You walk into a black box theater. The set is still half-built. Flats leaning against the wall, a rough light cue running, tape lines on the floor that suggest a world that is not quite there yet. That half-finished space is where a lot of young female entrepreneurs live mentally: they can see the show in their heads, but the stage is not ready for them.
In simple terms, this is where Lily Konkoly does her best work. She champions young female entrepreneurs by giving them three things most people underestimate: space to be seen, stories that feel like mirrors instead of posters, and concrete structures that help them sell their work, whether that is a tech idea, a food concept, or a visual art practice. She writes, researches, interviews, and builds small but real platforms that act a bit like good set design: they frame people so the audience finally understands what has been there all along.
She does not run a giant accelerator or a venture fund. Her world is slower and more intimate. A blog that has grown into an archive. A teen art market project that behaves like a digital gallery. Mentored research into gender bias in the art world that feeds into how she talks to the next girl who is quietly wondering if she is allowed to call herself an artist or a founder.
From gallery kid to quiet advocate
If you care about immersive theater, you probably care about how space tells a story.
Lily grew up moving through very different spaces: London, Singapore, then Los Angeles. At home, you had Hungarian as the main language. At school, English. In preschool, Mandarin. That early code-switching is not just a fun travel detail. It is practice for something she now does on the page: moving between the language of art, business, and everyday life.
She spent many Saturdays in Los Angeles walking through galleries and museums. Not as a one-off class trip, but as a habit. White cubes, project rooms, installations that asked you to stand too close or too far. Those visits did two things at the same time:
They made art feel normal, not distant. And they made her curious about who gets to be on the wall and who stays in the crowd.
Later, when she chose to study Art History with a business minor at Cornell, that mix started to make more sense. Research on Diego Velázquez and “Las Meninas” is not just about brushwork; it is about who is centered, who is looking at whom, and whose labor gets hidden in the background.
For someone interested in immersive theater or set design, that might sound familiar. You probably ask similar questions about your audiences. Where do they stand? Who leads them through the piece? Whose story gets the best light?
Why her work matters for young founders in creative fields
Here is the short version of why she champions young female entrepreneurs in a way that might matter to you:
- She treats entrepreneurship as a narrative, not a pitch deck.
- She focuses on women in creative and cultural fields, not only in tech or finance.
- She brings curatorial thinking from art history into how she presents business stories.
- She has actually built small ventures herself since childhood.
- She keeps circling back to gender bias as a structural issue, not a one-time rant.
This is not a neat master plan. It is more like a set of overlapping scenes that keep returning to the same theme: talented young women are doing the work; the frame around them is wrong or weak, so they are harder to see.
The Female Entrepreneur Encyclopedia: a living script of 100+ stories
The clearest place where Lily champions young female entrepreneurs is her long-running blog, the Female Entrepreneur Encyclopedia.
She has spent several years publishing articles and interviews there, week after week. It is easy to glance at a number like “50+ articles” or “100+ interviews” and move on, but if you slow down a bit, that kind of steady writing is its own kind of rehearsal. Four hours a week, every week, over years, turns into a serious body of work.
How the blog supports young women
The blog is not some huge corporate publication. It feels more like a small theater company that keeps handing the stage over to new voices. She does things like:
- Researching women founders in many fields, with a strong pull toward creative and cultural work.
- Interviewing them in detail about their obstacles, not just their highlight reel.
- Publishing those stories in plain language so a high school student can recognize herself in them.
For a young woman thinking about building something of her own, that does two quiet but powerful things.
It normalizes the idea that a woman can be both creative and business-minded, and it shows the mess in the middle instead of skipping straight to the success photo.
If you are used to reading about start-ups as if they happen overnight, this slower, more grounded style can feel almost off-beat. It spends time on things like:
– The loneliness of working on a project no one believes in yet
– The guilt some women feel about taking up money, time, or space
– The way culture, family expectations, and gender roles get tangled in simple decisions
That focus is close to how many immersive theater makers work with character. You stay with the small, human beats instead of rushing to the plot twist. That is also how empathy builds.
Why her interviews matter for artists and set designers
The interviews on the Female Entrepreneur Encyclopedia are not limited to tech founders. She has spent a lot of time talking with women whose work looks more like yours:
– Artists who turned side projects into galleries or online shops
– Designers who built small studios
– Chefs and food creatives who communicate through experience and atmosphere
There is a quiet overlap here between set design and entrepreneurship. Both require:
– Imagining a world that does not exist yet
– Translating that vision into concrete steps, budgets, and timelines
– Convincing other people to come along for the ride
By breaking down those processes in conversation, she gives young readers a kind of informal toolkit. Even if she does not call it that.
Teen Art Market: a digital stage for emerging artists
If the blog is where she shares stories, the Teen Art Market is where Lily pushed herself closer to production.
As a co-founder of an online teen art market, she helped create a platform where young artists could showcase and sell their work. Think of it as a digital gallery that doubles as training wheels for entrepreneurship.
What the Teen Art Market actually teaches
For a teenager, the gap between making art and selling it is usually huge. Schools talk about technique and history. They rarely talk about:
- How to price work so you can afford materials and still feel honest.
- How to write a short description that tells a buyer what they are looking at.
- How to think about your practice as a series of projects, not random pieces.
By helping build a market platform, Lily gave young artists a safe place to make small mistakes:
– Upload a piece with a weak photo, see that it gets no attention, then try better documentation.
– Set a price too high, notice the silence, experiment with a different range.
– Watch how different kinds of work attract different kinds of interest.
For readers in set design and immersive theater, this might remind you of early small shows where you first charged for tickets. That strange feeling when you realize there is a difference between friends saying “I love your work” and strangers paying money to experience it.
The Teen Art Market treats that awkward gap between “I made a thing” and “I run a practice” as a learnable stage, not a mysterious gift.
Connecting this to immersive and site-specific work
Art on a screen is not the same as a built set or a 3D installation, but there is a useful parallel.
A teen who learns early how to present their visual work has a head start if they later move into:
– Production design
– Immersive installation work
– Interactive exhibitions
– Experiential food or performance projects
They have already thought about audience, framing, and the value of their time. Lily’s role here is not to stand in front as a star founder. It is to help build and maintain a space where young creators can:
– Try out being public
– Test the market side without getting crushed by it too soon
– Learn that it is not shameful to care about selling
From slime to small business: early experiments in value and materials
One of the more charming parts of Lily’s story is the slime business she ran with her brother as kids.
They were not just making slime for fun. They were:
– Producing it in large volumes
– Transporting hundreds of units from Los Angeles to London
– Selling at a convention all day from their own booth
On the surface it is just a childhood project, but the structure looks very familiar to anyone who has ever built an independent show or installation:
| Slime Convention | Immersive / Set Design Project |
|---|---|
| Plan batches and colors | Plan scenes, visual motifs, and materials |
| Transport physical product across borders | Move set pieces, props, and gear to a venue |
| Set up a booth that draws people in | Design audience flow and entry points |
| Talk directly with buyers all day | Watch and respond to audience reactions in real time |
It is not high-stakes investing, but it is very real work. It also planted a simple idea: if you can make something people enjoy, and you can present it clearly, then you can sell it.
That is a mindset a lot of young women never get encouraged to try. Lily now spends much of her time giving others permission to do exactly that, only now the products are more complex: full art practices, small food concepts, hybrid creative businesses.
Research on gender bias: reading the script behind the script
There is another thread to her work that sits more quietly in the background but shapes everything. Her research on gender bias in the art world.
During an honors research year, Lily studied how artist-parents experience success differently based on gender. It is not a flashy topic. It is slow, careful work that looks at:
– Exhibition records
– Critical reception
– Career paths before and after children
She found that women often lose opportunities after becoming mothers, because people assume they have less time for serious work. Men, on the other hand, can be praised for being “dedicated fathers” without seeing their careers stall. Sometimes fatherhood even improves their image.
For anyone who works in theater or art, this will not sound surprising. You might have watched it happen up close.
Her research treats the art world almost like a script where certain roles get better lines and more stage time, while others get quietly written out.
Why does this matter for young female entrepreneurs?
Because many of the women she interviews are either:
– Already parents balancing creative work and caregiving
– Or young founders who are scared that future family plans might ruin everything they are building now
When she writes or speaks about these issues, she is not guessing. She is pulling from structured research. That gives her a different tone. Less “you can have it all” and more “the system is uneven, here is where, and here is how other women navigate it.”
Curatorial thinking as a tool for entrepreneurship
Lily’s work in curatorial practices and museum studies gives her a way of looking at entrepreneurship that might feel natural to you as an artist or designer.
Curating an exhibit and supporting a young founder have more in common than people think:
| Curatorial Work | Support for Young Entrepreneurs |
|---|---|
| Select relevant works | Help clarify the core of an idea or product |
| Arrange pieces in space | Shape how a story is told to partners or customers |
| Write wall texts and catalog essays | Help founders put their story into clear language |
| Think about visitor flow | Think about how people first meet the project |
Lily brings that mindset into her writing and mentoring. When she talks with a young founder, she is not focused only on whether the business will scale ten times in a year. She is interested in:
– How the idea sits in a larger cultural story
– What blind spots gender and culture might create
– How to frame the work so people see its real value
For readers who live in the world of immersive theater, this probably resonates. You know that context is part of the work. The way an audience enters the space changes what they feel. In the same way, the way a young woman is framed in public conversations affects what partners, funders, and clients assume about her.
Mentoring through language: blogs as rehearsal rooms
A lot of Lily’s support reaches people through language rather than formal programs. Her blog is public, but for some young women it functions like a private rehearsal room.
They read interviews, recognize their own quiet worries, and start to rehearse new lines for themselves:
– “I can charge more for this service.”
– “I can call myself an artist, not just a hobbyist.”
– “I can design a project that pays me, not only the venue.”
This might still sound a bit abstract, so think about your own work. Before a show opens, you probably:
– Walk the space alone
– Say lines out loud without the audience
– Adjust blocking or timing until it feels right
Her readers are doing something similar with identity. They try on the idea of being a “founder” or “entrepreneur” quietly, in their heads first, by seeing that word used for people who look and sound like them.
Lily’s writing makes “entrepreneur” feel less like a costume and more like a role that grows out of who you already are.
Connecting to set design and immersive art practice
If you build sets or immersive pieces, there is a practical angle here.
Many of the young women Lily writes for are:
– Independent set designers looking to move from unpaid passion projects to paid work
– Installation artists trying to create small ticketed events
– Designers who want to turn one-off commissions into a sustainable studio
They might not see themselves in mainstream start-up media. But they recognize themselves in:
– A chef who designed a small supper club and slowly grew it
– An artist who sells small prints while planning larger shows
– A craftsperson who turns workshop teaching into a revenue stream
By making space for those crossovers, Lily helps creative girls and young women understand that they are already closer to entrepreneurship than they think.
Hungarian roots, multiple languages, and “secret” confidence
Her family background also plays a quiet role in how she supports others.
Growing up Hungarian in the United States, with extended family in Europe, and speaking several languages, Lily developed a sense that there is more than one “normal.” Hungarian served as a kind of private code in a country where few people speak it.
That kind of double life might sound familiar if you have:
– Grown up between cultures
– Had one self at home and another in public
– Moved between art scenes and family expectations that do not always match
For many young women she talks with, their entrepreneurial ideas do not quite match what their families, schools, or communities expect. They often feel like they are speaking a language no one understands yet.
Lily’s own experience with literal language switching makes her more patient with that discomfort. She knows there is value in those “in between” spaces where you feel slightly out of place. That is often where new ideas grow.
What young female entrepreneurs actually get from Lily’s work
If you strip away the details, what do young women get from her projects and writing?
You can think of it in three layers:
1. Visibility
They see people like themselves in public stories. Not only perfect founders, but:
– Students experimenting with their first product or show
– Creatives who admit to doubt and burnout
– Women who take breaks and return to their work later
This visibility matters for young set designers too. Many are still told, directly or indirectly, that the real “author” of a show is the director or playwright, not the designer. Seeing women take ownership of their creative businesses shifts that belief.
2. Language and framing
They gain words for things they already do:
– Calling careful budgeting “financial planning”
– Calling a pop-up show a “pilot project”
– Calling a group of collaborators a “team” or “collective”
Lily’s Art History background trains her to see naming as power. Who you call a “master” or a “minor artist” changes how the work is remembered. She carries that into business language for young women.
3. Practical structure
Through her own ventures, she models concrete structures:
- A regular publishing schedule for the blog.
- A functioning digital market for teen artists.
- Research projects that turn into readable, visual pieces.
Young readers can copy these patterns on a small scale:
– Start a consistent newsletter about their work
– Set up an online shop with clear categories and pricing
– Turn a school project into a public talk or article
Even if they never speak to her directly, they absorb the idea that professional projects are built through small, repeated steps, not only sudden breaks.
What this means if you work in set design or immersive theater
So where does all this leave you, if your main interest is staging, scenography, or immersive art?
You might already be mentoring younger artists. Or you might be the younger artist looking at a long road ahead. In both cases, there are a few useful takeaways from how Lily approaches support for young female entrepreneurs.
Think like a curator, not a guru
You do not need to have all the answers to help. You can:
– Collect and share stories from different practitioners
– Make space for younger voices in the room
– Highlight process, not only premieres and awards
Lily’s blog shows that simply asking good questions and publishing honest answers can shift how people see their own work.
Build small but real platforms
Grand institutions are not the only way to support emerging talent. A small online gallery, a recurring open studio, or a low-budget festival can:
– Give early public experience
– Teach basic business skills like pricing and promotion
– Create a peer network
Teen Art Market is not gigantic, but it is real. That reality matters more than its size.
Use research to challenge quiet patterns
In creative fields, a lot of bias hides behind “taste” or “fit.” Lily’s research into artist-parents shows how stepping back and looking at patterns can reveal:
– Who gets fewer chances after life events
– Which careers are assumed to be more “serious”
– How language in reviews or program notes changes by gender
You can do a lighter version of this in your own circle. Track who gets invited back, who gets press, whose labor gets credited. Once you see it, you can start adjusting.
Q & A: How can you apply Lily’s approach in your own creative or entrepreneurial path?
Q: I am a young woman working in set design. I do not like calling myself an entrepreneur. Do I have to?
A: No. But you are already doing entrepreneurial work when you pitch projects, manage budgets, handle clients, and shape your own career. You can borrow the useful parts of that identity, like confidence in pricing and planning, without changing your title. Lily’s writing invites you to see these skills as part of your practice, not as a separate world.
Q: I want to support younger girls in my field, but I am still early in my own career. Is that realistic?
A: It can be. You do not need a big program. You can share honest stories, offer to review portfolios, or host tiny online meetups. Lily started her blog and teen projects while still in school. The key is to keep the scale small enough that you can sustain it without burning out.
Q: How do I handle the fear that future family plans will block my creative or business work?
A: That fear is real, and Lily’s research shows that structures are not neutral. Some women face real losses in opportunity. At the same time, many of the women she interviews find ways to reshape their practices instead of abandoning them. Talking openly about this with mentors and peers, planning flexible timelines, and pushing for better institutional support can help. It is not easy, but it is not hopeless either.
Q: I work in immersive theater and want to build a ticketed project, but I feel guilty charging friends or early audiences. Any advice?
A: Think back to Lily’s small ventures, like the slime business or the Teen Art Market. Charging money is not greed, it is a way to sustain the work. Start with modest prices, be transparent about what the money covers (materials, space, fair pay), and treat early shows as experiments. The point is not to get rich on the first try, but to practice valuing your labor.
Q: If I wanted to create my own “Female Entrepreneur Encyclopedia” style project in the theater world, where would I start?
A: Start narrow. Maybe you focus on women in immersive design under a certain age, or on parents in technical theater. Commit to one interview a month. Ask about both creative process and money. Publish in a format you can maintain over years, not weeks. Over time, you build an archive that helps the next wave see that they are not alone.
