Women’s Venture Summit — Stella Foundation CEO Flossie Hall

Fred Schonenberg
Hello everyone and welcome to the VentureFuel Visionaries podcast. I'm your host, Fred Schonenberg. I am so excited today to be sitting down to talk with Flossie Hall. Flossie is the CEO of Stella Foundation, which is a powerhouse organization serving 10,000 women founders and investors worldwide. 

Today she's going to share her journey from serial entrepreneur, having built and exited multiple seven-figure businesses, to leading a global movement that empowers women to launch, scale, and sustain their ventures. We're going to talk about how Stella's initiatives, including the acclaimed Women's Venture Summit, have facilitated over $200 million in fundraising for women-led companies. 

The conversation is going to dive into the mission of Stella to inspire, equip, and propel diverse female founders while cultivating a thriving network of investors to increase equality for women-led startups. I know you'll enjoy this episode with Flossie Hall. Flossie, welcome to the show. It's so nice to meet you.

Flossie Hall
Yeah, great to meet you and thank you so much for having me. That's always a mouthful when you have to read somebody's bio, right?

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah, but yours is fun. Sometimes it's like, okay, here we go. We have to say which college this person went to 40 years ago. Yours is legitimate and it's really cool to see all the change that you have sparked throughout your career. So that's a good one to read. It's also weird on the other side, right? When you hear somebody else read your bio, you're like, oh, it's too long.

Flossie Hall
Yeah, it's always slightly embarrassing where you're like, okay, just get to the talking part.

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. Well, I would love it if you could share a little bit about the Stella Foundation and maybe about the origin story, what brought you to it and how it came to be.

Flossie Hall
Yeah, so Stella actually was not founded by me. It was founded by our chairwoman of the board, Dr. Sylvia Ma, a little over 12 years ago now in San Diego as a three-day in-person bootcamp, helping female founders get ready to raise pre-seed capital, which 15 years ago was way worse than the stats that we see today. There definitely were not very many programs geared towards women raising venture capital. 

As a pioneer herself, an angel investor, she's now invested in, I think, almost 200 women-led companies. So she's really walked the walk and talked the talk on how to do this. And she was my first mentor in my first company over 15 years ago. So fast forward to about five years ago, she hired my company to come in and build the educational technology platform that we use today and our course curriculum and our accelerator curriculum. 

And then I stepped up about three years ago to scale this into a national organization and help fund it to the level that we should be funded at and really make this an everyday household name. So it's been really fun that something that started as a friendship and a mentorship over the years, I spoke at Women's Venture Summit, I volunteered for Venture Summit, I helped with community relations and sponsorships. I always had a hand in Stella over the course of the last 12 years. And I've never run a non-profit. So I'm learning all the things. I'm never one to shy away from a challenge, but my heart and soul is in the work that we do here at Stella. I don't think there was an option for me to say no.

Fred Schonenberg
What a cool story. I truly didn't know that coming into this. I think it's so neat to have somebody be your mentor, then become a friend, then essentially a client, and then you're involved. And then you get to take that organization and kind of shepherd it to the next level. What an amazing story of friendship and opportunity.

Flossie Hall
Yeah, that's what I mean. Stella is literally in my blood. And even my team every day, my marketing team, my tech team, they ask me questions. They're like, how do you know all of this? And I was like, I've been here since day one. So of course, I know all of it. You all are still learning after one, two, three years as babies in this organization. 

But what a blessing. Sylvia is an absolute blessing and a dear friend. I am more than honored to lead alongside her and our whole team every single day. And it's not easy running a non-profit. It's not easy scaling a national non-profit and underfunded non-profit. But I'm here. If I do something, I go all in. So my whole team always says I don't half-ass anything. I whole-ass everything I do. So if I said yes, yes is what you're going to get. So you get 110% of me until there's literally nowhere else to go. There's enough brick walls in front of me that literally stop me. I'm here until I don't need to be here anymore.

Fred Schonenberg
I love that. So one of the things that, and we were talking before we hit record, is that some of my clients, some of my team have been to your events. And they came back and they were like, we have to get Renfields to get more involved. And they kept talking about the powerful stories that come out of the Stella community. I was wondering if you could share maybe one or two that just helps the audience quickly sort of understand what is happening here and what the potential is for it.

Flossie Hall
Yeah. I think one of the things that happens, first of all, that creates those stories is trust and vulnerability. I think women often don't feel like they have the permission to be vulnerable in mixed gender settings. And I think when you're around other women, it just feels different and you are allowed to share the ins and the outs and the ugly and the what you know and what you don't know. So I think first the setting of what Stella does allows for those conversations to happen. 

But I think my favorite story outside of my evolution here at Stella is Debbie Chen, who is on our board. But she started in one of those three-day boot camps that Sylvia used to run in San Diego. She is a mom. She is a scientist. And she said, I have an idea. I think I want to start something. So 10 years ago, she took a three-day in-person Stella boot camp. Fast forward to today, she has a company called Hydrostasis, a full wearable with patents and technology and research around hydration. She's won awards. She's raised $5 million. She went through Stella. She went through Stella Labs. She went through Stella Angels. She spoke at Venture Summit. She volunteered. Now she's on our board. And she is here for the fight as well because she's seen the evolution of this tiny little community into this big community.

And when you lean in and you get to take advantage of those programs and those people and the opportunities or have the system and support when it's hard and you're running out of capital or you hit a brick wall, she is one of my favorite stories because she's now rolling her sleeves up saying, how can I get funded? How can I help other women do what I'm doing while she's still doing it at a later stage?

Fred Schonenberg
I love that. One of the things that I've talked about a couple of times on the podcast is my sort of entrepreneurial journey began with my mom. And my mom was a lawyer in New York City. We moved to Birmingham, Alabama, and nobody would hire her because she’s a woman essentially as a lawyer. They would offer her a job as a paralegal, even though she was already a practicing attorney at a large firm. And it was this moment, I remember her being very upset.

And then the next morning, kind of saying, I'm going to go start my own firm. If they won't hire me, I'm going to figure it out. Reminded me of your brick wall crashing vibe. And I think that's always, I just sort of assumed that was very normal. That's what I kind of grew up with. And then later on, as I became involved in the women event that we did, I started at NBC. I started hearing these stats that women still receive around 2% of all venture capital, even though they launched 40% of the new businesses. And it's just like, it's one of those things that can kind of feel my blood boiling a little bit. And also like, that makes no sense. 

That aside, I'm curious, what have you seen as one of the more or most effective levers to start to close that funding gap or make it more equitable for lack of a more creative word?

Flossie Hall
Yeah, well, we got kind of lucky. I think it got up to 2.9%, maybe two or three years ago, but now we're backsliding. And I think it's down to 1.9%. And it's only 0.7, if you're a person of color, which is abysmal, right? But I think at Stella and in a lot of programs nationally, we've realized we need more women writing checks, that we've been advocating and yelling and screaming and asking for change, and the change isn't coming. No one's here to save us. No one's going to save us. So I think the conversations have shifted to activating capital for women.

There's going to be a great wealth transfer in the amount of capital that's being controlled by women over the next ten years. And it's important, most of the work that we're doing, we do work on the founder side, raising and securing capital, but we're doing work on the investor side, teaching women, what is investing? How do I write my first check? What does that look like? Women are traditionally taught to be very philanthropic with their money or ignore their finances or let their spouse deal with the investing or their financial planner. We're debunking that.

And the more women we get writing checks, the more women that are going to write checks for other women and people of color and the services and products that we need that are not getting funded. Because traditionally male investors don't understand the products and the services and the things that women are creating. So I think the answer to all of this is to get more women activated as investors. 

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah, it is one of those things that you naturally, or I think people naturally, invest in things that look familiar to them, which is such a ridiculous statement. And at the same time, there are these opportunities. And so how do you get more women in the room writing checks, driving that forward, and closing this gap? I think one of the ways you do that is the Women's Venture Summit, Stella's annual event. And I can't even exaggerate enough how much I had multiple people telling me how unbelievable it was last year. And they went from clients to people on my team. 

I know from doing some of the research that that summit has facilitated over 200 million in fundraising. I'm curious, what do you think the secret sauce is for making that event so impactful for both the founders and investors? And I will say, there's so many events, right, that just sort of happened. But the authenticity you were talking about doesn't, that's a hard thing to auto generate. I'm curious if there's anything you can point to that makes that kind of stand out.

Flossie Hall
Yeah, I think the trust factor is important. We curate all of the speakers and the programming. We're not sponsor-forward. We're not just getting sponsors in and letting them talk to whatever topic that they want, but we curate the programming. It's all money-focused the entire conference. As much as I love my work life balance, my leadership coaches, every session we have is rooted in money, how to get money, how to grow your money, how to protect your money. 

So on one side, we have founders raising capital that are hearing from founders who've done it. They've been there, they've raised, they exited, they've failed, they've succeeded. Then the other half of the summit is for investors who are raising and deploying capital and they're hearing from seasoned investors, seasoned professionals who can teach them the best practices. 

We typically have the best of the best of the speakers in the room. We have about 100 every year, which is insane for a conference that's only about three days long. It's a lot of juggling, but the sessions are very expertly curated and it's small. We typically have about 400 attendees, but we have four sessions going on at the same time. So all of the sessions are typically less than 50 people, which allows connections and conversations. I would say the Women's Venture Summit is the end of the work that we do all year long at Stella. 

So we work to get women as fundable as possible. We work to get investors deploying capital and Venture Summit puts all of them together in the same room. These highly fundable women with great products that just can't get checks written with investors ready to write checks. So I would say the magic actually happens in the hallways, right? Like the content's great. Speakers are great. The programming's fun. It's a whole vibe. We make it amazing, but the connections and the magic that happens in the hallways and after the summit, that's where you see all of these relationships start evolving. 

And even today I saw a Forbes article that was written by a moderator at Venture Summit with one of our prior sponsors about the work they're doing and they connected at Summit. So every day I see something that was magical that came out of Summit in some way. So I think you have to curate the room, get the best of the best, and create a trusted intimate space. We're not hurting 2,000 women in and out of conference halls. These are great rooms where you see the speakers sitting in each other's sessions, also fangirling over each other. So it is, it's really fun. It's magical.

Fred Schonenberg
I love that. And I mean, this year is going to be our first as a sponsor. We're thrilled to be a part of it. Can you tell the audience a little bit about the theme for this year's conference and when it is and why people should be excited to attend beyond all the things you just said? 

Flossie Hall
Well, you should all be there. I feel like everybody has FOMO if they don't make it. It's September 23rd through 25th. It's always hosted in San Diego where we're headquartered. So who doesn't want to come to San Diego and also hang out for a few days? We have two tracks. We have a founders raising track and an investors track. We do have some dual sessions within the middle of that for both sides. We also have fun programming. 

Last year we did a show her the money screening. We did private dinners with Ellevest and different organizations. We have an LPGP dinner. We have happy hours that are curated. We do happy hours and kickoff parties with female vendors and we do activations. So you can come, you can get your brows done. You can get a power lip done. You can get headshots. You can get permanent jewelry. You can shop and get some jewelry or a cute outfit to wear at the summit. So we make it fun. 

Also, we have a live muralist who is painting during the whole summit. And then we auction that off at the end. We have women's fast pitch finals, six founders from all over the country pitching for $50,000 in cash and prizes. We have interactive due diligence sessions. We have Angel Academy. If you want to learn how to write your first check, I could go on and on, but the program is stacked for three days. The hard part is choosing which thing you want to go to while you're there. 

Fred Schonenberg
I love it. You mentioned the fast pitch and that brought me to a question I was thinking about is obviously you have an incredible entrepreneurial background. You see so many founders. What advice do you have for startups that are trying to fundraise in the current market? Are there any pieces of advice you have to help them stand out or be more successful? 

Flossie Hall
Right now, honestly, my number one advice for most founders, besides knowing your stuff, your money, having everything set up, is your presence, your LinkedIn presence, your networking presence. It's really important in today's digital world that the CEOs and these founders have a great brand, a great personal brand. They're talking about what they're building, how they're building it, why they're building it. And I think LinkedIn has been such a powerful tool for a lot of women who often can't get to networking events all the time to really build in public and build that ecosystem of investors that are funding their type of companies. And it makes it much easier when they are going through the fundraising process. 

I'm a big believer in building your brand because investors are going to buy why you over almost anything else. And if you were talking about it and you're in their face and you're sharing the wins and the losses and all the great things, they're going to know you when you jump in their inbox for a meeting. So I think women have to work a little differently on the networking side. And I think LinkedIn has been just such a powerful tool for a lot of our founders. They're so loud about what they're doing. It's hard to ignore them.

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah, I think it's fantastic advice for any founder, really. And then I want to ask you, too, about partnerships. You've built partnerships with organizations from NASDAQ to Carta. And I'm wondering, what are your thoughts on that sort of intersection between corporates and startup and VC? And obviously, our friends at Comcast and Flabs have worked with you. As you think about that sort of Venn diagram of those three worlds coming together, do you have any sort of high-level thoughts about either how to make that work better or how you see that all evolving?

Flossie Hall
Well, I think there's leaders in the space. As I said before, we're an underfunded, understaffed nonprofit that's operating in cities all over the country. But these organizations, these corporations have billions of dollars. They have resources. They have humans. They have experts. They have power in what they're doing. And we can't build that. We can't build what Carta's building. We can't build what Comcast’s doing. And we don't believe we have competitors here at Stella, no matter what you're doing. We believe that we could all be doing it together. 

We should all be doing it together because we're still not serving all the women out there that need us. So we look to these big partners to be the pioneers and the leaders in the great things that they do. So whether it's Cooley and their Cooley Go legal library or Carta and the amazing tools they offer or Comcast Lift Labs and the amazing programs and resources they offer, they all do great things. All we're doing is being a tool where we can get it to the founders we're serving because we do this one thing. We help founders get funded through our couple of programs. We host these great events. But we expect our partners to come in and serve really well with the thing that they're doing because we need to send our founders their way. So not only can we not do our work without their support, their marketing, their amplification, their resources, but it's incredibly important that we get those tools to our founders who might not know about them. 

Fred Schonenberg
I love it. So I'll get you out of here on this. What's one bold prediction you have for the future of women in venture?

Flossie Hall
I think it's going to surprise a lot of people how much wealth women start distributing over the next 10 years. I think there's going to be a major shift in capital movement. How many women start writing their first angel checks? How many women join as LPs and funds? And I think it's going to blindside a lot of people when that happens. I hear it all. It's happening now. The conversations of how we get there and the early check writing is starting to happen and I can't wait to see what it looks like in another decade from now.

Fred Schonenberg
I love it. Well, Flossie, thank you so much for both sharing your time with us today and for everything you're doing at Stella to spark change. 

Flossie Hall
And thank you to you as an amazing partner and someone who is also sponsoring the Women's Venture Summit and doing all the great things that you're doing to amplify this work. Again, we can't do it without people like you. So thank you for all that you do.

Fred Schonenberg
Awesome. It's our pleasure.

Flossie Hall
Thanks.