Meet the next wave of self-made women
A group of emerging female founders are positioned to grow their wealth substantially in the next decade.
A new wave of self-made women are set to vie for positions among the richest women in the country in the next decade, amassing wealth in the tens of millions of dollars driven by their success in founding businesses in retail and technology.
Despite consumer brands being a hard sell for many investors, there is a growing group of women behind fast-growing fashion and beauty brands – and because of the limited pools of capital available, the founders still own the majority of their companies.
Kristy Chong started her career in public relations, but it was when she had her second child and began training for a marathon that she began the journey of creating ModiBodi – a business that would sell nine years later for $140 million.
Like many women after childbirth, Chong was experiencing slight incontinence but hated the idea of having to wear liners.
From left: Goldee’s Verity Tuck, ModiBodi’s Kristy Chong, Rich Data Corp’s Ada Guan, MCoBeauty’s Shelley Sullivan and Vida Glow’s Anna Lahey.
This led her to create leak-proof underwear in 2012 – a concept that has now been taken up by underwear giant Bonds and many other smaller brands.
Chong invested $50,000 to start the company and create the first 500 pairs of underwear, before taking on a small amount of capital from a family friend to support ModiBodi’s early-stage growth. In 2019, private equity fund Quadrant acquired a majority stake in the business, a move Chong tells The Australian Financial Review she made when feeling overwhelmed growing the business and falling pregnant with her fourth child.
“I had my third when I started the business, and I was used to having babies around the business, but, when I fell pregnant with my fourth in 2018 I thought ‘oh my god, can I do this now and continue with four children?’” she says.
“I knew someone who came from an M&A background, and she said ‘have you thought of taking on an investor and selling down?‘. She said ‘let’s have a chat with Deloitte, I think we can get you a partner, or you could sell.’
“I don’t know why I thought it was a good time three months after having a baby, and I had sciatica too … I was in survival mode.”
In 2022, the company was acquired by Swedish hygiene and health company Essity for $140 million – a whopping 24 times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation multiple.
Now, Chong is using her earnings to invest in other female-founded businesses and has backed electric vehicle charging company Everty and medical tech company Laronix.
“I say this proudly, I’m consciously biased to investing in women. They need to own at least 50 per cent of the business and I like them to be in the CEO role as well,” she says. “I feel that I can help them, and also pick ones that can have an impact.”
To boost the number of female founders, Chong believes it’s critical to have more women investing, and for men to take on more responsibilities caring for children.
“The whole thing that women are more naturally carers is bullshit,” she says.“With my boys, I’m already having those discussions, [telling them] they have to have talked about family planning before they get married and make sure they’re aligned [with their partner] and have equal parenting responsibilities.”
Kristy Chong is investing some of the proceeds from her sale of ModiBodi into new female founders. Oscar Colman
Of this year’s top 75 richest women on the Financial Review Rich Women List, 37 are considered to be self-made, worth a collective $21.5 billion – up $1.4 billion on 2023. The cut-off for this year’s list was a net worth of $130 million, up from $100 million on 2023.
MCoBeauty founder Shelley Sullivan only started her fast-growing “masstige” beauty brand in 2016, but already the company has hit $63 million in annual revenue and is on track to bank $247 million in the 2024 financial year. In 2022, MCo secured the backing of Rich Lister Dennis Bastas’ VidaCorp, who owns 50 per cent of the company.
Sullivan began her business career by starting a model and talent agency in the 1990s, before creating her first beauty brand ModelCo in 2001, which went on to score the likes of Elle Macpherson and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley as brand ambassadors.
MCo was born out of Sullivan’s experience with ModelCo and represented a push further into the “luxe-for-less” market.
Speaking to The Australian Financial Review, a fast-talking Sullivan has an air of confidence that no doubt helped her take MCo from a start-up to the fastest growing beauty company in the country in eight years.
“What I saw was a space in the masstige beauty market providing high-end products at an affordable price,” she says. “[Premium brands] are making a large margin [on their products], but we get the benefit of volume.”
On track to achieve revenue growth of 292 per cent this year, MCo has been unaffected by the high cost of living. It is known for creating dupes of high-end products made by Charlotte Tilbury, Dior and NARS.
Young women on Instagram and TikTok see MCo all over their feeds, with influencer marketing a key growth driver for the brand.
Sullivan says the COVID-19 pandemic was a tipping point for the brand.
Shelley Sullivan created MCoBeauty when she noticed a gap in the beauty market for premium products at an affordable price point.
“Everything was shut but Woolworths and Coles … so I think we converted high-end customers to us then, and they fell in love with the brand.
“[Premium brands] are making a large margin [on their products], but we get the benefit of volume.”
Like Sullivan, Brazil-born Anna Lahey, who migrated to Australia with her family in 1994 as a child, has founded a fast-growing beauty brand – Vida Glow.
Creators of ingestible collagen-based beauty supplements, Lahey started the company a decade ago after a trip to Japan, where she saw the widespread use of collagen.
While this sparked her curiosity, it was only after taking the supplements and seeing her hair loss reverse that she decided to launch the company and introduce collagen products to Western markets.
Vida Glow is led by Lahey’s husband Kieran and hit $100 million in revenue only six years after launching. It took a hit in COVID-19, especially in China, but growth has since bounced back.
“In late 2012, early 2013, there was no ingestible beauty category in the West. Kieran and I have created a category, not just a brand,” she says. “A lot of what we’re innovating still, 10 years later, we’re doing for the first time.”
Creating a new category came with its challenges. The brand was successful selling direct to consumers in its early years but struggled to crack into the wholesale market. The tipping point came four years ago, when even collagen naysayers began recognising its benefits.
Having had four children in the last decade, Lahey’s cautionary advice to women is to not believe the myth that they can “have it all”.
Anna Lahey of Vida Glow says she couldn’t have built her business and been a mum to four kids without her husband and team of 60. Melissa Aroutunian
Female founders, she says, need more funding so they can afford to pay themselves enough to employ help, otherwise running a business and having a family is impossible.
“The juggle is impossible. I feel like I’m crawling around picking up balls half the time … like I’m doing a mediocre job at home and a mediocre job at work,” she says.
“I wouldn’t have been able to have four children if I didn’t have my husband and a team of 60 people. I’m not selling this dream that we can do it all.”
Other women in the retail sector building significant wealth include Showpo’s Jane Lu and Dissh owner Lucy Henry-Hicks, who sold a 40 per cent stake to billionaire Brett Blundy earlier this year.
Of the 37 self-made women on this year’s Rich Women List, 32 per cent come from the retail sector, while 22 per cent made their fortune in the tech industry.
One of the biggest issues holding back female founders is widely considered the lack of scale-up capital available.
One investor who did not want to be named said it was impossible for women to crack into the private equity industry because superannuation funds were unable to give money to first-time fund managers.
“You have to be able to fund an entire first time fund yourself, foot all the costs and support the team until you get results,” they say. “That’s why you see more women in early-stage venture capital and angel investing where the cheque sizes are not as big.”
The investor also said very few consumer businesses were able to attract investment, despite high-profile exits like Aesop and Zimmermann.
“The best option [for these founders] is to not need investment and to learn to scale profitability. But, growth will be slower ... and it’s not possible for all businesses.“
Tech founders
Self-made women in the tech sector were collectively worth $11.4 billion, over half of the total net worth of self-made women on this year’s Rich Women list.
Verity Tuck, who sold her flower delivery business Lvly for $35 million in 2022, is now co-founder of tech start-up Goldee, alongside her husband Mike Fraser.
The pair are creating an AI-powered assistant to help parents manage the mental load of coordinating a family.
Tuck is a rarity in the start-up world, having created her first business knowing she wanted to sell it.
“It sounds ballsy when you don’t know what you’re talking about … but we had a pipe dream and we never wavered,” she says.
“We went through tricky times … but we held tight, moved past it, and I got to see the full circle of a business in my first start-up, and I’m really grateful for that.”
She had the “itch” to start another business in early 2023, but this time around she isn’t focused on a sale.
Goldee co-founder Verity Tuck has already had one successful exit. Natalie Grono
“I have a bee in my bonnet about the mental load of parenting and something that needs to be done with it,” she says, adding that reducing the mental load of mothers she hopes will help enable more to get back into the workforce, or start their own companies.
“For this new generation, being able to provide little moments of oxygen and moments to breathe and dream again is really important and the support systems for women need to be in place.”
Other women in tech making their mark include Brighte’s Katherine McConnell and Kim Teo of Mr Yum.
Rich Data Corporation co-founder Ada Guan became one of the only Aussie founders to secure a series B capital raise last year at an elevated valuation, banking $28 million from Westpac and nCino.
The business has created software that uses artificial intelligence to help banks make decisions about whether to lend to small businesses.
The capital raise came only a few years after the company had been in danger of collapse.
A former Westpac program manager, Guan says it’s frustrating the business can’t attract funding from funds that support female founders because the company typically does not meet their requirements, given she has three male co-founders.
“Having male co-founders is a fantastic thing … but it doesn’t mean I don’t need support,” she says.
When considering RDC’s pathway, Guan says both an IPO or a trade sale would be on the table in the future. For now, though, she is focused on expanding into the US and growing “responsibly”.
“We’re watching our money quite carefully … We’re quite conscious that the economic environment is uncertain,” she says.
Trawalla Group’s Carol Schwartz, who ranks 61st on this year’s Rich Women list with an estimated net worth of $266 million, says there are more women starting businesses than ever before.
“We are definitely seeing a surge in female entrepreneurs and female entrepreneurship, which is fantastic. It indicates that women are feeling confident about their innovation, their ideas and their ability to bring that to fruition,” she says.
Schwartz, who is the daughter of Sussan co-founder Marc Besen, has invested in female-led start-ups and venture capital funds managed by women.
Her investments include Aliavia Ventures, Artesian’s Female Leaders fund, Sarah Nolet’s Tenacious Ventures and Maxine Minter’s Co Ventures.
“The allocation of capital by women is hugely important. In so many circumstance and environments we operate in, men control the allocation,” Schwartz says.
“I am absolutely 100 per cent prepared to take a risk on this asset class because I think it’s a very under-served asset class, and I’m getting more bang for my buck, and I’ll reap the benefits.
“I’m also contributing to these VC founders to establish track records, which, I think, is really crucial.”
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