Founders Fund

A decade in hospitality leadership has led me to the wold of tea & technology where I became a certfied Tea Sommelier and started an online store to combine my love affair for tea and entrepreneurship. 

Established in late 2013, I own and operate online tea company Tease Tea and have since successfully launched two pop-ups in New York City, released our products on Amazon, and work with select retailers and partnerships throughout the US & Canada.

This success came with significant barriers. Early on, I was had access to only $1000 of credit due to a non existent credit score (I was adverse to debt and avoided credit, like most women), very few mentors and support and virtually no education on how to run a business.

These barriers are what have lead me to found my second company, the Founders Fund.
 

We are committed to solving the success gap for woman entrepreneurs (particularly BIPOC and underrepresented woman) across North America. Woman founders are 50% less likely to raise capital outside of family and friends, resulting in less growth for their businesses.

Our solution is the Founders Fund. The Founders Fund is the first online, radically inclusive accelerator for women-identifying entrepreneurs. providing barrier free funding (no equity, no repayment), mentorship, education, resources and community to woman across North America.

In addition to the immeasurable impact of empowering woman to build better futures for themselves and families, an analysis by Boston Consulting Group shows that if women and men around the world participated equally as entrepreneurs, global GDP could ultimately rise by approximately 3% to 6%, boosting the global economy by $2.5 trillion to $5 trillion., which elevates humanity substantially.

We are committed to solving the success gap for woman entrepreneurs (particularly BIPOC and underrepresented woman) across North America. Woman founders are 50% less likely to raise capital outside of family and friends, resulting in less growth for their businesses.

In addition to the immeasurable impact of empowering woman to build better futures for themselves and families, an analysis by Boston Consulting Group shows that if women and men around the world participated equally as entrepreneurs, global GDP could ultimately rise by approximately 3% to 6%, boosting the global economy by $2.5 trillion to $5 trillion., which elevates humanity substantially.

The Founders Fund is the first online, radically inclusive accelerator for women-identifying entrepreneurs, by providing barrier free funding (no equity, no repayment), mentorship, education, resources and community to woman across North America.

Our goal is to support woman in launching and scaling their businesses.

We serve woman identifying entrepreneurs (particularly BIPOC and underrepresented woman) across North America, in every stage of business and across industries providing funding (no equity, no repayment), mentorship, education, resources and community to woman across North America. Women founders are 50% less likely to raise capital

outside of family and friends, resulting in less growth for their businesses.

Only 2.2% of VC funding goes to women-owned companies, with even less going to Latinx women (0.32%) and Black women (0.0006%) owned businesses.

In addition to the immeasurable impact of empowering women to build better futures for themselves and families, an analysis by Boston Consulting Group shows that if women and men around the world participated equally as entrepreneurs, global GDP could ultimately rise by approximately 3% to 6%,
boosting the global economy by $2.5 trillion to $5 trillion., which elevates humanity substantially.

We engage with our demographic through a comprehensive intake survey (which gives us insight into the various underrepresented groups within our community that we serve), as well as monthly surveys on how our program has impact their business.

In addition, we host focus groups and 'town hall' open forums to ensure that all voices in our community and represented in our work.

We are creating a complete system that supports underrepresented woman identifying founders across all areas of entrepreneurship (including mental health, discrimination in addition to more traditional education in finance, marketing and supply chain).

We believe that making these tools accessible will create a lasting impact on these woman, their families, communities and the global collective.

The idea for the project began as a way for me to give back to the entrepreneurial community through my first company, Tease Tea.

Initially, we wanted to create easy access to barrier free (no equity, no payback) funding for women that were launching and scaling businesses.

In our first year of creating the fund, we gave $39,000 to five women owned businesses and received hundreds of applications. From the funding a community naturally began to form and we saw that there was a need for so much more than just accessible funding.

That's when the idea for creating a membership model (which over 50% of the fee goes into the funding pool, with eventual hopes of creating a fund funded by the community it serves), which included a robust educational program, experienced mentors and more opportunities to connect as a community came to be.

In short, I am passionate about building legacies.

So many women at various intersections (religion, ethnicity, age, physical ability, sexual orientation and unique life experiences) don't see themselves and their values reflected in traditional business.

Growing up, I didn't see myself as having a place in business either. I didn't see myself graduating high school, or college or having a savings account. Everything that was shown to me in the world, told me that these were things that were not meant for me.It wasn't until I was out of the constant struggle of starting up my tea company on a shoestring budget and very little knowledge of business that I reflected on how far I had come.

Realizing the legacy I had was born into, didn't have to be the one I leave behind. I have daughter, Cami, and know that the legacy I'm building will give her opportunities to impact the world in ways I can only begin to imagine.

This is what I'm giving other woman like me with the Founders Fund. Funding, mentors, education, community, resources. We're giving these woman what they need to build the legacy they choose and not the one they were born into. 

In so many ways, I am our demographic.

That gives me a unique view on what our customers need, how they need it delivered and who they need it delivered by.

In addition to knowing the demographic intimately, I have gained an incredible amount of real world education from bootstrapping my tea company, learning finances from scratch and doing my own marketing, not to mention I know what comes with starting and growing businesses.

These are the factors that make me well positioned to deliver the Founders Fund.

When we launched Founders Fund for it's second year (and first year as a paid membership model), we anticipated funding contributions that would allow us to triple our funding pool (and drastically increase our operating budget) from the first year.

Unfortunately, our projections were premature and we ended up with significantly less funding. This came on top of building programming,  community tools and marketing (all of which were cost intensive). In short, everything was falling apart quicker than a small team of two could put it back together.

Our team regrouped after a very short mental health hiatus to clear our minds and began mapping out our strategy to operate on bare bones. We got down to the very essentials in every area of business, made an uncomfortable (but workable) plan, and set to work executing. While we're still in execution for our barebones plan, we've seen improvements and higher than expected results across the board, which gives us an incredible amount of optimism for our upcoming year.

Through the launch and growth of Founders Fund, I continue to grow my tea company, raise my daughter and retain a leadership position at Shopify.

In every area of my life I am called to be a leader in a unique way.

One day it may be checking for ghosts in my daughters closet before bedtime, another it can be coaching one of my Shopify staff through a difficult personal transition, supporting my staff at Tease Tea and nearly every day it's supporting our incredible members at the Founders Fund.

I have been offering one on one coaching to women in the Founders Fund program on various expertise (supply chain, ecommerce, marketing, finances...etc.), however the most impactful leadership I can give is to reflect back to these woman how capable and deserving they are of success and abundance in their business. To me, real, sustainable leadership is the ability to show your team (or mentee) their unique value as people and entrepreneurs (truthfully, at this point, most other things can be googled).

What makes Founders Fund innovative is the inclusion of demographics previously alienated from the traditional accelerator model and in the inclusion of programming that supports the full experience of entrepreneurs that includes all area of life that has potential to impact their business.

Our competitors include traditional women-focused business accelerators and membership models that cater to women founders.

Although we are grateful (both as women and entrepreneurs ourselves) to have seen this model emerge in the past decade, we believe the time is right to evolve this model to focus on underrepresented women from a range of life experiences (including race, religion, socioeconomic class and physical
ability) with services that support the complete range of entrepreneurial experience (including mental health).

Activities

- Women identifying entrepreneurs attend classes and session on all aspects of business and leadership (finance, marketing, team management, stress management, financing, parenting while scaling a business..ect.)

- Women identifying entrepreneurs connect with other women with shared life experiences and business goals

-Women identifying entrepreneurs meet regularly with peer groups (as placed by Founders Fund based on an in depth in take survey) for accountability and support

-Women identifying entrepreneurs apply for barrier free funding opportunities (and are made aware of external funding opportunities)

Outputs

- Women identifying entrepreneurs gain knowledge on how to operate and lead impactful, revenue generating businesses (and grow existing businesses)

- Women identifying entrepreneurs feel supported in a community that understand their unique experiences and challenges 

-Women identifying entrepreneurs gain accountability and structure within their business 

- Women identifying entrepreneurs are able to fund portions of their growth easily and with minimal risk 

Short Term Outcomes

- Women identifying entrepreneurs launch, grow and scale their businesses at an accelerated pace

- Women identifying entrepreneurs become more confident and secure in their leadership and direction of their organizations

Long Term Outcomes

-Women identifying entrepreneurs have enough revenue and profit to begin contributing to the global GDP and giving back in substantial ways to their communities

-Women identifying entrepreneurs create a gender balanced economy that demonstrates the economic value of equality

We currently have over 450 members who are women-identifying or non-binary founders from across North America, with a projected member count of 1200+ in 2021, and 20,000 globally within five years.

We envision a full-service approach to the elevation and support of underrepresented women identifying entrepreneurs across the globe that allows their businesses to launch, grow, and scale.

In the next three months our team will be developing our 2021 programming to include increased program accessibility, program structure that reflects the feedback of our community (more structured approach with easily identifiable milestones), a stronger social purpose pillar (educating our community more in depth on Benefit Corporations, building anti-racists businesses, and politics in business) as well as a digital community base that facilitates community and support beyond that of a traditional business
accelerator.

In the next six months, we will be launching the above-mentioned vision and begin monitoring our data and feedback closely to make adjustments where needed. In addition, we plan on developing technology that supports the accessibility of our programming across all languages and physical abilities.

In the next twelve months, our team has plans to launch accessible technology and expand our community internationally, with an emphasis of supporting women in remote communities across the globe and hiring country leads to support the cultural transition of our programming appropriately.

In the next five years, we plan on creating an internationally accredited program for women identifying entrepreneurs across the globe, including rural and remote locations. We plan on serving 20,000+ members annually at that time. 

The biggest challenge that we are facing is finding resources to develop technology that supports our customer base while we continue to scale in 2021 and beyond.

We have plans to build technology that makes our programming fully accessible (audio and visual supports), as well as technology that has the capabilities to recognize similarities within our member community (similar life experiences beyond race, religion and socio economic status) that would provide data to our team to inform our decisions on programming and support strategies, as well as community building.

Our strategy to overcome the lack of resources to build this tech is to continue to scale using low resource methods (i.e a lot of extra hours from our executive team) and to continue seeking sponsorship funding from fully aligned partners.

We are currently partnered with HubSpot (and are in discussion with Bumble and Facebook).

Our partnership with HubSpot is a learning partnership, which entails tailored content for our community delivered by their team on a monthly basis (ex. a session on how to maximize sales with email flows).

Future partnerships will come in the form of sponsorship (financial support) in exchange for a title connected to our funding (or program in its entirety, depending on the level of support) 

Founders Fund is the first digital accelerator for under-represented, women-identifying entrepreneurs. We have developed a program and delivery system that removes traditional barriers to allow for the success of women-identifying entrepreneurs across all industries and growth stages.

Our program includes: community mentorship, workshops, peer mentor matching, community engagement and discounted access to industry partner products (like CRMs and bookkeeping) and zero equity, non repayable funding.

Our model is based on memberships purchases of $225, of which more than 50% to the funding pool with the remaining cover operating costs and revenue. This means, as our community scales, our program and funding will become complete self sufficient. The more our community grows, the more
funding we have available.

This is a unique approach to traditional accelerators, as our model focuses on underrepresented women from a range of life experiences (including race, religion, socioeconomic class and physical ability) with services that support the complete range of entrepreneurial experience (including mental health).

Our path to financial sustainability lies within our membership sales (which generated 70% of our first years revenue).

Although we intend on partnering with aligned sponsors and independent funders, our most stable financial stream is through the sales of our memberships (which has proven viable and stable to scale).

We have funded Founders Fund exclusively through membership sales and sponsorship through our funders (for a total of $150,000).

70% of our revenue for our past year (our first year of operation) have come through membership sales.

We are seeking $150,000 in sponsorships and/or grants with the potential of exchange equity depending on the partnership.

It is integral that we be selective about our sources of funding, as our mission to serve with transparency to underserved populations of women remains the priority in our work.

Our estimated expenses for 2020 (not including our funding pool) are approximately $80,000 CAD (just under $60,000 USD), as we are digital (low overhead) and are keeping our costs as efficient as possible.

What interests us most is the opportunity to gain capital and mentorship with aligned industry leaders that see value in profit as well as impact.

The resources The Elevate Prize would provide will allow us to scale our technology (and supporting team) to meet the need for our product.

As we scale internationally, we are also looking for mentors and experts that have done so successfully and would be able to advise our executive team as our need for international development grows.

We believe that The Elevate Prize is the right partnership to accelerate our growth and knowledge.

While our project is completing its first year, we have a need for support in several areas including:

1. Funding (to develop our accessible technology and support team)

2. Mentorship and coaching (for scaling and entering international markets)

3. Board members and advisors (from diverse life experiences to ensure that we are serving all of our stakeholders fairly and effectively)

4. Marketing and media exposure (we have had an encouraging start with this, as we have had media attention on CTV, Thrive podcast and have an upcoming feature in Forbes, and we see a lot of opportunities to expand that reach)

We would love to partner with brands that have a tool or resource that supports business owners and have mission aligned values.

The brands we're in discussion with right now are Facebook and Bumble Business. We hope to partner with a financial institution with a purpose model, ideally BDC (a b corp) or Alterna.

On our list of ideal partners we have also included technology based brands to gain insight into the development of accessible technology like Zoom, QuickBooks and Shopify (which we have an existing relationship with).