"In the traditionally male-dominated activewear space, I really leaned into the female narrative," says Outdoor Voices founder Ty Haney (center).
ForbesTy Haney founded activewear brand Outdoor Voices in 2012. She raised $50 million and became a press darling, before being unceremoniously pushed out of her CEO role in February of 2020. Her replacement: an older white man with a private equity background. Weeks after Haney’s resignation from the company, Buzzfeed published an investigation into the “abusive working culture” at the Austin, Texas-based company. Speaking at the 2021 Forbes Under 30 Summit Kickoff: Decade of Disruption alongside Parade founder and CEO Cami Téllez, Guild Education founder and CEO Rachel Carlson and ForbesWomen editor Maggie McGrath, Haney said her push from the company was—at least partially—driven by the media’s desire to cancel female founders.
“There’s a perverse pleasure in taking people down. A lot of this takedown occurred from female journalists around female founders,” says 32-year-old Haney. “We become targets, in my case, certainly become targets. What I’m concerned about is this trend dissuading people from becoming female founders or coming back from these types of takedowns.”
After a year away from Outdoor Voices, Haney has founded a new company, details of which she’ll unveil in September of this year. By not shying away from the public eye, she hopes her journey help motivate other women to start their own ventures. That includes women like Parade founder Cami Téllez, who is currently 23—the same age as Haney when she started Outdoor Voices.
Téllez was the face of the 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 Retail & Ecommerce list on the achievements of her three-year-old underwear company Parade: $8 million in funding, $10 million in revenue and advertisements of smiling women with diverse bodies in colorful skivvies seemed to grace every New York City street corner. Yet, Téllez says she nearly skipped out on the Under 30 photoshoot.
“I almost didn’t show up because I was worried about putting a target on my back... It’s more difficult than ever to participate in any sort of PR as a female founder,” she says, citing the historic three-year low in venture capital funding for female-founded companies. “Journalists are quick to latch onto the growing pains of any startup and to make an example of female founders.”
What the business media landscape needs is to reframe its coverage of female founders by carving space for diverse management tactics, according to Rachel Carlson, CEO and founder of $1 billion B2B workplace skill builder Guild Education. It should allow for “feminine leadership” styles.
“We were all taught a masculine model of leadership and part of where the media narrative breaks down (and the employee narrative about what to expect of us as female CEOs breaks down) is that we have no playbook for [feminine leadership], right?” says Carlson. “We all need to collectively redefine a standard for feminine leadership; it doesn’t have to be just women who practice it.”
Partially to achieve this end, Carlson started an employer-sponsored daycare for the children of Guild employees near their Denver headquarters. “That’s part of my ability to employ a lot of badass moms and create a lot of generational wealth,” she says.
Guild’s daycare, and the company’s other accomplishments, is what Carlson wants to be recognized for, rather than her face. “What I get frustrated by is that my male counterparts get coverage that talks about their companies as their brain children,” she says. “I get asked to be the poster child of Guild. Women shouldn’t have to be the poster children for our companies; we should be honored for our brain children.”
