Hey, fintech fam! 💜

Can you believe summer is already coming to a close?

At the Fintech Is Femme office, that means my beloved Summer Fridays at the beach are also coming to a close.

Think I can convince my team to let me take Fall Fridays? 😆

Before summer fully wraps up, Anton and I are taking a vacation this week in Cancun.

He has family living in Mexico, so we usually do everything the locals do when we visit. This time, it’s nothing but relaxing like a tourist in a gorgeous destination!

By the time I come back to New York, early bird tickets for The Leadership Summit in San Francisco will be long gone - so I hope you’ll have purchased yours already.

And if you want to hang out sooner, here are a couple of places I’ll be in the coming weeks:

• Future Proof Wealth Festival: I’ll be signing and giving away copies of my book, Fintech Feminists, on Sept 9 at 11 AM at my publisher, Wiley's, booth. Limited copies are available, so be sure to come by and grab a signed copy! I’d love to see you there! Want to add it to your calendar? RSVP here.

• A Celebration of Women in Accounting: On Sept 16, I’ll be in NYC recording a live Humans of Fintech episode at a special event honoring powerhouse women in accounting, hosted by our friends at Rho. RSVP here to lock your spot.

Let’s get into it.

INNOVATION

Access Is Ownership: How GoodFin is Rewriting the Rules of Wealth

If you were in the room at the Fintech Is Femme Leadership Summit back in April (get your tickets for SF!), you already felt it: the energy shift when Anna Joo Fee, Founder & CEO of GoodFin, took the stage.

She didn’t come to talk about just another fintech app. She came to talk about a new wealth paradigm—one that centers ownership, access, and conviction.

“I followed the script,” she said. “The immigrant script. The perfectionist script. The do-everything-right script.”

And she did—Harvard Law, a top Wall Street firm, 90-hour weeks. But like so many high-achieving women in finance, Anna hit a wall: wealth creation wasn’t coming from the career accolades. It was coming from somewhere else.

“Wealth is not a meritocracy,” she said. “And not taking risks is not actually safe. It just feels that way.”

Now that’s a mind shift!

That realization led her to launch GoodFin, a platform that gives high-earning professionals access to private markets—opportunities typically reserved for the 1%. But GoodFin is more than a platform. It’s a signal that fintech is finally shifting from access to ownership.

GoodFin provides access to the assets that have long been reserved for the ultra-wealthy—like blue-chip private equity and pre-IPO startups. GoodFin aggregates wealth from individuals to collectively knock on the doors of exclusive private wealth opportunities.

By doing so, it lowers the barriers to entry, giving members a chance to diversify their portfolios in ways they couldn’t before.

In this new wealth management ecosystem, the key isn’t just access—it’s the education and empowerment to truly build wealth, not just manage it.

By providing a guided, automated experience that still feels personal, fintech can teach individuals to leverage complex financial products—like private equity or venture funds—that many high earners still don’t fully understand. 

A high-earner making $300k a year might be doing okay financially, but without access to these sophisticated wealth-building tools, they’ll never see the kind of exponential wealth growth that can come from investing in private markets or owning stakes in tomorrow’s unicorns.

This next wave of fintech will likely focus on building personalized yet automated wealth-building experiences that provide access and encourage community collaboration and mutual growth.

A place where high earners can share investment ideas, get educational content tailored to their financial goals, and access curated, high-quality alternative assets—all within the same platform. I know I’d be interested.

Anna’s perspective is razor-sharp because it’s personal. She became a mother. She looked at the financial system she’d worked within for years. And she asked: What am I really building here?

The answer: A better system. One that’s accessible. One that reflects the lived experiences of immigrants, women, and wealth-builders of every background.

“We don’t need permission,” she told our audience. “We need conviction.”

Founder Lessons from the Frontlines

Anna’s session left me with 5 key takeaways —and ones every founder, builder, or career shifter should consider as they build:

1. Don’t confuse prestige with ownership.

A fancy title might earn you clout. Ownership earns you equity. If you’re not building wealth, you’re building someone else’s.

2. Play smarter, not harder.

Anna had every credential in the book—but she wasn’t building real wealth until she changed the game. Hard work alone isn’t the strategy. Leverage, education, and risk-taking are.

3. Your pain points are business opportunities.

Anna didn’t just spot a market gap—she lived it. She built the platform she wished she had when navigating wealth as a first-gen professional and new mom.

4. Take the risk. Especially when it feels “unsafe.”

Quitting a stable, high-paying job to start a fintech company? Terrifying. But as Anna reminds us: staying put isn’t necessarily safer—it just feels that way.

5. Build for the next generation, not just the next quarter.

As trillions transfer to women and first-gen investors, the question isn’t if wealth will change—it’s who will lead the change.

Anna left us with this: “The future of wealth isn’t something we need to wait for. It’s here. And it’s ours to claim.”

Anna and GoodFin are officially partnering with us at the San Francisco Leadership Summit!

Get your tickets now and meet the people working on every angle of AI in fintech you can imagine.

From legacy businesses like IBM and Microsoft to the newest startups on the market: fintech AI experts in all categories will be with us on October 8th!

From Crisis to Cash: Elizabeth Gore’s Black Swan Event That Changed Everything

When Elizabeth Gore took the stage at the Fintech Is Femme Leadership Summit for a live recording of Fintech Mavericks, she was both exactly where she belonged—and a long way from where her journey began.

"We faced a black swan event, and instead of hiding, we owned it," Gore told the crowd. "The only way through it was straight through—and we came out stronger, more profitable, and more united because of it."

Gore is the Co-Founder and President of Hello Alice, a fintech company that has provided more than $60 million in grants and financing to over 1.5 million small business owners. But long before she was an entrepreneur backed by MasterCard and QED Investors, she was, in her own words, just a "shit-kicking cowgirl from Texas."

That grit has become a defining feature of her leadership style—especially over the last year, when Hello Alice found itself at the center of one of the most high-profile anti-DEI lawsuits in fintech.

The suit claimed Hello Alice’s grant program for Black-owned commercial vehicle businesses was discriminatory. Rather than settle or quietly backtrack, Gore and her team chose to fight.

"We knew this wasn’t just about one grant program—it was about our core mission and the future of equitable capital access," Gore said.

They won the case—but not without cost.

Betting on Purpose

Before launching Hello Alice, Gore built a career spanning global leadership and tech innovation.

She served as Dell Technologies' first-ever entrepreneur-in-residence, held a senior leadership role at the United Nations, where she spearheaded global entrepreneurship initiatives, and has been recognized as one of People Magazine’s Top 100 Extraordinary Women.

Her mission has remained consistent: to democratize access to capital for America’s Main Street entrepreneurs—those too often left behind by venture capital and traditional finance.

“We’ve done almost $60 million in small business grants,” Gore said. “Not all, but most of those are $5,000–$10,000. And we fund everyone—from veterans to Latina bakers in Detroit to Black-owned commercial fleets.”

Hello Alice’s community-driven approach is a philosophy and the foundation of their business model.

In addition to funding, the company offers a proprietary Business Health Score: a free, pre-underwriting tool that helps business owners improve their financial readiness before they even apply for capital.

“We realized that managing capital is just as important as accessing it,” she said.

The DEI Backlash—and the Decision to Fight

The lawsuit against Hello Alice centered on a targeted grant program, part of a broader philanthropic strategy. As Gore shared from the stage, the decision to fight the case rather than quietly settle was not taken lightly.

“We had to weigh the legal costs, our mission, and whether we had the infrastructure to weather the storm,” she said. “At the time, we had 650,000 Black-owned businesses on our platform. We felt like we had to fight—not just for our business, but for our mission.”

That decision nearly tanked their Series C. Days before closing the round, many investors pulled out. The company lost millions. Then came another blow: SVB, Hello Alice’s second-largest investor, collapsed.

But there was a silver lining. MasterCard and QED stuck with them, leading the Series C round that brought Hello Alice’s valuation to $130 million. The team cut costs, avoided over-dilution, and came out stronger. “Ironically,” Gore noted, “our employees now have more equity, and we didn’t end up needing all the money we thought we did.”

Controlling the Narrative

Gore is a seasoned communicator, but even she admitted a misstep early on: choosing to stay quiet while the lawsuit played out.

“We didn’t want to distract from the core business. But the other side went loud in the media—and we weren’t controlling our own message,” she said. “That was a mistake.”

Eventually, the Hello Alice team went on the offensive, aligning with a woman-owned PR firm and launching a proactive strategy.

“If you don’t control your own narrative, someone else will write it for you,” Gore said.

Tactical Takeaways for Founders

For the entrepreneurs in the audience, Gore laid out a playbook. Here are a few of her most actionable insights:

1. Create a Decision-Making Matrix

In a crisis, emotions can cloud judgment. "You can't let fear drive the business," Gore said. "But you also can’t ignore it." Her advice? Evaluate decisions through three key lenses:

• P&L impact: What is the real financial cost?

• Mission alignment: Does this reflect our core values?

• Operational capacity: Do we have the team and stamina to follow through?

2. Communicate the Framework, Not Just the Decision

“You won’t always get consensus,” she said. “But if people understand how you arrived at a decision—even if they disagree—they’ll respect it.”

3. Embed Purpose Into the P&L

Gore praised companies that turn DEI initiatives into measurable business objectives.

“Put it in your sales goals. Your loan strategy. Treat inclusion like the growth engine it is,” she said.

4. Use AI to Serve, Not Replace

Hello Alice is now developing AI agents that will act as business consultants for its users—automating everything from bookkeeping to loan readiness.

“Our customers often can’t afford an accountant or financial advisor,” she said. “These AI agents will do that work for them. And they’ll be free.”

5. Listen to the Community

The most innovative features on Hello Alice, Gore admitted, often come not from brainstorming sessions, but from user forums and community chat threads.

“Small business owners tell each other what they need before they tell us,” she said. “You just have to listen.”

_{I WANT IT, I GOT IT}

• 🎧 Today’s Listen: Milkshake by Kelis, thanks to the incredible Gap ad that was released with the girl group Katseye. Take a moment to watch this ad if you haven’t already! It’s a masterclass in branding, diversity equity & inclusion, and just general visual greatness. And as a former dancer, the choreography was the cherry on top.

• 🚀 Today’s Activity: Relaxing in Cancun. Who knows what Anton and I will do today, but I know it won’t be much and a relaxing day on the beach will always be just a few steps away! If you’ve been to Cancun, drop me some of your favorite things to do and see.

• 🧘‍♀️Today’s Self-Care: Plenty of SPF, water, good food, good music, and limited screen time. It’s the perfect way to end summer!

_{LET’S CONNECT}

📣 Join 190+ founders and decision makers in my membership community, The Academy of Fintech. Last Wednesday, we had a fantastic private virtual event about AI growth in fintech!

📰 Share this newsletter with a friend and start growing your network.

🔗 Connect with me on LinkedIn for daily insights on female leadership.

🤝 Grow your business through content & community by partnering with me.

🎤 Host an epic event by booking me as a speaker, moderator, or emcee.

📚 Increase your expertise by ordering your copy of my book, Fintech Feminists: Increasing Inclusion, Redefining Innovation, and Changing the Future for Women Around the World.

That wraps up today’s edition—thanks as always for reading! Until next time, keep innovating and challenging the status quo. 

See you Thursday!

Love,

Nicole 💜