Democratizing Capital for Women Entrepreneurs with Molly Huyck
In this episode, Laurel sits down with Molly Huyck, founder and CEO of Equitas Invest, a crowdfunding platform built to close the massive funding gap facing women entrepreneurs. Molly's path wound through Union Pacific Railroad, a startup she built and sold during the dot-com era, and a decade at PayPal helping scale operations to 400 million customers worldwide β all before she set out to tackle a problem she couldn't unsee: for every dollar invested, women-led businesses return more than double what male-led businesses do, yet access to capital remains stubbornly unequal.
Molly and Laurel dig into the real stories behind the founders on her platform β including a nurse practitioner turned med-tech entrepreneur building lifesaving devices for NATO β and what it actually takes, emotionally and operationally, to bring a founder's story to funders.
They also talk candidly about the loneliness of entrepreneurship, the importance of community over competition, and how Molly has configured Claude as a kind of always-on advisory board (complete with a marketing persona, a CEO coach, and even an "antagonistic" voice to pressure-test her decisions). And because one world-changing business apparently wasn't enough, Molly also shares the story behind Set the Bar, the women's sports bar she opened in Omaha β proof that when you build something rooted in your own values, community follows.
This is a conversation about capital, courage, and what it means to build a table wide enough for everyone.
