Maven Space Launches IFundWomen Campaign

At the first anniversary celebration of Maven Space on June 2, Bailey announced the launch of the campaign to a packed room of members and Maven Space supporters. In her speech, Bailey stressed the fact that Maven Space has been a bootstrapped venture from the start, and asked for community support to advance Maven Space’s mission of helping women business leaders and emerging entrepreneurs reach their goals and expand their networks. “The launch of Maven Space has been a labor of love from day one,” said Bailey. “It happened with my husband’s and my personal savings, my cofounder Kate Tauton-Rigby, and a healthy dose of optimism (or insanity, depending on how you look at it.)”

“Given that only 2% of venture capital dollars go to women, I knew better than to even try that route. And yes, there are small business loans available, but that only increases your overhead and makes it harder to break even. We’ve had some amazing support from community partners and we’re really on the cusp of coming up and over the hurdle of start-up costs, but we still have a long way to go. So, after weighing all our options, I decided to launch a campaign on IFundWomen, which is a crowdfunding service that provides coaching, grants and resources to female entrepreneurs.”

Hard facts about female start-up funding

● Only 28% of total SBA loan dollars go to women-owned businesses. And when those loans are received, they’re still coming with a nearly 10% interest rate.

● 46% of female entrepreneurs finance their start-ups with credit cards. Given that the current average interest rate on credit cards is 21%, women have to work about 121% harder than many male entrepreneurs just to break even.

● 40% of women finance their small business start-up with their own personal savings, while still trying to set college funds aside for their kids AND save for retirement.

● Traditionally, more than 70% of start-ups that raise venture capital have a white, male co-founder who went to Harvard or Stanford.

Equalizing the gap: “This first year of Maven Space has been a roller coaster ride of laughter, tears, sleepless nights and incredibly hard work,” said director Karen Kennedy. “We’re a tiny team trying to do big things. In a year, we’ve built a community of nearly 50 coworking members, held almost 200 events and donated more than $12,000 in event space to nonprofit organizations. We’re asking the community to help equalize the funding gap for female-owned start-ups by choosing to spend their dollars at local, women-owned businesses like Maven Space, among so many others, and support our IFundWomen campaign so we can continue to uplift and serve the bold, hard-working women in the Indianapolis community and beyond.” IFundWomen campaign details The goal of the Maven Space IFundWomen campaign is to raise $100,000 by July 3, 2023. Various reward levels are available. Details are available here. About Maven Space Opened in May, 2022 by Indy Maven co-founder Leslie Bailey.

Maven Space is a female-forward, 15,000 square-foot coworking, community and event space. It’s located in downtown Indianapolis in the historic OneAmerica Gibson Building at 433 N. Capitol Avenue, Suite 100. Event space options include a 200-seat conference room/private event space with state-of-the art a/v and video conferencing equipment, as well as smaller private and semi-private meeting rooms. Maven Space is an ideal location for holiday dinners and celebrations, networking events and corporate retreats. For more information, or to schedule an interview contact: Chrissy Bruns– [email protected] 219-895-5449