791 Elizabeth Gore: Co-Founder & President of Hello Alice

0:00I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be.

0:09Kara Goldin:You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. When you're building a business, every hire matters. The right people in the right roles can change the trajectory of your company.

0:55Kara Goldin:And as you look ahead to 2026, whether you're expanding your team or being more strategic about growth. Hiring with intention is essential. That's where LinkedIn Jobs comes in. LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant helps you find qualified candidates faster and with more confidence. So you're not just filling roles, you're building a team that lasts. In fact, LinkedIn hires are 30 % more likely to stay at least a year compared to the leading competitor. That kind of retention has real impact. And finding the right hire doesn't have to feel overwhelming. With LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant, you can skip the guesswork and jargon.

1:38Kara Goldin:It filters candidates based on your roles, specific criteria, and highlights top matches. So you're not wasting time digging through endless resumes. When you're running a business, you need a hiring process that's fast and focused. LinkedIn's AI assistant delivers 25 strong candidate suggestions each day, giving you the chance to invite the right people to apply and keep the process moving. It's a smarter, faster way to hire, and it's why I rely on LinkedIn Jobs. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find top candidates.

2:26Kara Goldin:That's linkedin.com slash Kara Golden to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Golden Show. So excited to have my next guest here joining us. Elizabeth Gore is the president and co-founder of an incredible company called Hello Alice, the technology platform helping over 1.5 million small business owners access capital connections and education so they can eventually and actually grow and thrive. So Elizabeth is one of those rare builders who I've known for a while who sits right at the intersection of entrepreneurship, finance, and impact, along with her co-founder, Carolyn Rods, who the two of them set out to solve a problem too many founders know all too well, the lack of fair and affordable access to capital and resources.

3:25Kara Goldin:So through Hello Alice, Elizabeth has helped redefine how small businesses engage with banks and corporations and financial institutions while staying deeply focused on what founders actually need to survive. She's also found time to host an incredible podcast called The Big Idea on Yahoo Finance. So I can't wait to hear more about that. So I'm so excited that you were here and I cannot wait to dig into all things. Hello, Alice and everything else that you're up to. So welcome. Thank you, Kara. And I was trying to remember how long we've known each other and how we met. I don't know if it was through Summit Series or what, but we know each other a long time.

4:11I bet it was Summit. Yeah, we've been in the trenches together a really long time.

4:16Kara Goldin:I bet it was, actually. That's, yeah, and Northern California girls. So gotta love that. Okay, so for listeners who are just hearing about Hello Alice, can you give us a quick description of what is the brand to you? Absolutely. So we're FinTech and our number one objective is equitable access to capital for small business owners. And coming right behind that is their financial fitness. So we are very proud to deploy about 60 million in small business grants. We provide secured and unsecured credit. We have a lending center that ensures equitable rights. And I keep using the word equitable because we primarily focus on the new majority, women, people of color, U.S.

5:04veterans, people with disabilities, folks in rural environments who don't have direct access to capital. And we're proud to serve. We just hit actually 1.6 million small businesses over the last nine years, which we're really proud of. One of our primary Most popular tools is called a business health score Where small businesses go in and Input a certain amount of data and we help them get ready to apply for capital And then we have this crazy cult following of a community Folks love Hello Else because they connect with each other on it and small business owners are Supporting each other through thicker than whether it was COVID or natural disasters or You name it what we've all gone through this last decade Yeah, definitely.

5:49Kara Goldin:Well, you and Carolyn are just awesome, too. So I think you have really shown leadership and really helping founders who are looking for guidance. You guys have been so, so helpful. So in terms of the steps, so somebody decides that they do really need help, what would they do? I mean, what is kind of the first step for a newbie who's coming into Hello Alice? my co-founder is a big brain and she's so good at user experience so we've tried over the years to make it more and more simple and the easiest thing for any business owner whether you haven't started yet or you're just getting started you've been in for five years is to go on to hellos.com and take your business health score so what that does is it shows us where you're at in the life cycle of your business how much cash flow do you have are you insured all the things that are that kind of solid foundation of your business.

6:45And then from there, you tell us, and we love AI. We were an early adopter, gosh, when we started building nine, 10 years ago. So through our data collection and AI, well, you will tell us then, hey, I think I'm going to go apply for capital. And we help you through the steps to both think that through if you should or shouldn't. We say no a lot. And then point you to the right type of capital and ensure you have that access. Maybe it's, I want to hire my first employee or I am filing my taxes for the first time. So we're going to help you through all those steps. And so, and then we really try to mine opportunities for you.

7:26So we pull you into, I think we have the best newsletter of all time, into opportunities. So we're sending you every week. Great opportunities, but very specific to you, to your stage of growth, your physical location, your industry, and then maybe you're a U.S. veteran. And so we're also mining opportunities for veterans to get discounts and grants and government protection. So it's really coming in. Usually folks come in, they have a pain point or they're looking to grow and we pull them in through those threads and help them out.

8:03Kara Goldin:This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. When you're building a business, every hire matters. The right people in the right roles can change the trajectory of your company. And as you look ahead to 2026, whether you're expanding your team or being more strategic about growth, hiring with intention is essential. That's where LinkedIn Jobs comes in. LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant helps you find qualified candidates faster and with more confidence. So you're not just filling roles, you're building a team that lasts. In fact, LinkedIn hires are 30 % more likely to stay at least a year compared to the leading competitor.

8:48Kara Goldin:That kind of retention has real impact. And finding the right hire doesn't have to feel overwhelming. With LinkedIn Jobs' AI Assistant, you can skip the guesswork and jargon. It filters candidates based on your role's specific criteria and highlights top matches, so you're not wasting time digging through endless resumes. When you're running a business, you need a hiring process that's fast and focused. LinkedIn's AI Assistant delivers 25 strong candidate suggestions each day, giving you the chance to invite the right people to apply and keep the process moving. It's a smarter, faster way to hire, and it's why I rely on LinkedIn Jobs.

9:33Kara Goldin:Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash Karagolden to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. So take us back to the beginning when you and Carolyn decided to start this. What experience did you have that you felt like you could really lend a helping hand, helping other founders to get through this? Yeah, I mean, I always tease, even though I'm NorCal now, I grew up on a cattle ranch in South Texas and my undergrad was in cattle.

10:17And so, um, I use all that experience. No, I'm kidding. I, um, so what, what we really, Carol and I bonded on, I actually had a full humanitarian career. So I was in the Peace Corps. I was at the UN for over a decade. And, um, I was very passionate about small businesses, um, overseas. Actually, I thought it was really a critical, particularly for women to own their own very small business, to pay for school and health care and the needs of their family. And I was really surprised when I got back to the States how hard it is to start a business. And I had a great opportunity to switch the private sector, work for Michael Dell.

10:58And my job there was to really understand how Dell technology could advance small business. So I got a big taste of the private sector side. And I met Carolyn at that time. And Carolyn's a Bolivian from South America and grew up in Texas. And she had started before me two businesses. One failed. One was quite successful. And she was really passionate about all that had to do with access, what she had access to or not, particularly as a Latina in Texas. And so we put our heads together and both really thought we could solve this problem of what is the barriers to entry for small business owners.

11:38And the number one is access to capital, period. Any business owner you talk to, no matter where they're from, what they're doing, that is their biggest pain point. So we put our heads together and it's kind of crazy. We actually didn't know each other well and had the opportunity to build in a lab in San Francisco. So we actually moved in together with two babies each, which was nuts, a big risk and probably not very wise. We maxed out some credit cards and shared a babysitter 24-7 and built the MVP, which is a wild time. A lot of tears, whether the kids or us, but leave this to say we got to know each other quick.

12:18And what year was this? Oh, my goodness. Jacob was born in 14. So we started this process in 14. And then this iteration of the software went live in May 9th, 2017. So this kind of section is 10 years next year, which is crazy.

12:38Kara Goldin:Wow, that's amazing. So to grow a community to over 1.6 million entrepreneurs is no small feat. And when you think about how this, how Hello Alice has changed from the beginning until now, I mean, I would imagine as administrations change and lots of things change over time. But how has your business changed over the last outside of 1.6, helping 1.6 million people? How has it really changed? And I guess what levers really helped you to be able to grow the way that you have? Yeah, I would say the way we changed the most is we used to boil the ocean. We would do everything to help a small business start.

13:34Build your website, do your payroll. I mean, we did everything in the beginning. And so we weren't that good at any one thing. We did okay at a lot of things. And when we really started focusing on, okay, our job is to get access to capital and then financial preparedness. When we were like, we're going to shave off all the other stuff, we still point to great resources to help you with all that. But it's not what we do well. That was probably the biggest shift. And it's so hard as a founder to say no to stuff. I think we're all yes people. And so I think that focus was massive for us. And that's probably the way we've changed most significantly.

14:16Where we have stayed the same, and ironically, it's been the most growth points of our time, is we've stayed hyper passionate and vigilant on equitable access. So we have grown through some really difficult times. What I thought we were going to fail because we stayed with our purpose that women, people of color, veterans all need access. So COVID-19, which we didn't know if we were going to make it, and millions of businesses were shutting down, we doubled down on access, took every penny we had and built the COVID-19 business center. We were supposed to be deploying all these AI agents and we didn't, and we did this instead.

14:59It was a huge risk and we grew the most during that time. We were sued for our focus on Black-owned businesses, and we stood our ground through that. And it interestingly put us in every news cycle in America, which was horribly hard on us, but we grew like crazy during that time. You know, I just think of these, we doubled down on a few natural disasters where we had to spend a ton of money to support small businesses to build different things on the back of FEMA-supported small business. And we grew during those times. So I think when we've stuck with our mission, our purpose, when we were being told, whether it was by investors or policymakers or everyone to back off, that's when we've really grown.

15:51Now, in the moment, I wouldn't say we were that bold and passionate. It was horribly difficult in. But looking back, when we've stuck to our core mission, equitable access capital, is when we've grown the most, ironically. Not when we put money behind growth marketing, not when we did deployments. It's just kind of interesting to look back and say, okay, when we stick to our guns, that's when we grew.

16:18Kara Goldin:That's so interesting because I think it's so easy to just throw the towel in. And you are not that individual. And over the last couple of years in particular, you mentioned the lawsuit. So just top level. I mean, you mentioned a bit about what it was about, but I'd love to kind of hear a little more what it was about. And why did you decide that you had to do it outside of the fact that that was, you know, kind of core to the company? you could have just shut the company down, right? At that point and just thrown the towel in, but you believed in it and you knew that you had to go forward and do something about it.

17:01Yeah, and I don't, I wanna be really clear that we almost died before we grew every time. So like, I mean, whether it's your physical health, your emotional health, your financial wellbeing, your family, it's also okay to know when enough is enough. I also really champion people who say this is enough. And we made the distinct choice on the lawsuit. And it was a hard choice. I mean, the humanitarian in me and the advocate was like, we got to fight this. Let's go. You know, fuck these guys. But I had a fiduciary responsibility to my employees. We provide capital and credit to over a million small business owners at the time.

17:42So if we just, you know, one, fought something that was very expensive that bankrupt us, that's a tough decision. or if we just decided to stop doing our work, that's the tough decision. So we, you know, met with our board, we met with advisors, we met with civil rights leaders. We met, I mean, everyone had a strong opinion on all different directions. And then again, we have Bidu Siri, we're a Siri C-backed venture company, so we have a lot of opinions on our cap table too. But at the end of the day, our, again, mission is equitable access to capital. And this lawsuit would have not just for us, but changed a very specific law called 1981, which both prevents discrimination and it provides access to people of color around small business grants and contracting.

18:36So we said, look, our business mission is access to capital. And so this, it seems like what we should do to fight this and move forward. So we stuck with it. It definitely almost destroyed the business. It was very difficult. We did grow on the side of business owners coming to Hello Alice. We lost a significant amount of investors, corporate contractors, and so on. because it was a time when there's a lot of fear and people were throwing in the towel, particularly around race and gender. So, you know, those are hard decisions. Once we made the decision, we were just all in and every quarter was triage.

19:25You know, and we had, we just, we had to cut basically two thirds of our budget to do this. And so, you know, Looking back, you can certainly say if we went this direction, this could have happened, but here we are. I'm very proud of us. And again, if we really look at not quarter by quarter, which is hard these days, a revenue growth, and we really say our job, the why we created this was access to capital, then we're coming out where we should be.

19:58Kara Goldin:Yeah, definitely. So getting into some of the founders that you've worked with and are currently working with, what are some of the biggest mistakes that they're making? I mean, assuming that they can get the capital, what do you see the founders, like the ones that are surviving, the ones that are getting their business ready to scale, all of those things that maybe really sets them apart from the ones that don't? Yeah, I would say, and particularly Main Street, so these are small businesses, the lack of time, because it's not fun, but folks, they don't work on the business. They work in the business.

20:48So if you think of a bakery, if you think of a t-shirt company, if you think of an artist, they love their craft, which is awesome. That's why they started in the first place. There's a big passion on that. but dedicating the time to actually work on your P &L, work on your cash flow, work on your cybersecurity, work on your taxes, look at data. I mean, you know, learn new AI tools. That I would say is, if I look at a weakness or I look at those who have been very successful, it's really working on the business, not just in it. And that can either be a detriment or it could be a huge success. And that's really hard.

21:28Also, some of that, you can't see the immediate payoff of it. So I'll just take AI right now. Or any business, I don't care if you're a pet store owner, you have to take the time to learn AI tools, because it will bring you so much time back to your business. It will lower your costs of doing business. It will prevent you from hiring XYZ contractor. But taking the time to do that is hard, right? When you're like, well, if I'm just on the floor selling to my customers, I can feel and see that immediate benefit. So, you know, I think that is something that folks really need to think about. The other is prevention.

22:09Again, these are not sexy topics, but are you insured? You know, with two-thirds of counties having natural disasters lately, really understanding your insurance profile, also cybersecurity, profiles. You know, so those are the non-sexy, highly technical areas that can really make or break a business no matter how good your product is. And the other, the last thing I just think about is, honestly, for Carolyn and I, if the fundamentals of our business had not been solid, we would have been totally screwed the last two years. So we didn't have debt, a lot of debt. We were very clean. We had no other legal issues.

22:45We had really good employees around us because we We were completely taken away from the business. So, you know, that having, you just don't know when someone's going to run a red light and sideswipe your car. So are you in a safe car? Are you driving safely? Do you have insurance? You know, because, you know, right before we got sued, Silicon Valley Bank went under. They are our second largest investor. So a lot of people lost the cash. We lost our, like, our board member, investor. you know that happened right before that so it was like oh my it was crazy things kept kept happening you know and so but again if the fundamentals of your business it's kind of like me as a 50 year old menopausal woman like everything's breaking in my body right now so I'm trying to stay fit and eat somewhat healthy I still drink too much but and that that is what's gonna like whatever hits me next you know I'm trying to kind of have the foundation to survive So I think it's the same with your business.

23:47Kara Goldin:Yeah, I think that that's totally true. What did you do? I was just curious on the whole Silicon Valley Bank when that whole thing happened. I mean, what was the like... It's on a cluster that we don't even talk about anymore. Like turn Silicon Valley upside. That was the craziest situation. Well, we had the double whammy. Like some of our cash was in there, not a lot. But then we, you know, they were the second biggest folks on our cap table. We did also lose a great human. John Sheena was the head of Silicon Valley Bank Capital, and he was a coveted board member. So we lost him. I mean, I still love the guy.

24:31We still thought it sounds like he's dead. but um and then we were in a series c and lost them as our one of our largest folks coming back so we had to you know hustle backfill figure all that out i mean it was that was a mess that was that was a toughie um because it was overnight right when you plan for things but when something happens in 24 hours and you're like holy shit this is nuts right no it's it's crazy what lesson did you learn from that? Like in terms of, you know, um, one is just a scar tissue lesson. You cannot, anyone who thinks you're not going to have some massive game changing negative event in your business.

25:13If you've been in business over five years, it is going to happen. I don't care how good of a founder you are or your relationship with the Lord, whatever it is. And so again, And, you know, being prepared to pivot, having those fundamentals in place, you know, and also, I don't believe in the whole blitz growth, Silicon Valley, high risk, potential reward. I think that is 1 % of 1%. You know, I think being really smart about your cash flow, growing and spending in a very thoughtful way, having cash reserves, you know, I really going back to those original fundamentals, you know, not overspending, not overraising capital.

26:02One thing I will say about us women getting such little capital and having to fight so hard for it, I do think we spend it so effectively. And also, when all these valuations went down the last few years, we were not overcapitalized. So, you know, back in and compliment to us ladies. But, you know, I think people now are being more careful of how much they raise, how much do they really need, how much are they getting devalued in their cap table. So, yeah.

26:32Kara Goldin:What worries you about the small business landscape heading into the next, or I guess this year in 2026? Yeah, I mean, capital is still very expensive and cost of goods sold is insane. And I'm waiting with bated breasts on the SCOTUS determination of tariffs because tariffs just demolished the small business community because they came out of nowhere and they were so extremely high. so all of this kind of is around capital but capital access capital is very expensive and then cost of goods sold and then tariffs all that combined um i mean small businesses either have to pass those costs on to the consumer or you know there's not a lot left to do there so it's that's that's my concern my optimism on small business i love ai for small business i think it's gonna a game changer for small businesses.

27:32I'm happy about software getting more accessible for small. So cybersecurity software, credit software, accounting. I love the big fintechs, how they're pushing the edge, making the banks do better, you know. And also we have five times the amount of businesses launching right now than ever in the US. So the post-COVID boom of entrepreneurship is super exciting, but I'm very concerned from a policy standpoint on, again, how are we going to lower capital interest rates and then try and really manage this tariffs issue.