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.
- Elevating opportunities for all people, especially those who are traditionally left behind
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).
- For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models