Funding for Women-Owned Businesses with Erika Lucas

Becky Mollenkamp: Hello, Erica, how are you? Thanks for being with me.

Erika Lucas: Thank you so much for having me, Becky. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for a while.

Becky Mollenkamp: We’re going to talk a lot about funding, but first I start every episode the same, which is tell me about your relationship with feminism.

Erika Lucas: You know, it’s funny because obviously right now, one of the pillars of our organization focus exclusively on funding women led companies and funding companies actually that make it easier for women to join the labor force, to join and stay in the labor force. So I become more acquainted and more close to feminism. I’ve always considered myself a feminist but I don’t think I’ve ever really explored the full context of what it means to be a feminist and an intersectional feminist at that, right? Because I’m Latina immigrant and I think that maybe not necessarily a discomfort, I would say, but my lack of understanding how feminism has evolved over time and how it’s excluded in a lot of ways, a lot of women of color. I think it’s something that I’m still wrapping my head around it and maybe an intentional about learning more so that I can be truly a feminist in all sorts of ways, right? And very intentional about it. 

Becky Mollenkamp: I want to speak with people who are all along the journey of understanding their relationship with feminism. So I think that’s great. Well, let’s get into business. Your background includes marketing and business development. You worked as the global director at the Oklahoma Department of Commerce. Oklahoma is where you are now. And you were also a partner for a long time in a private equity firm. And you have a lot of experience that is more traditional sort of employment. You were born in Chihuahua, Mexico to parents who were both entrepreneurs. They bootstrapped their businesses to provide for their families. And so I’m wondering, how did your background as a child and seeing your parents as entrepreneurs, and then you went into traditional employment, but eventually you started your own companies. So what made you go into traditional employment, having seen entrepreneurship, and then what made you decide to leave it?

Erika Lucas: Honestly, I wanted nothing to do with entrepreneurship because I had seen firsthand, I think that right now in today’s environment, we romanticize a lot with being an entrepreneur. And often the way in which Main Street media tells the story of entrepreneurs, the long wolf, self -made billionaire, and all of these stories that we are told over and over and over there’s actually a lot of inconsistencies with those stories, right? And a lot of people don’t have the leverage that enable a lot of those stories to come true. And so I think because I was born into a family of bootstrap entrepreneurs, as you said, that in Mexico didn’t have a lot of resources, didn’t have a lot of access to capital. We didn’t even know what the hell venture capital meant. So I grew up with a very real definition of what it’s like to be a bootstrap entrepreneur, not knowing whether you’re going to make payroll or not knowing whether you’re going to have the financial resources to keep going. And so I wanted nothing to do with entrepreneurship because I saw the risk, I saw how much work it takes to build a sustainable company. And honestly, back in the day, I just wanted to have a steady paycheck. I wanted to have health care taken care of by the employer and I wanted a more stable environment. I’m actually an immigrant, so I also migrated to the United States. There’s a lot of uncertainty that goes with a lot of that. And I also felt the weight in my shoulders to make sure that I was taking care of my mom and my family and pay it forward for all the sacrifices she made. So I wanted to take a less risky approach to how I was going to build generational wealth.

Becky Mollenkamp: I think it can go one of two ways when we have entrepreneur parents. You can either kind of say, that opens the door for me and I can do anything. I can start my own business. Or you can say, my gosh, I saw how hard it was for them. I don’t want to do that because I had my mom was an entrepreneur. It was very hard. And I think that was what took me a while. Also took me down the road of traditional employment. So then what made you decide to leave that security? And we all know once you become an entrepreneur and start to understand things, the security of a traditional job is not always as secure as we make it out to believe the story makes it out to be. But what made you decide to leave that so -called security and start something on your own then?

Erika Lucas: I think like a lot of women in the workforce right now, I think you reach a point when you start observing the workplace in a more realistic way, and then you start realizing that workplaces weren’t designed with women in mind, with working parents in mind, with caregivers in mind. I also obviously, again, talking about the intersectionality, I started realizing that I was often not just the only woman at the table, but the only woman of color at the table. I started paying attention to the biases, microaggressions, and honestly, I was burned out. I was burned out of that work environment. I knew I was not gonna be able to change it, even though for a long period of time in my career, my ego would tell me, you can go into these workplaces and change it from within. And the reality is a lot of times, yeah, we’re building our careers and, you know, climbing the ladder, if you will, but sometimes the ladder is stacked against the wrong building, right? And I realized that. I also realized how, you know, because at the time that I decided to leave traditional employment, I was at a private equity firm that was investing in ladder stage companies, so control ownership, very different than what I do now, because I invest in very early stage companies. But I started paying attention of how disproportionately the flow of capital goes, right? With less than 2 % of venture capital going to women, less than 1 % going to people of color. And then I started really studying and researching why that was, right? How can it be that women represent 50 % of the labor force, 50 % of the population, we control more than 80 % of consumer spending. The S &P 500 consistently says that companies with women at the C -suite level consistently outperform companies that don’t have diversity at the C -suite. So the numbers just didn’t jive, right? And I wanted to do something about it. So I took the leap. I think it was just a compounding effect, right, of things like realizing that the workplace really wasn’t working for me, realizing that the problem started with who’s building and funding companies from the beginning, and wanting to do something about it.

Becky Mollenkamp: Can you paint a little bit more of a picture of what it looked like for you at the end of that it sounds like you had children maybe by then. Can you say you are sort of reaching that place of burnout what were the expectations on you how much were you working what did it start to look like for your life.

Erika Lucas: You know, I was very privileged in that I married a feminist guy, right, without knowing that he was a feminist. He really did help a lot with caregiving, both of my roles when I was working for the Department of Commerce here in Oklahoma and when I was at private equity and we were investing both in companies in the US and Europe. I was traveling internationally consistently and so my husband really stood, you know, he was an entrepreneur. So he had the flexibility to be able to fill in the role of caregiving, right? And household management when I was gone. So I wanna say that I was very privileged and that I had a partner that really stepped up and provided that support to enable me to work the hours, the crazy hours that I worked and to allow me to fit in, if you will, into the workplace. But the expectations just were unrealistic because right now more than 77 % of high earning men have a support system at home versus only 22 % of women, high earning women, right? And so the expectation was always that I could go to all the happy hours, same as my colleagues, and there was somebody gonna magically cook for my kids or provide whatever. And again, I was very lucky to have a partner that did step in and provided that. But there’s only so much you can do, right? There’s only so much that the expectations of travel, when you can travel, the expectations of how you network and how you build your network of going to happy hours and going to weekend events and jumping on a plane just for fun to go visit high net worth individual that might invite, you know, all of those things, it just became too much. Couple that with, so it’s not just the expectation of, you know, the work environment and what you’re expected to do as a C -suite professional, but also the microaggressions, right? Or the backhanded compliments, right? Like, so for example, one of our perks at the firm that I was at, we would take all inclusive trips to the beach, you know, and I was the only person there. You know, my husband was the only non male executive, right? He was there as the spouse of Erika Lucas and everybody else brought their significant other, which was female at the time, were female at the time. And just a lot of comments that were made, right? That either diminish my husband’s contribution or presence during those deals or mine. There was a lot of gossip around as to how I got to my role, whether I was fooling around with some of the partners, because how could it possibly be that a Latina, as young as I was at the time, I’m not that young anymore, had made it to the top in a private equity firm? Just because, I mean, if you look at it, and I can see why people would raise eyebrows. I mean, Latinas represent less than 1 % of venture capital professionals, right? So it is very rare to see somebody like me as a partner at a private equity firm. W can go all hour here, Becky, honestly, just talking about how I felt in terms of expectations, but also microaggression, back-handed compliments and just honestly feeling that it didn’t matter what I did and how I showed up and how I consistently outperformed peers. I was never able to gonna be enough to be able to really have the same leverage that my male peers did, right? Even if we have the same titles.

Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah, I mean, we could go a long time talking about this, obviously. And I think listeners will relate. Anyone who’s worked in corporate America, certainly anyone who’s advanced in the way you have, will recognize that experience of being the odd person out. Like, why am I the one? Because I’m different than others in the room. And this wasn’t, we’re not talking about the 1950s, the 1980s. We’re talking about not even that long ago, right? This was 10, not, yeah.

Erika Lucas: Right, this was 2016, yeah, 2016, yeah. Exactly, and I think that one of the things that I did realize about myself is that I tried to do everything that people tell you to do to fit in, right? I achieve for perfectionism, right? I worked extra hours, I showed up every time I needed to show up. 

Becky Mollenkamp: We’re not even talking a decade ago.

Erika Lucas: I alienated myself and did all of the things to the point that I think I assimilated myself into this workspace that I didn’t really belong in. And it still didn’t pay off. I still got burned out because there’s only so much you can do. I was doing unpaid labor at home and I was doing unpaid labor at work. And on top of all of my work, my traditional work expectations. So, how can you not get burned out? I mean, right now we’re seeing it, right? 50 % of women in the C -suite are burned out and are either considering downshifting their roles and or quitting the labor force in general. One of the statistics I often mention, because I am very intentional about investing in black women, Latinas and traditionally underrepresented women founders. And I’m very proud to say that Latinas are launching companies six times faster than any other group and demographic. But I also know the reason why that is, right? And that’s because they’re quitting traditional corporate America, traditional workspaces because they’re not serving them. So in one way, I’m proud that women are taking control of their future and starting companies and all of that. But I also challenge, you know, my peer, my colleagues in corporate America and traditional workspaces to really think about why is that the women are leaving the labor force to start businesses. And I think a lot of it has to do because we really haven’t created the environment and the workplaces that provide flexibility, not just in terms of where we work, but when and how we work.

Becky Mollenkamp: I think your experiences give you an amazing perspective to bring into the work you’re doing now, because those microaggressions, the the overwork, all of the stuff is also the things that the people that you are probably talking to are experiencing, whether it’s because they have been experiencing it in their own jobs and are thinking I need to find and I got to find a way out of this and I want to start a new company. Also, then when they go to look for funding and are running into those same microaggressions and those same issues from traditional funding resources, because as you mentioned, they’re very male dominated. So you started Stitch Crew. You’ve co-founded two companies. We’re going to talk about Vest as well. But let’s start with Stitch Crew, because that was when you said, I can’t take this anymore. This isn’t working for me. Forget security. It’s time for me to say all that be damned. I just need to go work for myself. Tell me a little bit about Stitch Crew and how that was the first place you landed. Why that?

Erika Lucas: To be honest, it wasn’t like one day I got up and said, this is exactly what I’m going to do. It was a correlation of things. I actually tried to convince traditional economic development organization, my former employer, the Oklahoma Department of Commerce, chambers, universities were doing it to an extent, but they were very inward focused. So they were supporting students that wanted to start their own enterprise or their own company, right. But very specific to their student body or their faculty. And I went to different organizations because I didn’t want to start, I didn’t know how, right. I didn’t know how to start a nonprofit. I didn’t know all that was needed. And again, I was still looking for stability, just more flexible stability, right. But, everybody told us no. Everybody, you know, at the time, I think nowadays you’re starting to see more chambers and economic development organization focus on entrepreneurship. But back then, a lot of them weren’t. And that’s because the way we measure economic development in a lot of states and a lot of cities is based on job creation, not wealth creation. And so the problem was that every time I would talk to a traditional EDO, they would say, well, Erica, what you’re doing is cute and it’s noble, but it’s not really economic development at scale, right? We’re focused more on helping establish big companies or recruiting and attracting big companies to create hundreds of jobs instead of organic growth like you’re trying to do. So at the time, a lot of people told us no. But you know who said yes to us? So I was having coffee, probably drinks not necessarily coffee with some of the executives. So I’m based in Oklahoma City in our MBA team, the Oklahoma City Thunder has a very similar story. And that really, for an MBA, especially nowadays for an MBA franchise to be approved to own an MBA team, you have to be in a larger market, right? So Oklahoma by all means didn’t really fit the standards of what it would take to make an NBA team sustainable. But the Oklahoma City Thunder took the leap and Oklahoma have been successful in a lot of the ways that they’ve been able to sell out almost every game is because they really integrated into the community. And they also understand that it’s more than just selling a sports teams. You really have to be bested in the community and you have to provide opportunity for people then to be able to be long -term vested in the team. And so we were having drinks and I was telling them my frustration that everybody was saying no, and that we were losing a lot of talent to the coast because a lot of young talent wanted, didn’t think that we were progressive enough in terms of how we were looking at economic development in terms of providing support systems in our city and our state. And so they were living to the coast to build those support systems. And the Oklahoma City Thunder immediately got it. And they were like, well, what if we helped you do it? So if all these people are saying, no, what if we did it and we create a program and we give you the space and we give you our resources and we’ll start. And that’s how Stitch Crew got started over drinks, talking about how we could leverage resources. But it wasn’t something that I specifically thought about and built a business plan around. It was just very organic and it was built out of frustration with the system. And then little by little, we started getting other corporate funders and federal funding. And we’ve never today gotten state funding, but you know, city funding and other support mechanisms to continue to do the work that we’re doing.

Becky Mollenkamp: And that work includes an accelerator. Are there other pieces inside of that or is the primary focus around helping these businesses get off the ground?

Erika Lucas: It’s evolved. We started with one accelerator. We’ve now actually done five different accelerators. We’ve created the Indigenous Women accelerator. We created the Inclusive Beauty accelerator. We’ve created the Latino accelerator. So we’ve done Women’s Health accelerator. So in terms of programming, it’s evolved to be a lot more inclusive and always center around where are the biggest gaps in terms of what type of companies need to exist today, and what are the problems that need to be solved, and how do we create programming to kind of bring or stitch together the resources needed for these entrepreneurs. So programming is a big part of what Stitch Crew does. The other component of what Stitch Crew does is that we also focus on advocacy, right? So like really informing federal, state, and local leaders and economic developers now on the value of backing entrepreneurs, right? And growing organically in our communities. But also we talk about the, you know, what are the policies that need to exist to make it easier for people to launch a business and to grow a business and to be sustainable, right? And that’s not just access to capital, you know, healthcare, for example, access to healthcare is a big component. A lot of entrepreneurs, a second reason or the second fear, for people to launch their business. Obviously, the first one is loss of income, steady income at the beginning. But the second one is access to healthcare because health insurance, for most household, the second largest expense after mortgage. We do a lot of advocacy across the country now to educate people on what policies could help lower the barriers to entry for a lot of entrepreneurs, primarily socially and economically disadvantaged entrepreneurs.

Becky Mollenkamp: The healthcare issue is definitely one of them because that is always one of the first things that people who are traditionally employed who are miserable and I will talk to them and they want to start their own business and it always comes back to that, especially if they are not in a partnership where a partner can provide that. The Affordable Care Act seemed to have helped some. It allowed more people to say, I have some option that is not exorbitant, but I mean, it’s still exorbitant, so yeah.

Erika Lucas: It’s still expensive, right? And it’s still very, there’s just a lot of intricacies that come with that, that I think we should be talking about it. 

Becky Mollenkamp: And do you guys provide funding or was this because I know some accelerators, there’s some funding, others there’s not, or you provide education around finding funding. Where do you guys fall through Stitch Crew? Obviously with Vest, I know that’s very different because it’s about funding. But for the Stitch Crew piece of what you’re doing, what’s the funding component?

Erika Lucas: When we started, like literally, my husband and I put together our own funding because everybody was telling us no. So when we started out, it was mainly bringing together resources, partnerships, investors to the table and all of that. But now we’ve evolved to do provide non -dilutive financing or grants, I’m sorry, not even financing because they’re just grants. But now through a lot of our programs, what we do is, you know, there’s still small grants. So I think our biggest grant is $15 ,000. So it’s not a lot of money. And we realized that that’s not going to make a dent in somebody’s need for capital. But it’s actually grants are one of the primary sources of early stage capital, primarily for women and people of color, right? They can’t secure loans, they can’t secure the typical friends and family round that, you know, it’s full of biases and or, you know, private investment. So we provide anywhere from 10 to $15 ,000 to each of the company that we support. They don’t have to pay it back. It’s just something that we ask them to, you know, put towards the development and growth of their company. And we still provide access to mentorship, you know, relationships, networking, peer to peer mentorship and all of that stuff.

Becky Mollenkamp: What types of businesses are most attracted to those accelerators?

Erika Lucas: We’ve been very lucky to attract both venture backed companies and non venture backed companies, you know, main, you know, main street businesses, I think because of the fact that we don’t take equity in the companies, you know, but we do. I mean, if you talk to it’s not just me talking, but if you talk to anybody that has gone through our programming, I think one of the things that we pride ourselves in is community and like just a peer to peer support. And so I think that because of that reputation and because of the fact that we don’t take equity in the companies, we’ve actually been able to support companies that have already raised like over $4 million in capital, right? But they’re still lacking that peer to peer support or that additional introduction to, you know, peer networks. And with Stitch Crew, you leverage the fact that we’ve supported over 200 companies, our alumni network is very big, but also our mentor network. And then we have Vest, which we haven’t even talked about, but that’s a network of professional women that are in the C -suite VP that are often acting as mentors, but also pilots, right? Like if you’re building something for enterprise solution, a lot of our vast members are testing out this technology before it goes to market and providing feedback to the founders. So there’s a lot more than just capital when it comes to our programming. And because of that, we’ve been able to attract even companies that are like post-seed and venture backed because they’re not having to dilute their company to just go through our program. And they still get the $15 ,000 plus everything else. But we’ve also been able, I think a lot of things is a lot of companies that are not necessarily looking to be the venture route and have already gotten their SBA certification and stuff, they are also turned down by a lot of these for -profit accelerators because they’re not venture backed, or because they’re not looking to be venture backed. So we get a lot of those companies too, that are more Main Street, that want to grow through revenue or want to grow through debt financing or non -traditional sources of financing. We attract a lot of those as well.

Becky Mollenkamp: You mentioned technology, some of the folks through Vest trying out the technology. Are they all tech companies or are you also invest? No, OK. Other types of companies as well?

Erika Lucas: No, we’re very intentional about that. We don’t want to be like the traditional tech is going to save the world and only tech is going to save the world. We want to help good business owners that can grow sustainably, that are solving a real problem, that are wanting to build intentional companies that understand that we can use the systems that we have to build more inclusive workspaces and be more intentional about how we take care of employees. So we are not necessarily focused on tech versus non -tech or venture -backed versus non -backed. We’re just focused more on the type of founder and the type of company and the type of problem that they’re solving.

Becky Mollenkamp: I want to go back to something you, a couple of things you said and how they relate to each other, which was one about you being sort of, what I heard was I was a good girl. I did everything the right way. I did what I was supposed to do and it wasn’t working for me. It didn’t feel good. My life wasn’t the way I wanted it to look. And I have heard this theme, that particular theme come up again and again in interviews, especially with women for the show, this experience of I did everything that they said I was supposed to and I wasn’t happy. It didn’t feel like I thought it was going to. And you also mentioned the lone wolf self -made billionaire narrative. And I feel like these two things kind of go hand in hand because this idea that if we do everything right, that we can just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, if we do the things we’re supposed to do, that we can have that American dream, we can get rich and all of that. And that narrative gets really perpetuated when we see people talking about, when we hear the self -made millionaire or billionaire story. And you had a TEDx talk, which I’ll link to in the show notes, which was great talking about this. I want you to just share a little bit more about this idea of these like tech guys that, you know, start their business in their garage and now they’re billionaires. Why that story is deceptive and why it’s harmful.

Erika Lucas: My mom came here as an immigrant. And when she first came here as a single mother, work two jobs, nobody worked harder than my mom, right? And that didn’t, you know, that the whole story of like, if you just, you know, put your head down and work very, very hard, and you can become a millionaire. I mean, that is just not realistic, right? Not if you don’t have the right type of access to capital resources, educational, and all of these things. And if you’re not exposed to the different level of opportunities that exist. So I always, yeah, right there, I think that if we look at our teachers, if we look at caregivers, nurses that work, single mothers that are working or single dads that are working two jobs plus weekends and all of that, I think that that in itself will dismantle that myth. But let’s talk about entrepreneurship. And by the way, I don’t mean to diminish anybody’s accomplishments or achievements, but rather I want us to be very honest about how some people achieve success. Often the media tells us that the story of the Jeff Bezos, the Mark Zuckerberg, the Elon Musk and how they started with very limited resources, very limited access to capital in their garage. You know, we’ve all heard these stories. But the reality is most of these males went to Ivy League school. They had generational wealth. They had friends and or family that were able to invest in their company. And they are used to failure, right, which is very important. Women and people of color don’t have the same latitude to fail than white male peers. It’s just a fact. We’ve seen it with the WeWork founder, right? That he failed massively. We’ve seen it with Sam, with FTX, several times. These guys have the luxury of failing upwards because they fail terribly. They even are not honest with their investors. And immediately they start racing again and they get funding immediately. Even though women represent 50 % of the population, all of the statistics that I just mentioned, how is it possible that we only get 2 %? With 2 % of venture capital, you can’t tell me that women have the same latitude to fail than men. It’s just not, you know, that the math doesn’t support that. And again, going back to these gentlemen, they started with a lot of privilege, right? A lot of, all of the things that I mentioned. And even if they fail, they could start over again. And that is fantastic for them. Again, I’m not here to diminish them, but the truth is that most Americans don’t have that type of leverage, right? Particularly when it comes to women and people of color. Furthermore, I think that one of the most damaging stories that has taken place in entrepreneurship and in our society, to be honest, is that we idolize these gentlemen. And we think that once you hit the billionaire mark, you must be the most, the smartest person in the room. And I think Elon Musk has proven us wrong or those that think of that wrong, right? And I’m not saying that he’s not smart in some areas, but he didn’t build Tesla alone, right? He didn’t build, you know, well, he sure as hell didn’t build Twitter or X and now, but you know what I’m saying? You need employees, right? That are smart and that are contributing. You need investors that are investing and giving you the funding that you need. You need customers that are buying into the solution. You need stakeholders. I mean, come on, Tesla and, you know, SpaceX wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for government funding and government contracts. That’s public support. You know, so, so nobody builds companies alone. And when we idolize these gentlemen and they end up doing a lot of damage to our society, a lot of people are not paying attention to the damage costs and they only hear the story of the long wolf. And they think that that is the only way to entrepreneurship and to building a company, you know, the hustle mode that can be very toxic. and they start building companies that way. I can’t stand that argument because one is false. Again, nobody builds companies alone. Two, it’s toxic, right? And it’s led a lot of founders to, you know, kind of become kind of even like cultish. You know, like there’s just one way to build companies and whatever Elon says, whatever Mark says, whatever Jeff says. it’s the only way to build and it’s not true. 

Becky Mollenkamp: I absolutely think that this needs to be said and thank you for sharing it. And it even extends further, which I think is where you’re talking about, which is it’s not even just that they believe it to be true for themselves or for the world for themselves and the way they must build a business, but they project it outward. So it becomes this is the way everyone should be running a business. And if you’re not successful woman, person of color, it’s because you just have, you’re not as smart or you haven’t worked as hard. And they can actually internalize this to a place of truly believing, hey, the reason that less than 2 % of venture capital goes to women and less than 1 % goes to people of color, it’s just because there aren’t enough of those women and people of color who are building businesses. And the unspoken part that I think even sometimes gets spoken is it’s because they aren’t smart enough or working hard enough. And that is incredibly untrue and damaging. And you mentioned in this TED talk as well that it’s far more systemic and that doesn’t get talked about enough. And so instead what happens is a lot of these funders who are women or people of color are internalizing that narrative and then thinking there’s something wrong with them. When in fact it’s systemic issues that get us here and why they’re not getting that funding.

Erika Lucas: First of all, the first thing I think we need to understand is that inequality compounds, right? When rounds of funding for women led companies or companies with founders of color are rare, investors start to perceive them as uncommon, right? And what do we do with things as human beings when things are uncommon? We shy away from them, right? Because we instinctively treat them as suspicious and we put a barrier in between us because we’re uncomfortable. And the result of that is that we make less investments, right? Because it feels unnatural, it feels weird, it feels suspicious. Exactly, exactly, exactly. So the risk level goes up. But what happens is again, inequality compounds because when rounds of funding are rare, investors start perceiving as uncommon. And so the less rounds of funding, or unpredictable, and they love predictability. The less role models, the less angel investors or friends and family that can invest. And so the, you know, psycho continues and the spiral continues and inequality compounds, right? The second root cause that I think we don’t talk about enough is just the unconscious biases that exist, right? For example, it’s very well proven, there’s a lot of research that investors and even executives, we judge men based on their potential versus we judge women based on their performance. And so that gives a lot of leverage to male founders who you’re investing based on an idea on a napkin versus a woman, you need to see traction and you need to see how much revenue they have and you need to see what they do and are they credible. One of my biggest pet pieces is also the whole friends and family bias, right? Because a lot of investors says, well, your first round of funding really needs to come from friends and family. That is fantastic if you have friends and family that have wealth to be able to invest in the companies. But when you compare the national wealth average, if a wide, the average wide family in the United States is about $280 ,000 now, if you compare that to Latino family, it’s only about $47 ,000 in a Black family. It’s about $27 ,000. So there’s a huge wealth gap. And I don’t care how great your idea is, if you don’t have the friends and family that can invest, it’s very hard for you to get that friends and family around. That’s another type of unconscious bias. The third root cause that I think we need to talk about is just the incredible disproportionate lack of diversity in the investment space. There are several data sets dating back to, I don’t know, 30 years ago that show us that the investment community hasn’t really changed for over 30 years. And a lot of my colleagues will say, well, Erica, what do you mean? Yeah, there are more women in venture capital. There are more women investors. There are more women professionals in private equity and venture capital. But just because we’ve gotten used to hiring people to check the box or to make our websites look more inclusive, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that people with non -traditional backgrounds or socially or economically disadvantaged are making decisions. So when we’re looking, for example, at women decision -makers in the investment space, it’s actually less than 8%, right? And when we look at people of color in the decision -making space, it’s actually less than 2%. So how can we expect women and people of color to feel welcome into the space or to feel comfortable pitching firms or all of these? How can we expect to understand if they’re solving for a problem that we’re not close to because of their lived experiences, if we don’t have diversity in our teams, right? Is it really a lack of deal flow or is it the fact that we don’t know where to look, we don’t know what to look for because we don’t have diversity in our teams? And again, just going back to this proportionate, I always say, it’s just unbelievable to me that women control 80 % of consumer spending, we make 50 % of corporate America purchasing decision making yet when it comes to all assets under management, less than 1 .4 % of all assets under management are managed by diverse own teams. So both women and people of color, 1 .4%, right? So it’s just very disproportionate. And until we fix the face of who’s writing the checks, we’re not gonna see a big change in kind of trending number, the numbers trending up when it comes to the flow of capital.

Becky Mollenkamp: You talk about the people in the room. And obviously there’s just the part of like, it’s hard to, I think the camaraderie that just happens naturally with somebody who looks more like you, who has a similar life experiences you, who goes and plays golf with your buddies, right? So obviously there’s that. But you also mentioned in your Ted talk about somebody who was trying to sell a product or a service to help women with pelvic floor issues after having children. I think about things like period products. I’m thinking about things like women who have different skin tones and cannot find makeup that matches their skin tone or that addresses the texture of their hair. These are real issues that have real money that can be made from them. But if the people in the room don’t understand those products, don’t understand those life experiences. Why would they invest? So it goes beyond just the like, hey, you look like me, because I think sometimes men who don’t understand this think, well, I can invest if it’s a good product, I’m gonna invest in it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a man or a woman, but it matters beyond just because it’s your buddy presenting the product, but because you don’t get it.

Erika Lucas: By the way, Alison, who I mentioned in my TED talk that that’s creating that solution, just received FDA approval for her product. So I’m very proud for her. And she’s been able to secure investment both from male companies, but also from from female.

Becky Mollenkamp: And what’s the product just so we can give her a shout out?

Erika Lucas: So it’s a product that you can insert for women that are having urinary problems, right? So it needed to go through FDA approvals. It’s a subscription -based model now where you can replace it every 30 days. Yeah, yeah, so it’s Alison Conti, Conti Products, I think is the official name.

Becky Mollenkamp: Do you know the name? Cool, I’ll link to it in show notes. That’s awesome.

Erika Lucas: The product itself is called Yanni and I can send it to you. So if you want to include it in the show notes, but yeah, I’m very proud of Alison and she and she’s going. But yeah, to your point, you know, like right now, you know, and you mentioned how did I attach my personal experience and my experience. So in addition to Stitch Girl, I also founded VAST, which is a peer network of professional women, you know, and it’s cross generational cross titles, right? So we have women in the C-suite, VP, but we also have emerging leaders and we have entrepreneurs because we believe in the cross -sectional training and sharing different lived experiences. And then we launched a fund that invests not only in women -led companies, but women -led companies that are building specifically for how we’re caring for the loved ones, how broken our care infrastructure is in the United States. And also how are we helping employers better recruit, retain and upskill workers in a way that creates more inclusive workspaces. So all of that is tied to my personal story, but also the stories of more than 200 women that we’ve been able to support either through StitchGrew or through Vest that tell the same story. And I’m sure you’ve heard the stories again and again, like we’ve just talked about. But my point is when you talk about the care economy, and for those that are listening that really haven’t dwell into what the care economy is. So think about all the money we spend caring for our loved ones from the time they’re born to their last breath, right? So yes, that includes childcare, but it also includes elder care, home -based care, parent tech, household management tech, all of these things. It’s a massive industry, over $600 billion industry. So it’s actually bigger than the pharmaceutical industry. But we now talk to a lot of LPs, you know, to invest in our fund, they actually don’t get it because they immediately think of childcare and how low paying jobs, right, because of how we unequal we are to caregivers. And so they think, no, this doesn’t make money, right? This is not big enough. And, you know, yes, childcare is a problem, but it’s a problem for the government to solve or for women to solve, right? Not for venture capital to solve. And that is again, because I mentioned before, you know, when you have over 78 % of high earners or, you know, 90 % of male investors that have a support system of home, of course, they don’t understand how massive the problem is. But when I tell women the problem that we’re trying to solve and why it’s investable and why there’s a lot of opportunity, they immediately get it, right? Because for the most part, for societal norms and other things, women are still the primary caregivers and we’re still the primary party responsible for managing our household. So I think it just goes back to the point of, it doesn’t matter even if you are for investing in women, even if you are for investing in traditionally overlooked entrepreneurs, if you don’t have the lived experiences and representation in your team, sometimes it’s very hard to see past how big the problems actually are.

Becky Mollenkamp: You mentioned lack of representation and then very related unconscious bias because I think those things often show up together, right? And how that has clearly affected funding and where the money is going to. This is where I really want to talk about Vest. You’ve brought it up. So I’m glad you have because you’re you’re trying to imagine a new way. So what needs to change and how? And then let’s talk about and maybe you can do it now including in that, or maybe it’s a separate piece, a separate question, but I wanna know how Vest is a part of trying to help create that change.

Erika Lucas: I think women need to be part of the table, women with different lived experiences, right? So going back to feminism, I think that one of the challenges I think with why a lot of women, particularly black women, Latinas, indigenous women for sure, feel uncomfortable with feminism is because it’s excluded them in a lot of ways, right? One of the things that we’re very intentional about Vest is instead of asking for a seat at the table, we’re creating our own tables, right? We’re talking about, hey, not only how do we support each other as we navigate careers, but how do we intentionally create more inclusive workspaces that work for everyone, not just women. And so, and that requires us coming together to not try to assimilate to spaces that weren’t designed with us in mind, but coming together to talk about how we support one another as we create a different way of building workspaces. We’re also creating different ways by the fund, right? By the way, I can’t stand venture capital. And if you ask anybody that’s ever known me, I never wanted to raise a fund. I was very against, you know, Stitch Crew has always been very intentional about not just being for venture backable companies. The reason I decided to launch the fund is once again, it was frustration. You know, when we started back in 2016, we started trending little by little, but women started securing more funding. And so there were some years up to into like 2020 where women were able to secure and then it just dropped. So we were actually regressing. I feel like oftentimes we take two steps forward and then four steps back, right? And so I got upset and to be completely honest and now it’s not that I regret it, but I look back and I was naive and thinking, fuck, we’re regressing, so we just need to create a fund and the way we started actually, we weren’t going to be, our target right now is 20 million, but we started small, right? Like the first $2 million came from women in our network, right? And people in our network that we’re already familiar with, we were trying to do. So that’s a different way of like, again, it was non -traditional LPs, it was high net worth individuals, it was women that understood the problem that we were trying to solve. It was giving them the opportunity to decide which companies needed to exist in the world, right? Obviously profit driven, but also like, we’re tired of seeing like another, how do we build a life in Mars? Like, okay, that might be a problem that we may need to encounter 50 years from now, 100 years from now, but how will we create solutions that are needed now for the majority of the population instead of like, you know, we are shaped rockets that can go up to, you know, whatever. So I think that’s why Vest is important and that’s why it’s so important that people with non -traditional backgrounds, women, people of color start being the ones writing checks because we see problems from, we see the actual problems that actual people are facing not necessarily the 1% of the population, right?

Becky Mollenkamp: So Vest is women in the C-suite and also people of color. Does it include men in the C-suite? Just to be clear.

Erika Lucas: Vest is exclusive to women or people that identify as women. So no, but investors in the fun that we have do include men that do believe in what we’re doing.

Becky Mollenkamp: So it’s not just those women in the C -suite that are the investors in the fund. They also invest in the fund or the, I’m just trying to get clarity on how the actual fund works.

Erika Lucas: So two ways. We have the Women’s Peer Network. That’s coaching year round and coming together to provide solutions for them. So that’s a separate, like that’s one pillar. The second pillar is the fund. And yes, some VAS members have invested in the fund, but we now have even brought in institutional investors, including a tribal nation that believes in what we’re doing, right? So now we have several LPs that include high net worth individuals, vast members, also foundations, and then now a tribal nation that has decided to invest.

Becky Mollenkamp: And you said somewhere, maybe your TED Talk, maybe somewhere else, that you are a capitalist. So I assume that this is not an altruistic endeavor. I understand Stitch Crew is nonprofit. Is Vest a nonprofit organization or is there a profit arm of this?

Erika Lucas: Vest is a social enterprise in that I wanted to be very intentional. I’m tired of people saying that if women want to contribute to the world, they need to be a nonprofit. I also, you know, we’re based in the state of Oklahoma, which is very, very conservative. And there’s no way that I could have launched Vest and expected funders in the state of Oklahoma to fund us with the mission that we had, right? And so I wanted to be member-led. It was established as a for -profit organization, but we had reinvest all of the membership fees into the network, meaning nobody’s getting rich out of this. It’s all going back to the mission. So that’s one thing. So Vest is a for -profit, but it’s like a social good for -profit that’s, you know, we’re reinvesting proceeds into the company. And then the fund is a for -profit, but obviously we realize that the impact is equally as important for us. We know that by investing in women -led companies, not only are we helping that 2%, not at scale, but we’re helping. But we’re also funding the companies that need to exist to enable women not just to join the labor force, but to stay in the labor force. So that has a huge, massive impact as well. And we’re tracking that in terms of what are the solutions that we’re providing employers so that they can take care of their caregivers, the employees that are caregivers. We are tracking how companies are, the overall net positive impact benefit that they’re bringing into either employers and or working families.

Becky Mollenkamp: And you, I know, are interested in reducing that gap between the haves and the have nots. And you said that you identify as a capitalist. I mean, we exist inside of capitalism, but you also, I think, are very pro -business and pro -wealth generating businesses. So how do you kind of balance that piece in your head between capitalism, wealth generating businesses, and equity?

Erika Lucas: I think there’s a balance, right? So I am a capitalist. But I also realized that capitalism hasn’t worked for everyone. And I also realized that there’s a lot of people that have taken advantage of the system, so that only few people benefit from capitalism. Right? So I like everything I think that capitalism is not absolute and that I need that there’s a lot of things that we can fix. So for example, I do believe in capitalism, but I also question whether we need to have billionaires exponentially, right? Like the way we have now. I mean, these people are never gonna be able to spend this much money. I was talking to a friend that’s actually, hopefully will become an LP and she said, I wonder if we can just give people, once you reach a billion dollars, if you just get a freaking certificate, just so that you can say you’ve been there and you’ve reached that, but then everything else is taxed, right? So that we can take care of building better systems that benefit everyone and actually we can bring back the middle class. So to answer your question, I am capitalist, but I realize very much that there are some fundamental things and systemic barriers that has made it so that not everyone benefits from it. So I have a complicated relationship too with capitalism, if that’s fair. And I also think that there needs to be a balance, right? There needs to be a balance where, again, not everybody has benefited from it. If you look at who’s funding and who’s building the companies of the future, which a lot of them are tech companies, right? AI now, right, with AI, it dip disproportionately, they’re being led by male figures, white male figures, they’re being funded by white male figures, they’re solving problems for white male leaders. And there’s a lot, I mean, like, so for example, if you look at studies, 80 % of the company or the jobs that AI is going to displace are held by women. Yet, women professionals in AI only represent 22%. And if AI authors, perhaps more importantly, who’s actually writing the language for a lot of these things, it’s only 14 % of women, right? So if we don’t change that and the importance of changing the gap and closing the gap it’s so important because a lot of the biases that we see today are going to be not just replicated, but at scale, right? With AI, if we are not intentional about making sure that these systems and these languages are not actually doing more harm than good.

Becky Mollenkamp: It’s been very interesting seeing some of the folks, especially women of color, who have been looking at AI and some of the potential issues and already issues around racism and other things inside of what AI is generating as it is now. And who knows how it could potentially cause even bigger problems. So I think it’s a really good point.

Erika Lucas: I’m definitely a pro. I’m not afraid of technology, right? And I am, I do see how technology can benefit a lot of, can support a lot of solutions that are needed in today’s market. I’m afraid of people, right? And how people are gonna use it.

Becky Mollenkamp: The people creating AI.

Erika Lucas: Exactly. I think it’s not the technology that I’m afraid of, it’s just how people are going to use it, how people are going to build it, what people are going to use it for. And by the way, I think that we also as women need to keep each other accountable. Right. And so, you know, as much as I want to see more women led companies, I also question like, how do we set accountability systems for ourselves as well? I’m a big fan of Bumble, by the way. So getting out that I’m a big fan of Whitney. But you know, in the last tech summit, she was talking about how now we’re going to create bots that date other bots. And then once those day bots decide that it’s good for us to meet, we’re going to create. And that’s how we’re going to solve loneliness. And I was just like, what? You know, like, is it, does it really solve loneliness? Or is it really just helping the bottom line of the company? And I think we need to create systems that are you know, for accountability for ourselves as well, so that we can all be better and that we are actually using technology to solve real problems. One of my biggest fears right now is how disconnected we’re becoming, how polarized we’re becoming, you know, particularly when it comes to inclusion and equity and who gets to be seated at the table. And I’m afraid that if we are only looking at the bottom line and at the profit line, we’re only going to make problems even bigger.

Becky Mollenkamp: That is where that tension between intersectional feminism and capitalism exists. Because when you teeter too far into that side of capitalism, it can corrupt, right? It corrupts, greed corrupts us, and then we lose sight of the things that we were committed to. And on the tech piece, I just want to say it reminds me of like the seatbelt, which is not a super tech tool. But it’s the same thing. It was designed by men for men’s bodies and then doesn’t function for women as well and not for pregnant women at all. And it’s exactly that. It’s not that I have a problem with a seatbelt. I think seatbelts are great. The solution can be great. It’s who’s developing the tool and who are they developing it for. So that’s why we need that seat at the table.

Erika Lucas: Exactly.

Becky Mollenkamp: And speaking of seats at the table, for our bonus talk, we’re gonna talk about seats at the table on boards because you’re on quite a few boards. And as we talk about throughout this episode about the importance of getting more women, people of color at the seat, getting them a seat at the table, I wanna talk a little bit about boards and why that’s also important. So we’re gonna talk about that in the bonus content. So if you’re interested in that, make sure you sign up for the newsletter. And I’m gonna finish this episode. I had more I wanted to talk about, but I wanna honor our time, because we said we’d stick to close to an hour. So I’m going to finish by asking you for a resource that you recommend.

Erika Lucas: I mean, I have to make a plug for Stitch Group invest, right? So Stitch Group has a newsletter as well. And on a monthly basis, we actually talk about all the grants that are available for women and people of color. You know, not just no, no, that’s national. And in fact, a lot of our program in this national just so just to clarify and then and then we provide resources, whether it’s grants or pitch competitions or even investment firms that we highlight that are nationally in nature. So definitely subscribe to the Stitch Crew newsletter. And then the other resources, you know, with Vest, we actually have our own podcast where we talk about, you know, women at work, right? How are we building more inclusive workspaces? What are the blind spots that executives and workplaces have when it comes to putting women in more positions of power and influence?

Becky Mollenkamp: I will link to those things in the show notes. And then finally, I asked for an organization that’s doing good work in the world. But now that I know that Stitch Crew is nonprofit, I’m assuming that’s the one you’d want to highlight.

Erika Lucas: One of my boards, since we’re going to talk about that, one of the boards I served on is actually the Diversion Hub. And it’s a fantastic organization that was created to divert individuals from the criminal justice system. You know, once again, I live, people are always like, why are you there? And I’m like, because if I can make it here, I can make it anywhere, not New York. But, you know, not only is the state of Oklahoma where I’m based, the worst state in the nation for women but we’re also one of the worst states in the world to criminalize individuals, particularly women. And so this organization, what they’re trying to do is put tools and resources together so that people that have, for whatever reason, been in touch with the criminal systems, how they, especially with misdemeanors, how do they get out of that, what resources do they have so that they can build the systems that they need to get out of the criminal justice system. So I love the work they do. They do so much and they don’t get the recognition that they deserve. I actually hope that they’re able to replicate this model in different states.

Becky Mollenkamp: I will make a donation to Diversion Hub to say thank you for your time and encourage listeners to do the same. I will link to it in show notes. I just will say I have several friends who are either in Oklahoma or have left. And I’m also in a very red state, Missouri. And so I know what you’re talking about. It’s not I think we’re a little higher on some of those things, but we’re like last in the nation on education funding. So we we also have our issues. And it’s challenging because it’s like you were talking about with being in a company.

Erika Lucas: Thank you.

Becky Mollenkamp: Do you stay inside and try to make change from within or do you go and try to affect change from the outside? And I feel like it translates the same thing with where we live and not everyone, the thing that we have to remember is not everyone has that privilege to say, I can leave. And so some people have to stay and try and fight.

Erika Lucas: Exactly that and maybe that’s one of the main things why I’m still here.

Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah, and thank you for doing that because in a post -war world, Oklahoma is a tough state to be in. So I appreciate you staying and doing that work. Yeah. Well, thank you for your time, Erica. This has been really, really wonderful.

Erika Lucas: Thank you. We really, I really appreciate the questions and the time with you, Becky. I follow you and I love your content that you put out on threads since I left, you know, X. So really appreciate you.