By Kristen Euretig CFP®, Founder
In the past 15 years, I’ve been on the inside of the story of women-focused financial products — not just as an observer, but as someone who has met the enigmatic founders, tested the products, and seen firsthand where they’ve gone wrong. The pattern repeats so reliably it’s almost cliché: a company launches with glossy press, an enigmatic founder, and a mission to “empower women to take control of their finances.” It garners investment, headlines, maybe even celebrity endorsements. And then, within a few years, the original vision is gone — sold to a male-run corporation, pivoted into something unrecognizable, or shut down altogether. The women who signed up lose the tools, the trust, and the community they were promised.
The first time I saw this play out was with LearnVest, founded in 2009 by Alexa von Tobel. I interviewed with her when the company was still independent. She asked if I used LearnVest’s account aggregation and spending tracker. I told her honestly that I didn’t, because I found Mint more powerful. LearnVest’s system required dragging and dropping expenses into folders — clunky compared to simply changing a transaction category — and users had to create their own folder system. She became defensive, extolled the benefits of LearnVest’s system as though she was pitching to an investor rather than getting feedback from a potential employee, and chided me for not being a user of a company’s product I was interviewing for. I did not end up getting the job.
Alexa had no personal finance background when she launched LearnVest, a company ostensibly designed to help women invest and manage money. She dropped out of her Harvard MBA program after spotting a business opportunity, then earned a Certified Financial Planner™ designation after founding the company — surprising to many CFP® holders, since she didn’t appear to have the direct client experience required for the designation. The company raised huge investments, built proprietary tech, and then sold to Northwestern Mutual in 2015 — another male-led company. Overnight, all those accounts, the relationships, and the trust women had in the platform were gone.
Then came The Skimm. Founded in 2012 as a daily news digest, The Skimm expanded into financial content and, in the second half of 2019, launched its “Skimm Money” app because its investors wanted to see more “verticals” beyond their newsletter recapping the news. They hired me to help field community questions, review the app, and assist with social media content as sort of an afterthought. They had a crack team in product development, marketing and social media — but ignored getting financial experts involved in product development, which would have been my first priority in their position. The app is now gone, and “Skimm Money” has been reduced to lightweight articles about saying no to a girls’ trip or believing in yourself at work — not the real, sustained financial tools women need.
Ellevest launched in 2014 as a feminist-driven alternative to Wall Street’s old boys’ club — ironic, given that its founder, Sallie Krawcheck, had thrived in exactly that environment. When I tested the platform early on, I was underwhelmed: no risk assessment, just a few questions before being handed a stock portfolio recommendation, with risk deemed irrelevant because the Ellevest portfolio had already optimized for my goals — a glaring oversight in my view. From my experience, I knew women needed more context and customization. Then in 2020, out of the blue, Sallie emailed me suggesting we “get together and compare notes.” I honestly thought it might be a scam. I’d never met her and had no idea why she was reaching out. We set a date, and I asked what she wanted to discuss — she never answered. In reality, she seemed to be poking for information — what financial planning software I used, for example. Her style was very similar to her media presence: unabashed, bold, and slightly inappropriate. Did I need to know her ex-husband cheated on her with her ex–best friend in our first meeting before we sat down? At one point, she remarked, “These student loans are a real problem, huh?” — as if this were new information after six years of running a service targeted at a younger demographic of women. Sallie is incredibly well connected: glowing press, top speaking gigs, elite networks and celebrity investors including Melinda Gates but ultimately lacked something crucial: deep understanding of her target demographic. She stepped down as CEO of Ellevest at the end of last year, and in February 2025 Ellevest sold its robo-advisory, converting itself into an elite wealth management firm for women with $500,000 or more in investable assets — a clientele already served by countless non-gender-specific firms. I won’t fault targeting services for women who do have existing assets, but it’s certainly not the mission they set out with.
And then there’s The Financial Gym. Founded in 2015 by Shannon McLay, it raised $14.4 million and opened physical “financial gym” locations meant to provide services to people with lower asset levels. Shannon touted her experience in big-firm finance, primarily with high-net-worth clients. as the foundation for helping others build wealth. But as someone who has worked with nonprofits on financial education and empowerment and also with high-net-worth clients, I can tell you those are two very different skill sets. The Financial Gym struggled with profitability, and Shannon herself said in a blog post: “Before the global pandemic, venture capital investors were very comfortable funding companies that were losing money. We believe that startups will need to show a more clear path to profitability rather than just large revenue growth to receive funding in the post-COVID-19 world.” My response to that? Business 101: make sure what you’re offering is sustainable. They pivoted to a virtual model, closing physical locations and dismantling the in-person communities women had built there.
Across all of these examples, the common thread is not that financial products for women can’t work. It’s that the people behind them — women included — didn’t have the right mix of expertise, experience, and humility to sustain them. Combine that with tens of millions of dollars in funding from large-scale startup investors, and you have a powder keg. When it explodes, women lose their investment partner, their communities, and the belief that their financial lives matter to someone in power. And startup investors take away the wrong lesson, concluding these products aren’t viable when the truth is they’ve simply been built wrong from the start.
What I’ve learned in 10 years of running a financial planning firm — whose mission is to increase millennial women’s confidence with their money — is that lasting change comes over time. The way we measure our success isn’t by revenue generated or number of users; we measure our clients’ confidence with their finances over time. We have found that the score increases substantially over the course of the first year women work with us. We also measure the net worth of our clients — not of our company — as a core metric of success, and we are constantly seeking new and better ways to improve those numbers. These are measures that have a direct, tangible impact on our clients’ lives. Our annual survey tells us that what our clients value most is the personalized nature of the advice we give, the one-on-one time with their advisors, and something far less tangible — peace of mind. Brooklyn Plans is completely bootstrapped — no investor money, no seed funding, no venture capital. And yet I’ve built a business that is more sustainable — and more profitable — than other ventures hawking financial services to women. That profitability allows us to fund our operations, cover our expenses, and support sustainable careers in personal finance for women through direct client service, relationship-building, and meeting the very specific needs and wants of millennial women. Women don’t need another flashy platform; they need partners they can trust. And true partners don’t disappear.