I believe I’ve arrived at the midtown meeting point for the bus to the Female Founders Fund camp, a two-day invite-only retreat for female business founders in the Hamptons, when I see two women in pencil skirts and block heels standing outside the Shake Shack designated in the email. But when I look a bit farther down the street and see 20 well-coiffed women, taller than the national average and largely wearing Chanel sunglasses with travel bags that match their outfits, I realize the others are mere corporate drones. Here are the Female Founders.
On the bus, I introduce myself to a pair of women discussing the vagaries of regional fast-casual salad brands. Yashreeka Huq and Jasmine Wetherell are, it turns out, from Perkins Coie, and unlike the rest of the invited women, their law firm is here as a sponsor. “We pay a lot to sponsor this because we genuinely care about supporting these women,” Huq tells me as the bus launches out of Manhattan. “There’s no female billionaire tech founder except on fictional TV shows where they’re evil. There’s no female Elon Musk.” Huq pauses before correcting herself. “Not that there should be, exactly.”
