Edlonton Shelvie Fernan and Calgary Lourdes Juan are two of the winners of the 2022 HerStory pitch competition organized by Alberta Innovates and The51, an organization that invests in start-ups and companies led by women and founders of different genders. The pitch competition, held in Banff earlier this month, featured 29 entrepreneurs from across the country who shared stories about how they found the ideas behind their companies. Fernan is the CEO and co-founder of Fly & Fetch, a shipping company that aims to provide faster and cheaper international parcel deliveries. Fernan won $ 51,000 for the company through the HerStory competition. “I was definitely shocked,” Fernand said. “At the same time, you just have to claim it because I also work very hard and my team works very hard.” Well, financial feminists,This is a wrapper. We are incredibly excited to announce the WINNERS of HerStory 2022: Shelvie Fernan from Julia Rivard Dexter from pic.twitter.com/WOaPNgbrr8 – @ _ The51 Instead of a traditional shipping process, Fly & Fetch pays travelers with extra space in their luggage to carry and deliver packages to customers. The company covers 50 to 100 percent of the cost of flights for travelers, Fernan said, and already has a database of about 7,000 travelers willing to deliver packages. Fernan said the idea for the company came from her own experiences with international shipping. As an immigrant from the Philippines, whenever she sent parcels back home to her mother through traditional courier companies, deliveries were expensive and usually took more than a week. It is common practice in immigrant communities to ask people traveling back home to deliver packages to friends and family, Fernan said. “We have been doing this for so long,” he said. “We have to have a business model that works because a lot of other people want that [quick] mission as well. “
Redesign of the stadium process
Shelley Kuipers, co-founder and co-CEO of The51, said the idea behind the HerStory competition was to re-imagine the pitch process in a way that serves women and entrepreneurs of the opposite sex. “Do not throw us, but tell us your story,” Kuipers said. “Is there an experience behind this? Why are you creating this business? Why would this business be successful with you running it?” Kuipers said the competition is also intended to be a direct way to increase investment in companies led by women and founders of the opposite sex. He knows first hand how difficult it can be to navigate the business ecosystem. “My own experience has been that it was extremely difficult to raise funds as a female entrepreneur and founder,” Kuipers said. In 2020, women founders received just 2.3 percent of the $ 1 billion distributed to global venture capital funds. While initially assumed to be just one winner of the HerStory competition, Kuipers said the contestants were so impressive that four prizes had to be awarded by the end of the event.
“Increasing access to food around the world”
One of these awards went to Lourdes Juan, founder and CEO of Knead Technologies, a Calgary-based technology company that helps food rescue agencies manage logistics through an application. Juan won $ 20,000. Juan said that participating in the competition was one of the best experiences in her business career. “It was so wonderful to be in the room with that energy, to know so many people who do exactly what I do,” Juan said. Juan, whose background is in urban design, has founded many companies and charities, including a spa and the non-profit Fresh Routes, a mobile grocery store and an emerging market offering discounted products and other food. A Calgarian inspects product quality in one of Fresh Routes’ emerging markets at an LRT station. Fresh Routes is just one of many agencies founded by businessman Lourdes Juan. (David Bell / CBC) Juan said her passion for solving food access problems stems from her own life experiences. Her mother, who immigrated to Canada from the Philippines, used to do three jobs, including as a cashier at a grocery store, to put food on the table. “We were one of those families who just couldn’t afford to waste food,” Juan said. “Now, I’m really committed to increasing access to food around the world through this new technology.” While Knead Technologies was founded just this year, Juan said her team has already received calls from organizations around the world from Jamaica to Cλεte d’Ivoire.
Plans for the future
The various organizations that have invested in HerStory winners will contact each company to see how they plan to use their new funds, Kuipers said. “We will go through a due diligence process to make sure everything is audited from an investment perspective,” he said. Juan said the money her company earned would likely be used to improve the app to better promote it to organizations around the world. Fernan said her company is trying to expand its reach. While currently delivering mainly to Canada, the United States, the Philippines and Pakistan, the company hopes to reach countries such as Brazil and India.
