Syama Bunten

Women don’t talk about money the way we should. Not honestly, not openly, and not with each other. But that’s changing. I’m Syama Bunten, founder of Wealth Catalyst. And Getting Rich Together is where the conversation lives. Every week, a different woman, a different path, and a conversation that will change how you think about your own financial power. This community is growing and you belong in it.

Please subscribe so you never miss an episode and leave us a five-star review so more women can find their way here. Now, let’s get rich together.

Well, I am joined today by the incredible Melissa Wallace. Melissa, from the moment that I met you, I knew that we were destined to be friends. And it’s been just the most incredible unfolding of who you are and your purpose in this world and how much I’ve gotten a chance to get to know your heart and your spirit. But yet today, our listeners, some of them might know your heart and spirit, others won’t. So for those of you who do not know the lovely Melissa Wallace, Melissa. is the founder of Fierce Foundry, the first femtech venture studio in the United States dedicated to building and funding women-led health tech companies. Girlfriend, you’ve got over 25 years of experience in building brand. It is incredible. I mean, helping to scale body media ahead of its acquisition by Salesforce. You are truly the partner in crime when it comes to founders being able to put together operations and business models that are ready to scale and enter the market in big ways. You are also helping founders become investor ready and changing how women raise capital, which is really powerful because we know today that there are so many reasons why these things can be challenging, but you are focused on making things possible and bringing a sense of hope to new markets and to new founders. So Melissa, Welcome to Getting Rich Together. I am so excited for today’s conversation.

Melissa Wallace

I am so excited to be here and that sentiment is quite mutual. I’m loving getting to know you and I’m just so honored to be on this podcast.

Syama Bunten

I mean, the podcast is kind of fabulous. So, I’m happy because they’re kind of fabulous too. So let’s start from the beginning, my love. I mean, before you were out here changing the world, you might’ve been a little girl who also thought she was changing the world, but you spill the tea. Take me back to a young girl, somewhere between 10 and 12 years old. Where were you?

Melissa Wallace

I’m starting to have…

Syama Bunten

on this beautiful planet of ours, what was life like around you and what was money like around you?

Melissa Wallace

Yeah, so right about that time in my life was where there was a real shift happening with sort of how I was growing up because my father, who grew up very poor, had really started to build his own career and had now sort of transitioned into a role where he was doing really well. We moved from a really tiny house where me and my two sisters shared a room to a brand new house in in Port Jefferson, Long Island, you know, right in the middle of ⁓ Belterre. know, just like this, this totally shifted experience. And I think because I was younger, I wasn’t really paying much attention to that part of it. I just thought, wow, look at this, a new house, a new neighborhood, new school. You know, looking back on it now, it’s definitely like, wow, I was pretty oblivious to what was going on.

And I think also because no matter what, even in the years that followed, my father was always very conscious of where the money was spent, how the money was spent. And even though it was probably a huge honor for him to move into this neighborhood and build his own house in this neighborhood, I think he probably stressed every minute of that. And then the houses that we had later in life, I think the same where no matter what for him, it was about saving for the future and making sure that you were were taken care of in the future. But for me, as a kid at that age, I knew I wanted to do something. And it wasn’t just like being in school. I can’t remember. You know, I I was a very artistic kid and my godfather had had given me this really awesome art kit like. like all kinds of like stenciling things. And was almost like a caboodle. What were they called? Caboodle? Yeah. Which came out much later. The little makeup kits. It was sort of like that, but an art kit. It was massive. And I decided that I was going to start a greeting card company. And that was really my first chance of being an entrepreneur. went door to door.

I, my dad gave me one of his old briefcases, which I absolutely loved. I was not the kind of kid who played house or played with Barbies. I never was into that. But man, when I opened that briefcase and I had that calculator and all the little, you know, things that my dad would throw in there from his office, I felt, you know, like this was, this was me. I was selling my, you know, my goods and services and my company was called Mel’s Greetings. you know, not a lot of Not a lot of customers, mostly, you know, family. This didn’t get very far. It was fun.

Syama Bunten

What did you learn?

What was like your early? How did you think about like price? Like what was your little like, how are you thinking about pricing your services or like your products?

Melissa Wallace

I learned that I was definitely number one overpricing my products. think the bigger lesson was that I was offering custom, custom stationery, custom greeting cards. And it just was not something that I was able to do on my own. I had this great art kit and I was charging a lot of money for it.

But the reality was just that this was not a scalable business in any way. And so it’s definitely something that I hold kind of deep in my heart even today where it’s like, it needs to be manageable. It needs to be efficient. It needs to make sense, right?

Syama Bunten

The early money that you got from selling your initial products, did you throw that into the savings bucket? Or did you follow dad and the, have to save, we have to save? Or was it more like, oh, now I have some spending money to buy the chocolate or the thing I want? How did you sort of start to adopt

Melissa Wallace

Obviously, yeah, I mean, this is the 80s, right? So it definitely, you it’s not like, you know, I had a bank account that I, you know, I know my parents were putting money into, but my money that I was making and even, you know, kind of beyond just this period of time, I had envelopes and in each, you know, each envelope was labeled something different. And the first was, you know, savings. The second was clothing, because that was important. The third was like electronics or games. And that changed, you know, as I got older, like when I was now 14 and I had, you know, my first like babysitting job did the same thing, but the envelopes changed over time. So I did, I did save. It wasn’t necessarily going into a bank account, which, you know, looking back, but that would have been pretty awesome. And, know, something that I think about with my kids as they’re getting to be that age now.

Syama Bunten

That is so fun. love thinking of you, like, or imagining what it was like for you to hustle, you know, and start to figure things out. Okay.

Melissa Wallace

I loved it. The thing is, I’m a terrible salesperson. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a terrible salesperson. But I think when it’s something that is so personal and that you love, right? For me, it was very personal to me. I was getting to create something for somebody else. And that doesn’t require any selling.

Syama Bunten

No, I think that’s so powerful. So through your high school years, like what was it that you started to know of yourself? Like how did your identity start to shift? you know, were you on the sports teams? Were you working a part-time job? Were you heads down like, I’m going to ace all my classes. Like what were you like in high school?

Melissa Wallace

I did everything. I played a different sport every quarter. I would go from cheerleading to track to basketball to volleyball. I was in the drama club or the musical, the high school musical that we did every year. But I think the thing I loved the most was that I was a student leader. So I was always in a leadership position, whether it was for the class or like my senior year, was the… the student union vice president and really engaged with, you know, supporting my fellow students. That was really important to me. That carried on through college as well. But I was a little bit everywhere and I was really into punk rock and I had, you know, had groups of friends that were sort of a little bit of everyone, you know what I mean? I didn’t have like, I wasn’t part of like one group. I was kind of all over the place.

But I learned, I had the opportunity to really learn about, I think, you know, not just myself, but who I was in the world, because I got the experience of being an exchange student my junior year of high school. I went to Brazil for the entire year. And, you know, it was the first time in my life that I had been out of, you these circles of humans that that were very supportive and were always a part of what I thought of part of who I was.

And it was really, really hard to the point where I think by like the end of the second month, I was almost begging my parents to come home. And, you know, they of course were like, no quitting. You got this. Hang in there. And, and, know, I was dealing with people that I was living with, like these, these parents that were mean and just, you know, just very disrespectful. And I didn’t think I was going to survive. And I eventually did meet people that. were very supportive of me. And they allowed me to explore the experience the way I wanted to. It was like it went from, it shifted from this is what you’re doing. This is how it’s done. This is what, you know, it’s supposed to be to, well, what do you want to do? How do you want to, you know, learn about this culture and learn about this country? And ⁓ I basically dropped out of classes and traveled around the country with a group of people. Yeah, it was, yeah.

It was life changing. Unfortunately, it didn’t help me in getting into the college of my choice. Almost every university put me on a wait list because I didn’t have four years of consecutive grades.

Syama Bunten

Really? No way.

Melissa Wallace

Yeah, complete bullshit because by the way, I finished most of my requirements in 10th grade so that I could go to Brazil and come back and not have to be like doubling down on all my classes. I finished them early and yet because I didn’t have grades from that year, I was waitlisted pretty much to every school I applied to.

Syama Bunten

⁓ my gosh. So thinking about, you know, going to university and all of these incredible experiences, which obviously shows me that you’ve always been making your own rules. You’ve always been, you know, paving your own path, not afraid to change it up. And, you know, at that time, I think when you’re young and you experience a sense of freedom or breaking rules or changing rules, like it really changes the way you know of yourself and what’s possible. Cause all of a sudden you go, huh, like the world’s not over. I did these things differently and things are working out and it gets scary, but there’s a sense of like comfort almost and knowing that you’re going to be okay. So at that young age in high school and getting ready for university, What was it that you thought you wanted to be in the world? Like, who did you think you were going to grow up to be?

Melissa Wallace

I thought I was going to study law, international law, and be someone who helps people abroad. You like you hear about people who get locked up and they need a lawyer and someone that comes and saves them, or to be an ambassador, or to somehow be helping people overseas in what to me would be a really, really scary experience. So I went. to college with the intent of, you know, I studied political science and I think it, I, there was a level of conformity that started and I, you know, constantly was trying to break out of. So, I went into college as a young Republican and I did not call my, I refused to call myself a feminist. I didn’t believe that a label like feminists was effective. And I was definitely surrounding myself around people who were getting in my head in a way that was really not productive. But I was lucky to meet my roommate and now my best friend, who was the complete opposite of the people that I was surrounded by. And she did everything she could in her power to get me out of this sort of, you know, like I said, I call it sort of conformity. was sort of like in order for me to do well in these classes, I need to be writing a paper that’s about this, you know, and I, you know, it just happened to be a very conservative landscape, even though I had different ideas. And I ended up not going to law school, mainly because I was temping in a marketing department after, ⁓ after college and realizing the level of creativity I could have in a career and decided to go to graduate school for marketing and communication. like immediately everything shifted. It was like, okay, get me out of this like space of like, you know, this rigidity and conformity and like, let’s get creative. Let’s have some fun.

Syama Bunten

create our own rules here, you know? mean, that’s like, think about like, you know, marketing, it’s all about creating new rules. you know, like, how do you, how do you, how do you read, how do you do what has been done well before, but also make it very different, right? What a way to hold like both of those things at the same time. You know, starting off your career in marketing, I mean, certainly if you’re a career anywhere, starting off is simply just not lucrative because you are starting off. So when you are getting out of university and starting off your career, how did you start to build your life? What did that start to look like for you and what were some of those early decisions? Was it scrappy? Did you find little pockets of reprieve here? How did you start to figure out your young adult life?

Melissa Wallace

Well, I think I struggled because I had my rules. Like I didn’t want to get married. I wanted to focus on my career. I wanted to be very successful, but I ended up getting married at 23, 22, getting engaged and married and, you know, moving to California and kind of being, you know, on this track of like, I need to continue to grow. need to, you know, climb the ladder, make more money, be more successful. And I wasn’t. I was sort of like blinded by what the reality of what was going on around me was. And so I suffered from working with people who were not good humans, whether they were, you know, men who like to sexually harass or women who were you know, leading as men because, you know, and I followed along this path too. was like if you acted more like the men did, then, you your likelihood of being more successful was higher. So I was in a really weird place, you know, that sort of in my 20s. And it wasn’t until I, you know, decided that I didn’t want to be with this person anymore, but it was sort of like just lingering in the back of my mind. but I decided I needed to make a change. I actually had taken this weird class for work about finding your own creativity. And it was another moment in time where it was like, I’m drawing these pictures of me on a plane flying home to my family. I don’t want to be in LA anymore. I’m drawing pictures of myself with other people that are not my current husband, who in the end was just a terrible person to me. I’m drawing myself in. moral leadership role not working for these people. But I wasn’t seeing it like with full clarity. How I it enough that

Syama Bunten

Like how old were you when you started to figure out maybe it wasn’t, this is what I want, but this is what I don’t want. When did that reflective moment happen?

Melissa Wallace

That it was right after I turned 30. By the time I was 31, we were packing and moving back to New York. My ex-husband basically told me, the only reason we would move is if I was making more money. So I lied to him. I took a job where I was actually making less money. I was actually working on commission, which as I just said, I’m not a salesperson, so it was really bad. But we got an apartment in the city and I knew… that that was the first decision that had to be made. But I knew nothing else after that, you know? And then when I decided to tell him that, you know, we needed, I started with saying, we need time apart. And I know you know what this experience is like. he, he went crazy. He emptied my bank accounts. That was the first thing he did, which meant I had no cash available to me. So,

Syama Bunten

Yes.

Melissa Wallace

That is an incredibly scary experience. But I was fortunate to work with, I was working at a digital music startup at the time. And the founder of the company quickly wrote me a check, took me to the bank said, open a new account. You know, I had really good support, you know, around me while this was happening. It got worse. It got much worse. He tried to have me arrested. It was, you know, was just things that made no sense at all. And When I decided to hire my divorce attorney, I said, just give him everything. Just give him everything. I just want to walk away from this. It had gotten so nasty. And she was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can’t, you know, I had a condo in LA that sold and I was using that in the process of buying an apartment in Manhattan. Give it all to him.

Just give it all to him. I never want to see him again. I don’t want to talk to him again. He was threatening to sue me for future earnings and just, you know, yeah. All kinds of craziness. And I didn’t think that I could recover from that financially, but I knew that I was going to be happy.

Syama Bunten

Yeah. You knew, you knew inside of you. I don’t know what the future holds, but I know what it is I do not want.

Melissa Wallace

Exactly. Which, know, and now I’m in a totally different place. I mean, I think I know what I don’t want, but I know what I want. It kind of taught me, you know, like to go out. You know, I lived my 30s now as a single woman in New York City. I went back to graduate school. I thought I was going to become a filmmaker. I decided that money was not going to be kind of the focal point of my career, that it was creative expression and being with people that I loved to be with. it was, know, my 30s were very sort of different pace and experience and it was definitely a coming back to who I was. ⁓ It was really, really exciting and fun.

Syama Bunten

You know, what’s really powerful is all of us will be faced with crises, but not all of us will have the strength and fortitude to get on the other side and to be able to really like have the perspective. But every single one of us on this planet will all have the traumas and the crises, but really like what a gift it is to move forward into the unknown. you know, even though you don’t know what it is, it’s going to to yield for you and also to have had that experience at such a young age. You know, I think in your in your thirties to have such awareness ultimately also liberates you to again start to build new rules, new playgrounds and new opportunities for yourself. So talk to us a little bit about, you know, moving from hey, I’m going to work for you and build you to, I’m going to, you know, take skills and work for me and build me. What was the career that you were building and when did you decide and how did you sort of, how did you sort of decide internally that you had enough inner security, right, to be able to like, you know, fuck it.

Like, you know, want to do it. Okay, so talk to me about all of that.

Melissa Wallace

Inner security. Okay, I’m going to come back to that. You know, I spent my career coming up with ideas and companies that I wanted to build and actually, you know, right about my 30th birthday, I was working on an idea with a co-worker that we both were, you know, we would meet every morning for coffee and we would spend about an hour and half, two hours kind of building out this plan around this business that was really Today, I mean, it’s task rabbit, honestly. So this is, I think it was 2003, 2004, and we had two pilots, and it was like this idea that we could connect college students, working with sororities, like women in college with middle level management women at corporations who don’t get an assistant because you’re not at that level yet, but truly need it probably more than anybody because if you’re gonna keep moving up, you’re gonna need more time to get work done. And the idea would be to make these connections that then these college students would have connections for life. so that was like a big piece of it, but at the same time, how we monetize it was just like, it was reasonably priced for middle management or women, but enough that would get us off the ground. And my partner backed out. She didn’t want… to lose the security of her job. We both worked at DirecTV at the time and it was actually a very stable place to be at the time and she backed out. So I didn’t go forward with it. And then again, you know, after Buddy Media sold, I, you know, really considered, I had a couple different ideas that I was thinking of starting with my now amazing husband. And we were sort of building these different ideas out and. it came back to this idea of stability and making sure that we had money for the future. But the idea of taking all the money that we had and investing it into something that we’re going to build and it’s going to be great was like, he wasn’t 100 % on board with that. And so I had to take a step back. So if you see, there’s a pattern here. I was not doing this. I was not willing to go out and do this on my own.

When I started my marketing agency eight years ago, I started it with a coworker, someone who had worked with me at a couple of different startups. And she really is, is kind of the other half of marketing. I’m the brand and she’s the. The digital, I’m the consumer side. She’s B2B and, and it made sense. And, but there I was once again, it was, I needed a partner. And after COVID the agency was suffering and we worked with early stage tech startups and It started to suffer just, you know, kind of on the initial part of COVID, then everybody started getting funding and we were like blowing up. was fantastic. But I realized kind of in the, you know, was kind of stress of, of what we were building with the marketing agency that I needed something more. And not only that, we were meeting women who were building companies that couldn’t afford our services. They were seeing, they were being told by investors, show me customers.

And coming to us saying, help me get customers. And they were bootstrapped. They definitely were having trouble getting a pre-seed. And that’s when it was like, huh, there’s something that needs to be done here. And it started as a group of us, ⁓ volunteering services to female founders to kind of help bridge that gap in funding. Just get the pre-seed. You’ll build your product and then you’ll go from there. And that was wonderful.

But then it was to the point where I knew there was a lot more that could be done. And that’s when the idea for Fierce Foundry came about. And I decided I had to do this on my own. was, I think that I had to experience the level of passion for what it was that I was creating and that there was sort of no other path. You know, this is the path. This is where, this is the direction I need to go. And I Felt very strongly that I knew I would have support, which I mean, the support, the level of support and the number of people who want to be a part of this is phenomenal, but it’s on me and I love it. I absolutely love what we’re building.

Syama Bunten

⁓ Okay, so you glossed over this incredible marketing agency real fast. let’s like, let’s double click a little bit into, you know, not only building business, but building life, right? And sort of the, the like building blocks because you know, your agency has been a real rock. you know, and it’s been really a incredible growth engine. You’ve done incredible work, but there is something so satisfying about being able to really truly rely on yourself and something you’ve built to support you, right? And I remember when my first business started like generating revenues and I was like, wow, like, you know, and it grows and you’re like, my God. says, it’s happening. I have a thing and now I can, you know, that inflection point between when you feel like you’re making all this money and then you hire people and you’re like, I’m not making any money. my God. And then it grows again. And so you’ve been through a lot of growth and inflection points. Can you sort of double click a little bit, maybe some of the moments where you were like, okay, You know, I’m now able to breathe a little bit and that breathing means that I can, you know, fill in the blank, go on vacation or live in the house I want. Like what were some of these inflection points in building this marketing company that helped you know and feel more secure and also help affirm that you’re on the right track?

Melissa Wallace

Yeah, I would, I would say that every year has been really surprising with the marketing agency. It, you know, it started out really strong word of mouth, you know, we would be hired by someone that we’d worked with in the past and then they would, you know, share the work with someone else. then, you know, we, you know, bring somebody else in and ⁓ what I think what was really, really cool kind of in the, in first year and a half, which was like, you know, this moment kind of we’re rolling into COVID and all of a sudden, you know, we’re getting this like high roster of clients and they’re all really great and they all have money. So, you know, I work with tech startups who sometimes will say, yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ve, know, we’ve got money, we’ve got money and you know, they actually don’t. And so that’s, we’ve gotten into a lot of trouble with that. There was this moment where, you know, I could literally just bring in the team.

I could, you we work with contractors, which is one of the ways that we keep our costs down for our clients, but allows us to still generate, you know, the revenue that we need to have a life. There was this moment where we were, I think, 15 clients in and we’d never expected to, you know, we were like, you know, five clients is sufficient. That’s, you know, you can live off of that. And here we were with, you know, multiple teams running, so many clients. That was a breathing moment. It was like, I don’t have to do this work. I don’t have to actually do the work. I can just run the company. That’s when I really learned that it truly is that piece of it that I love. I love being a leader. I love helping solve problems for teams and organizations.

You know, for me being, you know, kind of a step away from the day to day was like, my God, okay, I’ve made it. ⁓ It may not be, you know, I might not be fully at the salary that I had, you know, when I was at Salesforce, but, you know, I was happy in what I was doing and we were making really great money for the company and we were supporting contractors and freelancers, which is another piece of, of, you know, this awesome cycle of what we’ve built. every year there seems to be some new challenge that we face and we have to kind of overcome it. Now I think I’m just not afraid of anything anymore. like, bring it, you know, what is the worst thing that can happen? We’ve had crazy clients. We’ve had wonderful clients. We’ve had clients who decided not to pay us and they had a significant balance that meant no bonuses, no vacations. So service business is tough in that regard, right? But yeah, that was a moment where it felt like, wow, okay, I don’t have to do this.

Syama Bunten

I mean, how amazing. so let’s shift gears to talking about building something that is less, there are less models to build after. You know, I feel like in some service based businesses, you’re like, all right, the model’s really clear. Like this is, this is how all the components work. You know, we can self fund this because we get the clients and it’s like, there’s, there’s like something easier about not to say building business is never is always easy. It’s certainly not, but there’s a model of building an agency that has been done before, right? And you can kind of, you know, tether and oscillate from the P and L and be agile. And now shifting your attention and direction to something where there are not a ton of models out there of how to build and do this. Your mission is something that isn’t just about changing. some businesses and their attraction, but it’s about shifting an industry. Your purpose is around moving large amounts of capital towards innovation. There are certainly some through lines of the inspiration, but this is also something that is not for the faint of heart and something that is also seismic in terms of what the implications can be. for the world around us. And so I would love for you to sort of focus, as you explained to me, the mind and sort of your mind shifting, right? And sort of this moving towards making the aperture larger and where that sort of appetite has increased over the last few years and how you’re kind of navigating, for lack of a better word, the bigness of what it is you’re doing and maybe in the process explain the business model because I think that’s important for the listeners to understand as well. Okay, that’s a lot of questions. Go.

Melissa Wallace

Yeah. Stop me if I’m not, if I’m not capturing at all, but you I think, you know, in a lot of ways I’ve been very receptive to how women work. This is not the first organization that I have built throughout my career. I’ve created small organizations for women to find connection and to help each other do more. I do wear the feminist badge now. I’m very proud of that, but But when you think about women in tech and you think about the opportunity to build something great and you think about how the ecosystem works in tech, how you come up with an idea, you build a prototype, you bootstrap, you get a little bit of money to get it off the ground, and then you go out and you find an investor who puts the right amount of money into the business so that you can grow and scale.

And then everybody experiences some level of return over time. Now for the founder, man or woman, the idea is that, you can eventually go on to exit IPO or, you know, get an acquisition in play. And then, you know, you come out the other side with an opportunity to start another company or, you know, invest in something wonderful. Okay. So this is how.

Syama Bunten

and retire fabulously, right? mean.

Melissa Wallace

Yeah, exactly. yeah, I mean, that’s the that’s how it should all go. Now. Now, it doesn’t there there is a spectrum. It doesn’t have to be, you know, you know, a multi billion dollar exit. I mean, that would be ideal. But there can be successful exits as well. that allow, whether it’s the next step in the progression or to invest and retire fabulously. It’s, I think, been portrayed to us that it’s like, okay, investor, you go out, you get a huge investment and build, build, build, and then it’s this normal pattern of doing things. And one of the things that I realized is that with women, don’t necessarily, well, they don’t get the early stage funding.

So, without the early stage funding, and I think everybody who’s listening to this podcast absolutely knows that women globally receive less than 2 % of global VC funding. So, if you think about all the women who are out there building products, and that number continues to grow and grow and grow, but that percentage continues to be the same, that there needs to be a different way to support women. What women typically do is they’ll go to an accelerator or they’ll go to a program that’s a duration of time to help them learn the skills that they need about building a product in tech or how to even get started, what does that mean? Or, like, the programs that we have where you’re learning how to be investment ready. For years, this model, this studio model, venture studio model, has been around, but it hasn’t been applied in a way that we’re now rethinking it to be. highly supportive of women in tech and that it is not just investing. Investing is a piece of it, but it’s also being a co-founder. The studio helps to co-found from idea to exit. So what does that mean? So it means that, you know, if a female founder doesn’t have to go out and raise a pre-seed, it means that they’re getting that injection of capital early on in addition to skilled operators who have been through this, have done this before, that are going to be the resource and the vetted resource through every stage of the building and growing process. It also means that they’re supported at all times. So, if you’ve seen, there are women who go into accelerator programs, and I’m a fan of accelerator programs for the right people, but there are women who the second that, support stops, they lose direction or they lose sort of that confidence that we are always sort of taking a step back because we take risks, but it’s very strategic. And in that moment, just like I have in my own career, you might say, you know what, maybe not. And to have a studio model that says, you don’t need to worry about that. whatever that piece of the puzzle that you’re saying, maybe not, we’re going to help solve that for you. Not all the way to get them to exit. And hopefully through the studio model, which is known for exiting in less than seven years, we can get them to go on and either create more companies or invest in more women. I don’t know if I answered everything that you asked me. I get a little bit carried away.

Syama Bunten

I love that.

Melissa Wallace

you know, just talking about the model in general.

Syama Bunten

I love that so much. feel like, you know, entering into the space is certainly, it’s a bold move for the ways we think about facilitating an ecosystem. You know, I think what’s so important to recognize is ecosystem building means that we are investing across all the different players, you know, and to be able to sort of have a team be put together for you of best-in-class people and to be able to, you know, have these things truly allows each of us to really step into our own areas of excellence, right? As opposed to having to be excellent in all these other areas, right? We get this opportunity to really focus into the thing that we are excellent in. This certainly is also feels like a legacy. in the making. And so I’d love for us, Melissa, to sort of turn our attention to really, you know, as you start to think about your young life at 102, you know, when you’re looking backwards, and now you’ve had this bigger awakening of seismically changing the planet and doing so by creating ecosystems of change for female founders in who are building in this way. What does legacy look like to you? How would you explain sort of the impact that you seek to have on the world?

Melissa Wallace

I mean, I haven’t thought of it from 102 years of age, but certainly in 10 years time, the idea that other studios will be built will continue to perfect this model in a way that the impact is actually beyond just how female. founded tech companies are supported and how they build and grow, but it’s also in the products and the services that result from women building. So, whether that is leaning into the health tech side of things, I mean, I meet several women every week who are building something new in women’s health that I’ve never heard about. actively doing research on a regular basis. There are people with solutions out there today that, when I’m 102 years old, my hope is that that person is never going to have to even think about how they go to build. It’s simply, this is a model that has been perfected over the last 50 years and now this is how works for me. I can go. I can build. I can create something that I don’t have to face the challenges of simply being a woman to be able to bring this product to life. also, mean, honestly, like the impact to women’s health, the impact to the economy, maybe the world is a nicer place as a result of this. Maybe there’s more women running companies that changes everything from what we’re experiencing and… everything from climate to education, know? Yeah, am I being grandiose here? Yeah, absolutely. it’s every aspect of what we’re building and bringing this model to life has that potential, has that potential impact. And so it’s really exciting. you know, my Right now, my wish and dream is that five, 10 years from now, there are similar models that are built for different industries and that we’re really kind of changing how this all works.

Syama Bunten

Bravo, Melissa. It’s really, you know, it’s like I can see you today in a different way. You’ve got your custom greeting cards and vis-a-vis creating new businesses. you know, it’s really incredible to see you starting to shape the world like this. And I’m so grateful for the work you’re doing. Before we jump, I have two final short questions. The first is, How can we support you and what is it that you’re calling in? What can we do for you, my love?

Melissa Wallace

I mean, listen, I think spreading the general awareness of this model and what we’re building and I will tell you, we’re raising money right now, yes. And we need, we’re going through the struggles ourselves of, you know, trying to get to that point to have our proof of concept that this works. And I think that the biggest challenge I have in that this part of the journey is educating people on how this does actually work and how it will have impact. know, most people who start venture studios have had an exit that allows them to really kind of infuse their own capital into the venture studio. And that’s not how we’re starting. you know, we’re living the life alongside our founders and experiencing it with them. So Awareness, number one, and I think just finding ways to support women who are building health tech companies in any way because there are a lot out there and the impact that it’s going to have on our lives as we get older is going to be huge.

Syama Bunten

Amazing. Final question is, you we talked a lot about money and we talked a lot about, you know, business models and systems and fundraising. But I want to know before we jump, Melissa, what is the most fabulous thing you’ve recently spent your money on?

Melissa Wallace

God, right now I’m doing a lot of saving. I have to be totally honest because we didn’t touch on it. But you know, in addition to what happened, you know, in the ending of my first marriage and then, you know, in the building of my first company, there were definitely some other things that, that are, put me in a position of rebuilding, rebuilding wealth, which is really, really important and a focus of mine. So.

Maybe not the most fabulous purchase recently, but something that I’m just like so obsessed with is I bought my first vehicle and I love it. I absolutely love. Yeah, you know, like I had always wanted to. I did not get a Tesla. I had always wanted, you know, I thought that was the path that was going to go. But not having to pump gas in itself is kind of fabulous. So.

Syama Bunten

It is fabulous.

Melissa Wallace

but I also got this like super sporty model with like these red seats inside and I love it. And so it makes me feel good. It makes me feel like I’m also doing good.

Syama Bunten

I love it. Melissa, you are an incredible human. I am grateful to have had you here to end the show. Thank you for sharing your wisdom, your spirit, your generosity. I’m grateful that we get to orbit each other. So thank you for being here today.

Melissa Wallace

Thank you so much. It’s wonderful to be within your orbit and all of your listeners and all the other guests that you have had. It’s been such an honor. Thank you, Shalini.

Syama Bunten

Thank you for listening. This is the conversation we come back to every single week. Real women, real wealth, and what becomes possible when we stop being silent about money. If today’s episode moved you, don’t let it stop here. Wealth Catalyst is where women go to take it further. Our Freedom Tour salons are gathering women in 32 cities this year. Intimate evenings in homes and private spaces where women talk honestly about money, risk, and what they’re building.

And if you’re ready to go even bigger, join us at the Wealth Catalyst Summit, a full-day event in San Francisco this October. Find your city and claim your seat at wealthcatalyst.com. We’ll see you there.