Amanda Smith put $600 into a Facebook group in 2017. Nine years later, that group pays five salaries, sells sponsored job listings to employers, and counts more than 50,000 members across the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Two much richer competitors never made it this far. The Wing raised over $100 million and shut every location down. Chief still charges up to $8,900 a year and keeps fielding complaints about what members actually get for it. Smith’s Facebook group, built for the price of a used laptop, is profitable and still growing.
A $600 Facebook Group Becomes Dallas’s Hiring Pipeline
Smith was an elementary school music teacher when she started Dallas Girl Gang. She wasn’t building a company. She wanted friends outside her workplace who were building careers and businesses of their own, according to D Magazine, which first reported her story.
The group has since outgrown its original purpose. Employers now buy paid job postings targeted at women in DFW, and the organization’s most recent hiring thread pulled more than 11,000 views and 200 comments in four days. Smith went full time on Dallas Girl Gang and co-founded a second company, Playbook Marketing Co., a small business marketing and consulting firm, alongside it.
A five-person team now runs marketing, events, operations and community management. Smith says every dollar the group brings in gets reinvested into that infrastructure. The revenue itself comes from four sources:
- Paid community memberships with added perks
- Ticketed events, including an annual conference
- Brand and corporate partnerships
- Employer job postings targeted at DFW women
That is a modest list next to what venture capital built for Dallas Girl Gang’s closest competitors. Neither of them is still standing the way Smith’s group is.
The Wing Raised $100 Million, Then Folded in 2022
Audrey Gelman and Lauren Kassan launched The Wing in New York in 2016 as a women-only coworking club with furniture designed for women’s bodies and a roster of famous visitors. By late 2018 it had raised $117 million from investors including WeWork, Sequoia Capital and NEA, and was valued at about $365 million that year. At its peak it ran 11 locations, signed up 12,000 members and built a 35,000-person waiting list.
Membership ran $200 to $250 a month for unlimited access, roughly what a WeWork desk cost. The pandemic hit its physical-space model hard, and criticism over inclusivity and workplace treatment followed soon after. The company closed its six remaining locations for good by September 2022, six years after it opened, having burned through more capital than most Series C startups ever raise.
Chief Still Charges Up to $8,900 a Year to Join
Carolyn Childers and Lindsay Kaplan built a different bet in 2019. Chief targets vice presidents and C-suite women exclusively, charging $5,800 to $8,900 in annual dues for peer coaching groups and executive events. Alphabet’s venture arm, CapitalG, led a $100 million round in March 2022 that pushed Chief’s total funding to $140 million and its valuation to $1.1 billion, with membership passing 20,000 and a waiting list of 60,000 by that October.
Chief has real fans among its members. It also has real skeptics. Fortune’s reporting on the club found some current and former members struggling to see its value beyond the initial introductions it makes, even as the company describes the friction as ordinary growing pains from scaling fast.
| Network | Founded | Entry Cost | Members | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dallas Girl Gang | 2017 | Free Facebook access; optional paid tier | 50,000+ | Profitable, expanding in 2026 |
| The Wing | 2016 | $200 to $250 a month | 12,000 peak | Closed permanently in 2022 |
| Chief | 2019 | $5,800 to $8,900 a year | 20,000, 60,000 waitlist | Operating, facing member criticism |
Why Did Women Show Up Without a Waitlist?
Dallas Girl Gang never restricted entry the way its costlier rivals did. Smith built the opposite of a velvet rope, and she says that openness is exactly why members keep showing up for each other.
Women are incredibly generous when they feel safe. The moment you create a space where there’s no competition or comparison baked in, women show up for each other in ways that will genuinely surprise you.
Smith told D Magazine that most women are craving permission to take up space, charge what they are worth and call themselves a business owner out loud. She built Dallas Girl Gang to be that permission slip.
The numbers behind that pitch are small next to venture math, but they tell their own story:
- $600 was Smith’s entire startup investment back in 2017
- 50,000+ members now sit inside the community
- 11,000 views landed on one hiring thread in four days
- Five employees now draw a paycheck from the business
No outside investor pushed those numbers. Members did, one referral and one job lead at a time.
Boss Vision Conference Turns Attendees Into Owners
As the Facebook group grew, Smith spotted a second gap. In 2018 she launched the Boss Vision Conference after finding no events built specifically for female founders in North Texas. The conference has since become its own pillar of the business, with panels, breakouts and mentor sessions for founders and plans to expand further this year.
Smith points to a member named Tara as proof it works. Tara attended Boss Vision Conference, reworked her business strategy, left her corporate job, and is now on track to generate six figures in annual revenue.
“That’s the whole point,” Smith said. “Someone sitting in the audience and realizing that they can build something of their own.”
Employers Turned a Community Into a Recruiting Channel
The most telling shift may be who else showed up. Employers now treat Dallas Girl Gang as a hiring channel, paying to post openings straight into a feed where women already trust the recommendations. It is a cheaper, more targeted alternative to a job board post that disappears into an algorithm.
That shift lines up with a bigger national pattern. The women owned 22.9% of U.S. employer firms as of the Census Bureau’s most recent count, released in November 2025, with 14.2 million women-owned businesses nationally generating $2.8 trillion in receipts. Wells Fargo’s most recent Impact of Women-Owned Businesses Report found those firms growing 43.5% faster than men-owned businesses between 2019 and 2024.
Smith frames Dallas’s slice of that growth as overdue recognition. “Dallas has a serious entrepreneurial ecosystem and women deserve to be centered in that conversation, not sitting on the sidelines of it,” she said. Members who relocate to the city keep finding the group before they find much else. One member discovered Dallas Girl Gang on TikTok shortly after moving to town and attended an event within hours. The phrase Smith hears most from newcomers is short: “I found my people.”
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is Dallas Girl Gang?
Dallas Girl Gang is a Facebook-based community for women in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, founded by Amanda Smith in 2017 and now paired with an annual conference and a paid membership tier. Membership is open to women at any career stage, not only founders and business owners, which sets it apart from executive-only clubs like Chief.
How Much Does Dallas Girl Gang Membership Cost?
The core Facebook community is free to join. A separate paid membership tier layers on extras such as a monthly Supper Club dinner and partner discounts, plus a reduced rate on Boss Vision Conference tickets, without the four- or five-figure annual dues that clubs like The Wing and Chief once charged.
What Does Playbook Marketing Co. Do?
Playbook Marketing Co. is a separate small business marketing and consulting firm that Smith co-founded alongside Dallas Girl Gang, giving her a second business built around the same base of DFW entrepreneurs.
What Happens at the Boss Vision Conference?
Boss Vision Conference runs as a two-day event drawing female founders from across the country, not just North Texas, for keynote sessions, breakout panels and one-on-one mentor meetings aimed at people actively building a business.
Do You Have to Pay to Join Dallas Girl Gang?
No. The group’s own event listings describe the core Facebook community as free with no membership required, which is part of why it grew to 50,000 members without ever running a waitlist.
