A guide to building business in the age of the generative economy. By Rose Kaz
We, the people who are doing more than just dreaming of a better world — we are here to design it. Yep. I said what I said. And I say this because for the past eight years I've been interviewing & actively surveying women in business, women in leadership and just bad ass women in general about what we need to feel supported, to feel truly generative and to feel like our work actually matters.
And for the past five years, I've been taking the consensually shared data from those people and building the safest place on the internet for women and our friends. I've tested and retested. I've built the plane as I (re)train my team to stay viable during a Covid pandemic pivot. We got out MVP - most viable product - into the market in 2021 and made some traction, even some revenue. I wrote ( & received) grants, I pitched and was given feedback on my font choices, lols, seriously.
And even as women are still being written out of our shared history as major contributors to our global economy and much needed innovation, we persist. We are beyond resilient. We are true collaborators.
We’re the visionaries, the early adopters, the system-refusers who know collapse isn’t the end — it’s the invitation. It's the initiation to better innovation, to better collaboration and to build better systems for everyone, not just those at the top. In fact, f* the top. Let's flip the script!
Some have told me that I'm just here just here to break things. Those same people often say we women can do anything we like and they are here to build equitable bridges. Ironically, those same people stand firmly as gatekeepers, holding up hoops and quietly installing roadblocks and even sometimes pit women against one another.
This is so gross. It is beyond unhelpful and makes me want to break things even harder. But I don't and I won't. I don't react to this bs from standard disgust because women like me and the ladies I lead with are no longer spending our time converting gate keepers to go beyond basic af box checking and winning the best nomination for 'woke bro' of the year.
Nah. We have been training for this moment to show up to do better, be better and when they go low, you know, we go high.
And I'd say, we’re right on time — not only to dismantle, but to truly build better both in our businesses and the communities we serve. Because when ALL women have what we need, everyone wins!
For my part of the new build, I’m here to learn from what failed. My intention is to respect and value the future forward predecessors who paved the way for my work to land right now, when the world needs it most so that I can continue to be a change architect of the kind of economies and technologies that serve the many, not just the few.
Trickle down, Regan inspired, neo- liberal money is dead. Versions of collaborative currency are the forward. And I invite you, dear reader, to join me and women across the States and the world in building a new, collaborative series of economies.
Concentric circles of change makers who prioritize our shared humanity. When women have what we need, everyone wins.
Communities flourish, ecosystems based on natural order begin to again in habit homeostasis that is healthy, not depleted from extractive models that simply are not sustainable.
Gatekeepers? You're welcome to get out of the way — or better yet, help us build.And let me be crystal clear: I’m not asking for permission on this. In fact, this moment doesn’t need more power clearance or granting of access. What it does need is new and power shifting infrastructure — for equity, for real care of our humanity and for shared ownership to power.
Season 3 of Money, Sex & Politics is live. And this season is for the co-builders
This season of MSP is our most collaborative yet. We’re hosting live conversations, recording in-person at various Startup Weeks, and community-driven events, and bringing the mic to the builders actually shaping what’s next.
Season 3, Episode 2 will drop this weekend — May 30th. I’m going even deeper into this exact style of generative MONEY conversation there.
If you’re like me and totally over extractive systems that use the f* out of you until you don't recognize yourself, ready to stop waiting for the future and start building better into the present — press play and let’s f*ing go.
This season of both the MSP Pod and the launch for the collaborative extended build B4G blog highlights what a truly generative economy based on sharing as f*ing caring really looks like.
You know what it doesn't look like? Endless corporate ladders, pant suit clad attempts to shatter patriarchal enforced ceilings and the glass cliff that simply take from women as much as possible instead of supporting, encouraging and propelling are so last century!
The system we’re leaving behind is extractive by design. It rewards hoarding, burns through labor and natural resources, and calls exploitation “efficiency.” This model is collapsing — not just morally, but mathematically and that means economically.
A generative economy is circular by nature. It values regeneration over growth-for-growth’s sake. It does not value the top down structures that late stage extractive capitalism sees as fundamental. In fact, it flips the entire script and touts access to the tools & resources that are inherently abundant no longer be gate kept.
I’m talking about the long game, ya’ll because it creates long-term wealth, not just short-term wins. Not only is this more humane and more kind making it our time to shine as humankind but this type of generative economy is simply more sustainable and equitable. And so naturally, — it’s more intelligent.
And not surprisingly, women are leading this transformation.
As of 2025, women own 42% of all U.S. businesses — that’s 12.9 million companies generating $1.9 trillion in revenue and employing 9.4 million people!
During the pandemic — while traditional institutions froze — women-led businesses added 1.4 million jobs and brought in $579.6 billion in revenue!!
I'll say it again for the people in the back. Ya’ll the numbers don’t lie, not this set anyways. And as women, we’ve been taught to be resilient but these stats, these don’t indicate just resilience.
This massive amount of contribution to our annual GDP is the natural outcome of what happens when we women get shit done.PERIOD.
1870s feminism was foundational — but built for a narrow slice of society.
1970s feminism expanded the fight — but kept many systems intact.
Both eras centered assimilation, not transformation. Both eras notably excluded priorities for women o f color.
For those women of color who lead their own movements, against even more pressures of the patriarchy, thos e women have been largely written out of the history books all together.
Womanism can be applied as a social theory based on the history and everyday experiences of Black women. According to womanist scholar Layli Maparyan (Phillips), Womanist theory seeks to "restore the balance between people and the environment/nature and reconcile human life with the spiritual dimension."
Now it’s 2025. And we’re operating from Humanism grounded in this collective vision of Womanism — a framework rooted in intersectionality, community care, and collective liberation for all women! This translates to freedom for all of our communities. When ALL women have what we need, everyone wins!
The women I have been interviewing for the past 5 years, myself included, are no longer are simply interested in just representation without redistribution. We want top to bottom change — from policy to platform, from the office to the boardroom, at the breakfast table and the exam table, inside and out! We are calling for a full on flip of the script. When we change how resources are distributed, we change the way business is done.
And from my vantage point of using tech as a tool, just like a hammer was once considered technology, we can use the tools of business to shift inequities. This is tech as equity. I like to call it #Tequity
This looks like infrastructure built by the people that it’s meant to serve not simply continue to take and take and take and take ... That colonial extractive model is dying. It’s basically dead and we women are building differently.
And again for my part, I continue to pivot, evolve and to actively build business 4 good with equity-centered founders.
Gone are the arm chair days of theoretical shift! Girl, I don't need to tell you but I am low key kind of shouting: it's happening now!
If you'd like to build business 4 good and will solid intention for a truly better tomorrow, here are some very powerful ways to engage with Business for Good:
I'm here to keep consensually gathering real-world insight from women building better, interested in moving beyond surviving and into thriving in what comes after the fall of late-stage capitalism.
NBD. Someones got to do it!
If anything I've shared sets a fire in your soul and you're a woman in the world ready to build better, please and a big thank you : add your thoughts to this survey I look forward to learn what it is that you need to stay grounded, well-resourced, and radically sane. The future of money, our future, her future, your future, his, their future, and the possibility of strong economies of innovative builders can’t be based on outdated systems that demand to see just how much we can take from each other.
All futures MUST be based in community, collaboration, and humane kindness because sharing as actually f*ing caring.
LFG!
Rose
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