Good morning! Andreessen deal gives Mira Murati more board control at her startup, Department of Defense pulls national security program for women, and Tory Burch makes a new pledge to support women entrepreneurs.
– Economic impact. Over the past 15 years, the Tory Burch Foundation has supported 387 women entrepreneurs whose revenue totals $340 million. Today, the foundation is announcing a commitment to supporting women entrepreneurs whose revenue, or economic impact, totals $1 billion by 2030, Fortune is the first to report.
Burch, the woman behind her eponymous foundation and fashion label with a reported $2 billion in annual sales, sees this commitment as the next phase of the foundation’s work. “Our core mission is to increase women’s economic power, and that’s by supporting the entrepreneurs and their businesses in a way that their businesses will last,” she told me yesterday. The foundation is announcing the pledge this morning at a breakfast, which will honor Martha Stewart.
Women entrepreneurs need access to capital, Burch says, and guidance on how to make it through challenging environments—like the existential threat of tariffs for small businesses. “It’s very, very tough,” Burch says of the current environment for women business owners. “We have to take it one day at a time, and also keep cash on the balance sheet.” She’s drawing on her own experience—like closing 340 stores during the pandemic—to help the foundation’s founders build “resilience.”
Alumni of the foundation’s program for female entrepreneurs include Denise Woodard, the founder of Partake Foods (who went from $400,000 in revenue when she entered the fellowship to $17.5 million), and Christa Cotton, the CEO of the bitters and mixers company El Guapo (which went grew from $180,000 to $3 million). Burch says that participants in the foundation’s program reach the million-dollar mark at 10 times the average for small business-owners. Its yearlong program offers networking, educational resources, business-education grants, and zero-interest loans.
“Women are great investments,” Burch says. “It’s very important for people to know that diversity is what I find beautiful and also good for business.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
