New fund weaves success for women entrepreneurs
Grant program aims to propel passions into thriving enterprises
When you’re starting a small business, “any capital is unbelievably helpful,” says Naomi Blackman, co-founder of Toronto-based Alder Apparel. But when the money comes from a pool created by women for women, it is especially sweet, says her partner Mikayla Wujec. Their company has been awarded $25,000, the largest startup grant this year from the Founders Fund, a digital business accelerator for women. The national, membership-based corporation offers mentoring, training and networking — as well as funding — to women looking to propel a good idea into a thriving enterprise.
Blackman and Wujec plan to use the grant to expand the stereotype-shattering brand of women’s outdoor wear they launched online last year.
They say that the Founders Fund, which calls itself a “social impact tech company,” fits hand-in-glove with their own corporate ethos of diversity and inclusivity.
“Being awarded by other female founders and other female leaders was especially validating and also very special to have that support from such a community,” said Wujec.
Founders Fund, which began as a pilot project of Tease Tea, a social enterprise based on sustainability, fair wages and women’s causes, was incorporated as a separate entity last September.
On the eve of its first anniversary, the company has attracted about 500 members, 30 per cent of them from the Toronto area, said Sheena Brady, founder of Tease Tea and co-owner of Founders Fund.
Half of the annual $225 Founders Fund membership fee is reinvested into the grant funding pool. The rest of the money goes into operational costs, including the administration this year of more than 100 hours of online and inperson events such as mentorship sessions and a recent town hall on antiracism.
The idea is to give startups access to consultants and experts they can’t afford individually, said Brady.
She said Founders Fund is a for-profit corporation with a social mission.
“We really want to walk the talk about the power that social enterprises carry. The burden of addressing social and environmental issues should not be left to government, not-for-profits and charities alone. For-profit corporations can be purpose and mission driven while also protecting their bottom line and fairly compensating the people they work with,” she said.
Hamilton’s Vivian Kaye is also a partowner of Founders Fund. Kaye’s online hair extension business, KinkyCurlyYaki, was recently featured in the Star.
Ultimately though, Brady said she intends to turn Founders Fund into a multiple, value-aligned ownership that reinvests in the company.
“It’s so hard to say what that looks like because even though we’re a for-profit company, we’re going to be operating at a loss this year and we’ll probably be operating at a loss next year,” she said.
Wujec and Blackman are among 11 recipients of this year’s grants. They were selected from 200 member applications for funding. The other 10 grants range from $1,000 to $5,000.
Recipients were chosen by a diverse, 30-member selection panel of individuals who have been in business for at least three years or have worked in an executive capacity. That 40 per cent of the grant applicants identified as women of colour is probably a reflection of that
committee’s diversity, said Brady
Wujec and Blackman, both 31, founded Alder Apparel as a response to imagery in the outdoor clothing business that identified their brands with consumers who were thin, white and athletic.
The pair, who date their friendship back to Toronto’s Annette Public School, reconvened a couple of years ago when Wujec returned from New Zealand, where she had been working as a National Geographic explorer.
She shared her frustration about the lack of functional and fashionable women’s outdoor clothing with Blackman, who has a background in fashion marketing and retail.
Wujec said women’s choices were limited to leggings, which generally don’t have pockets, or activity-based performance garments that don’t necessarily work for women’s bodies. When they did some broader market research, the pair recognized that most outdoor brands were missing the mark with women.
“It went beyond clothing. It was really happening at a value level,” said Wujec.
Women didn’t identify with the outdoor brand imagery they were seeing, she said.
Last year, with $200,000 in Kickstarter funding, Alder launched its first product, its “Open Air” pants with a highwaisted, multiple-zippered pocket design in three colours sized up to 4X. This year they have introduced a tank top with a higher neckline and wider straps and shorts in a waterwicking fabric with eight pockets and a removable belt.
The partners say the Founders Fund grant will help them build out their line. They are looking at doing a raincoat and a sweater and they are considering extending their size range to a 6X, petites and taller-fitting garments.
Blackman said that starting their own company allowed the women “to say from the get-go the things we don’t want to compromise on — the inclusivity, diversity, putting people first — the kinds of things that aren’t necessarily always available to you in every role.”
Other Founders Fund grants went to these startups: $5,000 grant recipient Ania Wysocka began experiencing panic attacks in her fourth year of university but she was living on student loans and couldn’t afford counselling.
“I was really looking for something on my phone and I couldn’t find anything,” she said.
That planted the seed for Rootd, an app offering a tool for deep breathing, active visualizations and journalling — all set up as a game so the user collects points as they go. Victoria-based Wysocka initially launched in 2017. Once she had gathered feedback on her panic-attack tool, she expanded the app’s features and officially launched in January 2019.
Wysocka developed the content and did the writing and graphic design (a skill she says she picked up at the “University of YouTube”) herself so she could afford to hire a developer to create the app.
About 370,377 users in 105 countries have purchased the Rootd app, a testament to the universality of anxiety and panic attacks, said Wysocka.
Rootd costs $6.99 on IOS and $4.99 on Android. There is a $5 monthly user fee, a $50 annual cost and $150 lifetime subscription.
The Founders Fund grant will help Wysocka pay for further refinements — push notifications so people can stay more engaged with the app, some analytics-based tweaks to the user experience, advertising and “onboarding” companies willing to pay for the app for their employees. $3,000 grant recipient When Khaoula Abtouch e graduated from university, she found the work world exhausting. She went looking for an avenue to regain some energy. She found it at the gym. What the Montrealer, who wears a hijab, couldn’t find, was the kind of looser, breathable workout wear that allowed her to maintain her modest mode of dress.
So a year and a half ago, armed with $25,000 saved from working 9 to 5 in an insurance company, Abtouche founded Dignitii Activewear.
Her workout pants and longer, looser tops of modern, breathable fabrics, as well as a sports hijab, sold out in March, with half the orders of her Canadian-made line shipping to the U.S.
She plans to spend her $3,000 Founders Fund grant on advertising.
“I’ve reinvested all the revenue I got back into the business. I didn’t have anything left for marketing which is very important especially since we haven’t had stock for a while,” she said. $1,000 grant recipient After the birth of her daughter in 2016, Meghan Stewart-Wills experienced postpartum depression. She was prescribed medication and psychotherapy. But it was mindfulness — a practice associated with meditation — that helped her identify her feelings and work through moments when she felt overwhelmed.
It gave her the power, she said, to recognize her feelings in situations where anxiety would pull her into the future and depression would push her into the past, she said.
“It’s like a good recipe. You just want to share it with everyone when you experience it,” said Stewart-Wills, who launched her Ottawa-based mindfulness coaching practice in 2018.
Now she is expanding her mission to make mindfulness inclusive of the Black, Indigenous and people of colour communities.
There’s a growing acceptance of mindfulness among those underrepresented groups, many of whom are reeling with the long-suppressed trauma being stirred by the Black Lives Matter movement, said Stewart-Wills.
Because of COVID-19 and the geographical reach of the antiracism movement, she is increasingly practising online. The Founders Fund grant will assist with the related costs of that — helping pay for platforms such as Zoom and updating her website so people can access her teaching.
“My vision would be to alternately change the way that Black people specifically view their mental health and their investment in it through mindfulness. By change I mean empowering their ability to heal themselves through self-acceptance, self-compassion and courage,” said Stewart-Wills.
The pair recognized that most outdoor brands were missing the mark with women