Startup of the Month: Future Funded

Future Funded is the first and only crowdfunding platform providing women with funding to learn tech skills. Through eight-week campaigns, participants raise the money needed to cover the fees of the bootcamp or course they want to attend. We work closely with each woman to create her campaign. A lot of work goes into each one, so we look for highly motivated, proactive women who can take on the challenge.

The idea was born when my co-founder, Cecelia Tham, and I were working on a project called Project Young Fish. It taught unemployed youth about technology and entrepreneurship by giving them a challenge and two weeks to solve it. As we were working on the project we started thinking, ‘What if we could run these programs all the time without having to rely on outside funding?’ That’s when we had the idea of creating a crowdfunding platform for education. 

We started doing research and saw that there was a big skills gap. A lot of companies are looking for individuals with tech skills, although a lot of unemployed young people lack this in-demand knowledge. With so many code academies and bootcamps popping up around the city, we saw that the infrastructure for gaining those skills existed—only the funding was lacking.

It all fell into place one day when we were participating in an event where all of the other speakers were men. It wasn’t a surprise—we know what this industry is like—but we got really angry that day. We realized that we had to do something about the lack of women in the tech industry and decided that the crowdfunding platform should focus on women in tech specifically. The goal of Future Funded is not only to raise funds but also awareness of women in tech, and to create a platform where we can discuss these issues collectively. 

The nature of crowdfunding allows you to engage a lot of people as contributors. Your backers become the foundation of a professional network, as the rewards are based on the new skills you are going to learn. So your contributors are, in a way, your future clients.

The idea is that companies looking for individuals with tech skills back at least half of each campaign. In exchange, the participant will work for them for a period of time, usually a few months, after having completed her course. If it’s a good match, she might end up working for the company full-time. Each participant’s circle of family and friends tends to contribute as well, and then you’ve got the entrepreneurs and startups who want to contribute to the cause but also might need help fixing up their WordPress site or coding something.

I left my job at Makers of Barcelona last year to take this challenge on full-time. It’s been a lot of hard work since then, but we’ve now managed to secure some funding, and we’ve got a great team of five committed to encouraging women to enter the tech industry. I think we often put barriers up for ourselves or give ourselves excuses not to try things. My advice to other women thinking about entering the tech sector or launching their own startup is to just do it! There’s nothing we’re not capable of.