Entreprenista League scales a global network for women founders with Circle

Courtney Spritzer and Stephanie Cartin started as agency co-founders, launched a podcast, and built one of the largest communities for women entrepreneurs. Today, the Entreprenista League serves close to 3,000 members, hosts more than 300 events a year, and uses Circle to manage everything from content libraries to member networking. What began as informal meetups at bars has become a full-scale business network where members are collaborating, landing funding, and growing revenue together.

"Our business is based on community and building meaningful connections. And Circle makes it all possible — from the platform to our app — Circle powers our entire business."

Before

From local meetups to a media brand with momentum

Courtney Spritzer and her co-founder Stephanie Cartin have been building businesses together since their early twenties. They launched Socialfly, a social media marketing agency, in 2011 and spent years learning the rhythm of entrepreneurship firsthand — fundraising, operations, hiring, scaling. Along the way, they started hosting informal gatherings for other young women founders. “We would bring together young female founders and host these local meetups at bars,” Courtney recalls. “We had the idea early on to create a formal community, but starting one business was hard enough.”

In 2018, they channeled that energy into the Entreprenista podcast, which quickly became one of their favorite parts of the work. Interviewing successful women founders each week expanded their network and attracted a loyal following. By 2020, the timing aligned: women were leaving the workforce during the pandemic and reaching out to Courtney and Stephanie for advice. “If we answered everyone directly — every coffee, every call — we wouldn’t have time to run our business,” Courtney explains. So they spun off Entreprenista into its own community and media company, formally launching the Entreprenista League in 2021.

"We always practice what we preach. When there were new platforms out, we’d jump in, learn it, and share those learnings with our clients."

Challenge

Finding a platform that could keep up with rapid growth

When Entreprenista launched as a formal community, the team initially tried another platform — and it wasn’t working. They were attracting new members quickly, and the tool couldn’t match their pace. “We needed a space where everyone could come together easily, without a lot of education on how to use the platform,” Courtney says. “It needed to be intuitive and easy to access.”

They also tried Slack, but it lacked the features they needed — particularly around virtual events. With plans to host hundreds of events a year, they needed a platform that could handle event scheduling, RSVPs, and content housing in one place. Piecing those capabilities together across multiple tools would have slowed them down and created friction for members who just wanted to show up and connect.

"We tried Slack, but it didn’t have the features we needed — especially for virtual events. We do hundreds a year."

Solution

Building a full-scale community on Circle

The team vetted platforms and landed on Circle. “We loved the user experience — the design, how easy it was to use, the features,” Courtney says. “It was a perfect match for what we needed.” From there, they built an entire community infrastructure — dedicated spaces for different topics, a content library spanning thousands of recorded sessions, and an events engine that now powers more than 300 virtual events a year, from workshops to networking sessions to office hours.

Inside Circle, they created rooms where members can find the right conversations and the right people. The member directory became a key tool for networking. And direct messages emerged as one of the community’s most valuable features. “There’s a lot of what we like to call business magic happening in the DMs,” Courtney says. “That’s what enables our members to build really meaningful relationships.”

The team also recently deployed an AI Agent to help members navigate the growing community. With thousands of videos and a deep content library, it was becoming harder for members to find exactly what they needed. The AI Agent is designed to surface answers, link to relevant events, and guide members through FAQ topics — reducing the load on the community team while improving the member experience.

"Circle has evolved so much since we started using it, and we’ve evolved so much — we’ve really grown together. Circle is always shipping impactful new features and seem to anticipate exactly what we need, before we even realize it."

Transformation

A thriving network where members grow their businesses together

Today, Entreprenista has close to 3,000 members and is adding new members every month. The community supports women founders at every stage — from first-time entrepreneurs to founders who have exited for hundreds of millions of dollars and are now building their next venture. A five-person community team manages the programming, with support from a broader 12-person staff, while members themselves contribute by hosting events and serving as Entreprenista Experts.

The real-world results go well beyond engagement metrics. Members are collaborating, hiring each other, and closing deals inside the community. Courtney points to a trademark attorney named Lauren Ferguson who joined right as she was starting her business and “quickly did multiple six figures from people she met inside Entreprenista.” Introductions made through the network have led to more than $1 million in funding for individual members. “Members are collaborating, finding partnerships, finding the vendors they need,” Courtney says. “They’re growing their revenue from the community.”

"We know we’re making a real impact. We see it through the testimonials — members tell us their businesses are growing, that they couldn’t have done it without Entreprenista."

For Courtney and Stephanie, the proudest moments come at their annual Founders Weekend event, where hundreds of members gather in person. “There’s always a pinch-me moment when we see everyone in the crowd and think, ‘We did this.’ Everyone is here because of something we built, and they’re all genuinely trying to help each other,” Courtney says. Looking ahead, the goal is to grow the community as large as possible while keeping those meaningful connections at the center.

“In a world that’s constantly moving toward AI, having that human connection is so important. That’s what Circle means to us.”