This is Article 5 of the Female Founder Economy series.

In this series, I define and document the Female Founder Economy: the goals, priorities, revenue models, and growth patterns of entrepreneurial women who are building their companies primarily online. Topics explored across the series include, but are not limited to, visibility, leadership, team and scale, revenue and economic impact, emotional and mental well-being, relationship capital, and AI.

Inner Circling: How Women Founders are Building Their Own Rooms of Access

The more time I spend with the women who attend our Power Table events, the more I notice where the real business actually happens. It’s not a direct result of a marketing campaign as often as you might think. It’s in the DMs. It’s in the group chat never shared publicly. It’s at a private dinner.

Last year, at one of those dinners, I made one introduction. It took me ninety seconds to send an email after chatting with the female founder sitting next to me. She landed a $30,000 brand partner from my email.

A few months later, she sent me an in-kind sponsor that covered my event videography, easily totaling a comparable amount.

We’ve now got a text thread going where we trade ideas and connections in our industry.

That kind of thing is happening constantly now, and mostly out of public view. I’ve started calling it Inner Circling.

Private circles. Dinners. Retreats. Group chats that never stop moving.

Women are building these rooms on purpose, and they turn to them first for advice and counsel.

Who should I hire for this?
Was that event worth the ticket? Would you go back?
How do you actually run this part of your business?
Can anyone introduce me to X?
Who would be good on this stage?
What would you do in this situation?

The rooms answer fast and honestly.

Both the good and the bad are shared and welcomed.

These rooms also keep informal blacklists. Whose coaching didn’t deliver. Whose event wasn’t worth the flight. Whose reputation doesn’t hold up behind closed doors. It’s not gossip. It’s women protecting each other from bad investments.

It’s an Inner Circle of trust.

None of this is new. In 1868, a group of women journalists were barred from a New York Press Club dinner honoring Charles Dickens. They were told they could attend only if they sat hidden behind a curtain. They refused. Two days later they held their own lunch and founded Sorosis, the first professional women’s club in America. Membership was vetted. It compounded into a movement of more than a million women. Shut out of the room, they built their own, on their own standards.

The economics back it up. Access was never a soft skill. It is money, and female leaders and business owners are once again building the version that works for them.

Chief, a private network for women executives, reached a $1.1 billion valuation by 2022, within a few years of launching.

At The Power Table, the referrals and hires that move through our community of women founders drive millions of dollars back into independent businesses. One introduction becomes a paid speaking gig. One recommendation becomes a new contractor, a new client, a new sponsor.

The broader community economy is worth around $200 billion, and 88% of the people running these networks now charge for membership, up from about half a few years ago.

Private, paid, vetted rooms are not a trend. They are infrastructure.

Why now?

To put it directly, women are tired of the internet’s empty promises. The pressure to post content that never converts. The high ticket coaching program they found the courage to invest in that ultimately underdelivered. The hire that burned them. The traditional networking groups, business associations, and boys’ clubs that dismiss their expertise because it lives online instead of on a Main Street or startup they recognize. So they flipped it. Instead of waiting for a seat at a table that was never set for them, female founders built better rooms and pulled the door shut behind the right people.

What these rooms do is bigger than deals.

They help protect women from shady practices through private recommendations and conversations. They build confidence. They challenge small thinking. They create collaboration across industries that would never have met online. And they create safety for women who carry a business alongside motherhood, caregiving, health, and a full household, and who experience the work differently because of it.

I believe we are seeing the beginning of the new era of business & social clubs.

Women will keep seeking out peers who understand their goals, their pace, and their priorities, and they will run as much of their business as they can inside these rooms. Vetting first. Buying second. Hiring, sponsoring, booking, and referring, all of it moving through trust before it ever touches a public feed.

If you are a founder, the takeaway is simple. Invest into the right room, and be the kind of person other people vouch for.

And, if you are a brand or a media outlet trying to reach women founders, understand where the shortlist actually lives now. It is not your inbox. It is a group chat you will never see, where one warm introduction is worth more than any campaign you could buy.

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Sources: Chief ($1.1B valuation, 20,000+ members, 2022); Circle, “Creator/Community Economy Statistics 2026” (88% of community operators monetize via paid membership); General Federation of Women’s Clubs on Sorosis (1868)

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This is Article 5 in the Female Founder Economy series.

I write this series from what I see firsthand: the rooms, the private conversations, and the businesses women are actually building. The entire article series can be found on my website, www.taylorsmithonline.com

For media inquiries, interview requests, or speaking opportunities, use the contact form on my website or reach me directly at taylor@taylorsmithonline.com.