Many female-founded companies were branded with the color 'millennial pink.'

In the 2010s, dozens of female founders were celebrated on the covers of business magazines like Inc. for their recent startup success, from Emily Weiss’s Glossier makeup brand to Steph Korey’s Away luggage company. But many of these companies were also the subject of large takedown articles around the year 2020.

It’s no coincidence that the white women who were seen as the faces of the girlboss movement (founders such as Audrey Gelman of The Wing and Christene Barberich of Refinery29, for instance) stepped away from their companies around the same time that America stepped into its era of racial reckoning with Black Lives Matter.

Sophia Amoruso turned a small eBay shop into Nasty Gal, a $250M fashion empire. Her success sparked the #Girlboss movement after her bestselling memoir, but behind the rise was a rapid fall. Leadership struggles and financial missteps led to bankruptcy in 2016.

In 2006, Amoruso founded the clothing company Nasty Gal, then later wrote a memoir called “#Girlboss” about her company’s meteoric rise. Later, she launched other ventures, including her “Business Class” business coaching series and the venture capital fund “Trust Fund.”

It has been more than a decade since 2014, the year Sophia Amoruso published her book "#Girlboss," which became a New York Times bestseller. Since then, Amoruso has more or less journeyed through the seven circles of the corporate underworld, and the "girlboss" has been declared dead. This podcast episode lets listeners hear her thoughts on the legacy of the girlboss phenomenon 10 years after she started it.

The movement—which pushed back on punk’s misogyny and argued for a countercultural form of third-wave feminism—began in self-published magazines before taking root in bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile. The scene’s music and ethos can still be found in contemporary acts like Olivia Rodrigo.

What’s the difference between a girlboss and a career woman? The simplest answer, perhaps, is time. Once it was the term "career woman" that translated female ambition as selfish, immoral, and slightly ridiculous; now, "girlboss" does the job.

Sheryl Sandberg left her top executive position at Facebook around the same time that other girlboss-era founders stepped down from their companies or faced backlash about how they treated their employees. An article explores the part Sandberg played in the girlboss movement, and why her Facebook exit was significant.

This article from 2016 is a time capsule of sorts. It includes an interview with the person who coined the term “girlboss,” Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso, that took place just after she appeared on the cover of Forbes magazine. We now know that her company would go on to file for bankruptcy the next year.

In a new era of work where many millennials wanted to work for themselves in offices with exposed brick, cold brew on tap, and casual dress codes, WeWork realized these entrepreneurs and startup workers didn’t want to do it alone.

Sheryl Sandberg, a top executive at Facebook, published "Lean In," her career-advice book for women, in 2013. The book would go on to spend more than a year on The New York Times Best Sellers list and contribute to a cultural movement.

An article dives into not only the origin of the term “girlboss,” but also the quotes from the woman who coined the term about her thoughts on the word and the movement around it. In the piece, she explains that she doesn’t identify with or claim the word "girlboss."

That year, Bumble Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd became the youngest female CEO to ever take a company public. The company pivoted during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, focusing its marketing strategy on promoting social-distanced dating and its video chat features.

In a video, a podcaster interviews an expert on the girlboss movement and a separate expert on “white feminism” in an attempt to understand how these two ideas intersect and overlap. It also includes a definition of white feminism and an explanation of how it differs from other types of feminist thought.

After the "Barbie" movie premiered, the number of investors in Barbie parent company Mattel's stock grew more than six times larger on the investment platform Public, according to the platform's recent report. Other cultural trends have affected which stocks investors choose as well.

Eighty-five percent of those women were white. A data visualization breaks down what the face of corporate America looks like, plus provides information about the history of female CEOs on the Fortune 500 list.

The Wing was supposed to be more than a woman’s answer to the popular WeWork coworking spaces. Founder Audrey Gelman envisioned The Wing as a private members club where women could feel empowered and dignified—if they had a few thousand dollars a year for a membership, of course. However, after racism scandals and widespread employee criticism, The Wing ceased operations in 2022.

The '90s saw a resurgence of the girl group, with acts like TLC, the Spice Girls, and Destiny's Child turning the model on its head. While still strongly influenced by the '50s and '60s girl groups, these acts also worked in hip-hop and dance music. More significantly, they emphasized female empowerment—or "girl power"—rather than adolescent yearning.

The widespread popularity of the four-piece girl group Blackpink has built a large community of fans—called Blink—and proven the success of unconventional marketing strategies. Instead of producing a wealth of content and new material, Blackpink releases albums slowly, building tension for their fans. During their musical breaks, the women continue to build on their icon status, working with luxury brands like Chanel or even guest-starring in major American TV shows like “The Idol.”

While Lauder herself was just starting her cosmetics empire, she knew wealthy people who could afford high-quality products would always be her target market. In order to make her products as appealing to this market as possible, Lauder held up different colors of glass bottles in people's bathrooms to see what would look best with their decorations before landing on a turquoise bottle with a gold cap.

In 2006, Sophia Amoruso started an eBay shop that would later transform into the clothing company Nasty Gal. However, Amoruso’s rags-to-riches success with Nasty Gal didn’t last. After multiple rounds of layoffs and employee complaints, the company filed for bankruptcy in 2016.

Tech is still the dominant industry for startups—in part due to its low barriers to entry, high growth potential, investor preferences, and the proliferation of tech into a wide variety of industries. Sweetgreen, the fast-casual salad chain, for instance, has often referred to itself as a tech company.

Women were the primary driving force behind the increase. In 1966, slightly more than 2% of all women in college studied business—but by 1985, that percentage had increased to almost 22%.

Sophia Amoruso’s memoir, “#Girlboss,” spawned more than just a cultural movement—it also inspired an ill-fated television show that is remembered as one of Netflix’s first major failures.

Like so many art movements, the pantheon of pop art was mostly men, despite the contributions of several important women artists to its aesthetics and history. See paintings from British pop founder Pauline Boty and several artists who worked with, or exhibited alongside, the likes of Warhol and Haring.

While the uptick didn't last, when Bumble announced Founder Wolfe Herd's return in 2025, shares rose in premarket trading and later that day. Investors likely hoped that her strategy could restabilize the business.

At social media management platform Buffer, employees have been able to see each other's salaries since the year 2013. This article explains how Buffer's decision to make these numbers public has impacted the social media company's workplace culture, internal wage growth, and more. Read the article here.

As parks raced to make the biggest, longest, tallest roller coasters, costs skyrocketed, and the return on investment became more challenging to achieve. Consumer tastes have also changed, with Millennials in the US preferring more mid-tier rides for family inclusion.

WeWork’s story is colored by the times it just couldn’t make its numbers work. Its competitors in the coworking industry, such as Industrious and Convene, seem to be prioritizing slow and stable financial growth instead.

Many of the philosophies that the leaders of Y Combinator have infused into the program’s portfolio companies have become the playbook for building the next big thing, such as its focus on founder personality and more.

When Blackstone acquired MagicLab in 2019, Bumble Founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd was elevated to CEO of the entire parent company (which also owned Indian dating app Badoo). The parent company was rebranded as Bumble Inc.

An article details some of the wildest bell-ringing day stunts in recent history, from Clifford the Big Red Dog ringing the opening bell to one company's employees roasting marshmallows in a campfire on Wall Street as it went public.

Teen boys are the biggest driver in perfume sales as of the summer of 2025. They have increased their spending on fragrances 26% year-over-year as the trend blossoms on TikTok via #PerfumeTok. Additionally, users of weight loss drugs GLP-1 agonists are adding to sales, as they seek olfactory over culinary sensations.

While one might assume that older women face the most unfair treatment due to age in the workplace, some research from McKinsey & Co. suggests otherwise. The consulting firm found that while ageism impacts older women and men at similar rates, women in their 20s and 30s report much higher instances of ageism than both older women and their young, male colleagues. Learn more from the research here.

If you’ve heard of companies like Google and Yahoo, you’re already partially familiar with the dot-com bubble: a period from roughly 1995 to 2001, when internet companies were the hottest thing in venture capital. The “bubble” part of the term refers to the industry’s eventual implosion.

When Wolfe Herd stepped down as CEO in 2024, assuming an executive chair role, she said she was eager to return to her "founder roots" and do more big-picture thinking. However, when her replacement as CEO, the former Slack CEO Lidiane Jones, left the company "for personal reasons," Wolfe Herd once again assumed the CEO role.

Reporters from the Washington Post share an analysis that indicates gray and neutrally toned houses are signs of gentrification in a neighborhood. Visuals of different paint swatches help illustrate which colors are chosen for newly built homes in certain DC districts.

Although this article was written pre-pandemic, the workers interviewed in it still feel representative of the sector’s modern ethos. In the piece, the writer interviews a handful of gig workers about why, exactly, they’ve chosen to make a living off of Airbnbs or TaskRabbit gigs rather than doing something else.

The New York City-based investment management company paid about $3B for its stake in female-focused dating app Bumble. The app's 2021 IPO that made Bumble Founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd a billionaire at age 31 proved lucrative for Blackstone as well.