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 List

To read more on Arian Simone:

How Arian Simone Overcame Her Greatest Fear and Helped Entrepreneurs of Color Fight Another Day

To 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 List

Read more about Cate at Inc.com: There’s a boom in female founders right now

Cate Luzio on the Female Founders 2021 List of 100

Visit: 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.

Babba Rivera, the founder and CEO of clean-beauty company Ceremonia, is a cover subject of Inc. magazine’s 2025 Female Founder issue. Her heritage is both an inspiration and a driving force for her brand. 

When Babba Rivera was growing up, her Chilean family moved to Sweden to escape the brutal Pinochet dictatorship. She spent her early career working at startups in both Sweden and the U.S., at Uber and at the luggage upstart Away, where she was director of marketing. During that time, Babba was spending an hour every morning styling her hair with really “toxic, unhelpful products.” As a Latinx woman, she didn’t see any products that were designed with her heritage or type of hair in mind. So, in 2020, she founded Ceremonia, an aspirational natural-ingredient brand that seeks to fill a void in the beauty market for her fellow Latinx consumers.

For Inc. magazine’s Female Founders 2025 series, Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom sat down with Babba to chat about her background and where the seeds for Ceremonia took root. They discussed how Babba felt that working at Uber in her 20s was like getting paid to go to business school, how she created a knowledge exchange with another founder to learn about the beauty business, and how her company’s product development is constantly evolving with the help of customer feedback. Joining Diana is Inc. editor-at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, as well as special guest Cate Luzio, founder and CEO of Luminary.

Additional research and information:

Inc.’s 2025 Female Founder List

Read more about Babba and Ceremonia at Inc. 

Visit: Ceremonia

Half of Americans live in child care deserts. For many more, child care is unaffordable. Paid leave for parents is far from universal. Reshma Saujani is on a mission to change all this. 

Reshma is best known for having founded Girls Who Code in 2012 during her run for the U.S. Congress. She has raised $100 million and taught 670,000 girls programming skills over the past decade. Now, Reshma has turned her sights on building her second nonprofit, Moms First, which focuses on making women’s lives better in the workplace through paid family leave, improved child care, and pay equity for moms. Today, Moms First is a community of 1.1 million.

For Inc. magazine’s Female Founders 2025 series, Inc. editor-at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin sits down with Reshma to chat about how she is bringing everything she learned from scaling Girls Who Code into her new venture, the potential lasting impact of the war on DEI programs, and the ongoing fight against the rising cost of child care in this country. Along with Inc. executive editor and co-host Diana Ransom, Luminary founder and CEO Cate Luzio joins the conversation as a special guest.

Additional research and information:

Inc.’s 2024 Female Founder’s list (2025 out soon!)

Read more about Reshma and Moms First (previously The Marshall Plan for Moms) at Inc.com: https://www.inc.com/rebecca-deczynski/marshall-plan-for-moms-mothers-day-ad-flexible-work-policies.html

Check out My So-Called Midlife with Reshma Saujani Podcast

Visit: Moms First

Visit: Girls Who Code 

In this episode, Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom and editor-at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin host a roundtable discussion with some of the reporters who contributed to Inc. magazine’s 2025 Female Founders issue. They are joined by freelancer writer Issie Lapowsky and senior editor Rebecca Deczynski to discuss how the state of female entrepreneurship is rapidly changing in this political moment.

In putting together the 2025 Female Founders issue of Inc., Diana noticed an interesting phenomenon: There were a significant number of women entrepreneurs who’d bought back their businesses or returned to the helm of their startups after having stepped away. What’s going on? We discuss.

Also: The challenges—and remarkable innovations—of women-founded companies in health care.

And finally! Celebrity business overload! Could 2025 see a shift in strategy, with brands leaning more on social media influencers and fans to reduce their reliance on costly A-list celebrities? What industries are still ripe for celebrity founders? Which are essentially over? And, the eternal question: What’s the real ROI for a brand when it enlists a celebrity co-founder or spokesperson?

Additional research and information:

Inc.’s 2024 Female Founder’s list (2025 out soon!)

Listen to Chrisitine’s interview with Anu Duggal about the state of female founders in 2024

To read more from Inc.com about embattled DEI: The Anti-DEI Lawsuit Against the Fearless Fund Was Just Settled

To find out more about Female Founder funding read: What Female Founders Can Do to Raise Money Right Now, Next Year, and Beyond, According to This VC

The serial founder says the legacy pasta brands have made their beds. So she made a new one.

Jen Zeszut’s mac and cheese brand, Goodles, is designed not just to stand out in the aisle—with rainbow-hued packaging amid a sea of beige and blue—but also to carve out a new customer for the classic pasta recipe: young adults who like convenience, but who aim to eat something healthier than your standard boxed fare.

This meant changing adopting new market strategies in addition to creating a nutrient-packed mac and cheese. Jen is not a first-time founder, nor is she a stranger to the consumer packaged goods landscape. She left her role as CEO of the baby food company Cerebelly to launch Goodles in 2021, and the brand has been on the rise ever since. Today, it’s the fastest-growing mac and cheese in the U.S. and the seventh-fastest-growing natural food brand in the U.S. grocery category.

For our mini-series highlighting Inc.’s 2025 Female Founders honorees, executive editor Diana Ransom sat down with Jen to discuss Goodles’s rapid growth, scrappy but innovative marketing, bringing in incremental customers, and how she raised $27 million for seed round funding. 

Additional research and information:

Inc.’s 2024 Female Founder’s list (2025 out soon!)

Read more on Jen Zeszut and Goodles on Inc.com: If You Cannot Outspend Your Competition, Out-Weird Them 

Visit: Goodles

Visit: Goodles’s bio

To kick off our fourth season of From the Ground Up, Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom and editor-at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin are speaking with founders who will be appearing on Inc. magazine’s Female Founders 2025 list. Our first guest is serial entrepreneur Jeni Britton.

She’s best known for rethinking flavor creation in ice cream, and is the founder of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, which has close to 100 scoop shops around the country and over $150 million in revenue.

During the pandemic, Britton took a step back from day-to-day management of her company—and that got her thinking about her own health. Christine sat down with Jeni to talk about the mental and physical health inspirations for her new business, Floura. Starting up a second time wasn’t the plan—but Jeni explains what her prior experience in retail and culinary experimentation armed her with for this next journey, and what she knows will still be a challenge. Plus: We get a peek into the burgeoning ecosystem of upcycled food, as Jeni explains the unconventional composition of her new fruit-leather bars, which includes watermelon rinds and apple cores.

Additional research and information:

Inc.’s 2024 Female Founder’s list (2025 out soon!)

Read more on Jeni Britton and her new business, Floura, on Inc.com: How the Founder of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams Knew It Was Time for a Second Act

Why Jeni of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams Won’t Stop Talking About Fiber

From the Inc.com archives: This Ice Cream Retailer Figured Out How to Turn a Logistical Nightmare Into a Stellar Brand Experience

Visit: Floura.com

This is a special segment in collaboration with our partner at Glenfiddich Single Malt Scotch Whisky. Inc. Editor-in-Chief Mike Hoffman spoke with Smarsh Founder Stephen Marsh about his remarkable journey, the legacy he has built, and the honor of being the first recipient of the inaugural Legacy Award presented by Glenfiddich at this year's Inc. 5000 gala.

Ah, 2024. So much to say! For our last episode of the season, we analyze the biggest small-business and workplace topics of the past year and highlight what’s on the horizon for 2025. Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom and editor-at-large Chrsitine Lagorio-Chafkin sat down with senior editor Tim Crino, and staff writer Sarah Lynch to discuss the annual changes that have taken place here at Inc., the massive layoffs in the tech sector, DEI backlash, and the generational workplace mismatch between managers and Gen Z employees. Also, we look ahead to Trump’s proposed tariffs and the new wave of crypto hype and scams. Don’t worry, we are optimistic about a few things in the startup landscape, though.

Additional research and information: 

To read more from our Inc. 5000 coverage:

How Tiny Changes Have Reaped Enormous Results at America’s Fastest-Growing Company  

How Inflation Shaped the Companies of the Inc. 5000

To read our coverage from the tech layoffs:

Employees Are Still Worried About Layoffs

The 2024 Layoff Landscape Is Better Than You Might Think

To read our coverage of Gen Z in the workplace:

Gen-Z Hits Some Bumps as it Enters the Workforce

Are You Leading on Empty? How to Recognize and Combat Manager Burnout

Why Gen-Z Workers Are Consciously ‘Unbossing’

To read our coverage DEI Backlash:

U.S. Workers Might Be Souring on DEI

Here Are the Most Common Anti-DEI Legal Cases Right Now — and What You Need to Know About Them

To read more on tariffs and crypto:

Here’s What Trump Says About Tariffs, and How They Would Work

New Trump Crypto Venture Gets Boost From GOP Candidate Himself 

If you grew up in the ’90s, the “¡Yo quiero Taco Bell!" chihuahua commercial was inescapable. Remember the vital-to-surfers sunscreen Sun Bum? Both of these memorable branding moments were created by serial entrepreneur Tom Rinks.

Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom sat down with Tom for this episode of From the Ground Up to discuss his unusual path to becoming a branding whiz—and what he’s learned about identifying human desire along the way. His early job of selling furniture taught him how to read people, and his first branding deal, with the University of Michigan’s Fab Five, immersed him in the skills needed to identify talent. Diana and Tom discuss the complex art of brand-creation, company-building, and finding the niche audience who will fiercely love your product. They also discuss Tom’s most recent branding venture, the oral-care line Made by Dentists.

Additional research and information:

Visit: Made By Dentists

Visit: Made by Dentists’s profile

Visit: Made by Dentists’s educational page

Visit: Sun Bum

Visit: Sun Bum’s profile