6 Female Founder-Influencers Inspiring a New Marketing Era

Gone are the days of the untouchable founder; polished, put together, and intentionally out of touch. A new era of female founder-influencers is building their companies in public, posting unfiltered, behind-the-scenes content to their own audiences.

This new entrepreneurial persona isn’t just a marketing trend; it symbolises a permanent shift in what consumers expect from the companies they buy from. 

Leah Marcus and Yasaman Bakhtiar - Co-Founders of Good Girl Snacks

Best friends turned co-founders of viral pickle brand Good Girl Snacks, Leah and Yasaman, instantly became a sensation on social media.

Their brutal honesty about launching a business, including a major PR package catastrophe and social media mistakes, shows that a new era of brand marketing is emerging.

These influencer-founders have turned the messiness of entrepreneurship into a relatable strategy by posting about their products on a daily basis.

Since launch, they've built a strong bond with their 143,000 followers, making their fans feel like supporters from the beginning. Leah and Yasaman share: “A large part of our success is that no other food brand has built in public as we have.

We’ve been posting our journey and vlogging since day 0 (literally pre-launch), so our community feels as though they've built the company with us.” (“Meet Leah Marcus”, 2025)

Oner Active - Founder Krissy Cela

Krissy Cela built a fitness empire by ignoring every piece of advice women’s fitness magazines had ever given her.

Her curiosity led her to the free weights section at a time when weightlifting was marketed only for men. She shared her fitness journey on social media, admittedly, as rage-bait for her ex-boyfriend, gaining nearly 600,000 followers in one year.

For Krissy, it seemed natural to document her story on YouTube, given her rising popularity on other social platforms. It was there that she also shared the start of her company, Oner Active.

The influencer-founder shares her honest thoughts about her first launch, admitting to her YouTube community that she was naive about choosing the right providers, fabrics, and cuts, and that her first product received negative feedback.

Taking the critique into account, Cela admits to becoming “obsessed” with every detail of how her activewear should look, feel, and even how it holds stains. In a YouTube video, she documents spilling olive oil on one of the sweatshirt prototypes to see if it would be ruined by how the typical woman would wash it.

Cela’s attention to detail following that first launch setback nearly tripled her sales within Oner’s second year.  

Aimee Smale - Founder of Odd Muse

After leaving her job at ASOS to start her own brand with less than $14,000 in savings, Aimee Smale is a case study in how sharing your brand story from the first product sketch isn't unprofessional but authentic.

Smale drew her first iconic blazer for Odd Muse a few weeks prior to flying out to China to bring her concept to life. Smale frequently takes her community along to visit her supplier, talks about new brand products, and maintains her commitment to slow, investment fashion.

Aimee began using TikTok as a platform to spark virality among her products and increase brand awareness, while also using Instagram to create more depth within her community, now a stunning 390,000 across all social platforms.

It was that depth and feedback that allowed her to continue bettering the brand, all while staying authentic about what it takes to grow a fashion brand as a woman, influencer, and founder.

Milly Goldsmith - Co-Founder Sult

Milly Goldsmith started her social media journey on a very vulnerable topic: recovery from an eating disorder.

In the month following the announcement of her weight gain journey, over 100,000 people followed her progress, remaining vulnerable about the highs and lows of recovery while starting her strength training journey.

Goldsmith built her half-million Instagram and TikTok followers on authenticity, a love for personal growth, and humor, which she also carries into her hydration brand, Sult, an on-the-go powder.

The influencer and co-founder brings her personality to the brand, including the unique way she met her business partner (spoiler alert: it was a dating app!) and their first employee. Milly is a reminder that imperfection and the chaos of starting a business are still content, and further, one that makes the community more involved in your success.

Grace Beverley - Founder of We Are Tala, Shreddy, and The Productivity Method

("RCZ_1004" by Web Summit is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)

Grace Beverley’s business started in a moment of sheer desperation. Her student loan at Oxford hadn’t received approval, and if she couldn’t pay it, they would kick her out.

She drafted her first downloadable PDF workout guide during an all-nighter, which would later become the launching pad for her workout app, Shreddy, which now has over 1 million community members. Grace shared her journey of building her brands on social media and YouTube.

She believes her honesty and openness about the process are key parts of her brand identity, not things to hide. This influencer-turned-multi-founder (including We Are Tala and The Productivity Method) believes starting a business involves defeat and missteps.

“The process of starting a business is mistake, mistake, mistake, small win, slightly bigger win, mistake again.” (Beverley, 2025)

With these stories in mind, what can founder-led marketing teach us?

1. The brands and founders that are winning in marketing aren’t the ones with the most polished content; they’re the ones who are the most honest.
   
2. Mistakes are content: As an influencer, your audience doesn’t want perfection; they want to see the process. In return, trust is built when your community feels like co-creators in your success. 
3. The founder IS the brand. Audiences are more frequently viewing product and personality as inseparable. We buy from people before we buy the product. 

🪽 Written by Kelcey Barrigaer