, told NBC News earlier this summer.

The approximately 100 “campers” include founders behind several popular household brands including beauty, fashion and pet companies such as Jones Road, Rent the Runway, Wagmo and Ceremonia. Days include over 12 hours of programming, including seminars, meals and exercise classes.

The camp is an extension of the Female Founders Fund, a venture capital fund created by Anu Duggal in 2014 to help women get more skin in a game whose rules are often dictated by men.

Duggal, an entrepreneur herself, experienced this unbalanced dynamic when she was seeking funds for her own e-commerce businesses.

“The real takeaway was around funding and the fact that almost everybody that we met as part of our fundraising journey was male,” she said. “As I looked into the numbers, it became clear there was kind of a larger issue at hand.”

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Over 11 years, the initiative has raised funds for female-founded businesses that are now worth over $3 billion in total. Still, women-led startups only receive about 2% of all venture capital money, according to the 2025 Female Founders Fund Report.

Duggal founded the camp five years ago to juice investment momentum by connecting founders through a sense of community and nostalgic summer fun — and as an antidote to “tech bro” culture.

“This is where we get those conversations done,” Kristie D’Ambrosio-Correll, the founder of Dacora Motors, which produces ultra-luxury electric vehicles. “And women have a lot of power and a lot of wealth, and more and more every day. This is our golf course.”