No one has more practical ideas for new products and services than Moms. Women make more than 80% of consumer purchasing decisions, and they dominate internet and social media usage. They know products and services, and the practical applications and benefits, better than anyone else.  But when time and money are so scarce in a mom’s life, where can they turn when they have an idea for a product or service to improve life on the front lines of running their household?

Meet MUMZY: the next-generation crowdfunding site completely dedicated and built with moms in mind to support their strong ability to innovate while addressing their unique pains and lack of time and resources, a barrier to bringing their ideas to life. 

MUMZY is the first of its kind, a place for moms to support and help each other bring their ideas to life. In addition to the built-in community support, MUMZY also provides moms with the tools and resources they need to get their revolutionary products out into the world. It is a full-cycle platform that provides assistance in each step of the journey, whether a mom is launching a new product or building an existing business. 

Raise capital, use our resources, get support, help fellow moms, and collaborate with our brand partners who also want to help you succeed. Moms really can do it all, on MUMZY.

Moms are problem solvers. They’re innovative. They’re motivated. They’re connected. They possess many of the key traits that make a successful entrepreneur, and yet, moms have been a forgotten community, even among the massive growth in the crowdfunding industry. 

Want proof moms make great entrepreneurs?

Overall, women are 13% more likely than men to meet their Kickstarter goals.

Women are 61% more likely than men to meet their financial targets on Indiegogo.

Women make more than 80% of consumer purchasing decisions, identifying winning products based on their own needs.

Moms dominate the internet and social media, which are critical to mounting an effective crowdfunding campaign.

A determined, tenacious, resourceful and supportive community — what more could you want?

Etsy has been a gold mine for moms to get their products out there, and many of them have done quite well for themselves. This is a testament to the creativity, wit, and passion of moms everywhere.

But not all businesses involve physical products to sell. And very few businesses can reach scale without funding from outside sources. For moms to move their businesses from a craft room to a global scale, there’s only one place to go: MUMZY.

In a world where crowdfunding is booming, from Kickstarter, Indiegogo, GoFundMe, to the site you’re on right now, MUMZY is the first and only crowdfunding site specifically for moms.

With our supportive community and full cycle of services, innovative moms are able to achieve success. We provide tools and resources to optimize crowdfunding campaigns, and once funds are raised, next steps to help moms bring their idea to market. MUMZY is the go-to site and resource for moms looking to launch a business or grow an existing one.

A large differentiator of MUMZY to other platforms is our access and partnerships with mom-friendly brands who want to help the strong women in our community launch or grow their business. We marry great ideas with brands who have the capacity and interest in bringing it to life.

For example, our first bran partnership will be with Revolution Foods, as they look for the next food-based entrepreneur. Most people would say their mom is the best cook they know, but if you’re truly a culinary genius, MUMZY has the partnership in place to nurture and support your creation to market dominance. 

MUMZY is also in talks with Huggies on a potential partnership to help bring mom-centric innovations and products to life. 

Your MUMZY Journey

MUMZY.com is live! As we’re still in a beta testing phase, we’re hand-curating projects that will give us the best data on what people are looking for and how we can improve. Our key KPIs will be to grow our community, grow projects posted on the site and realize revenue through projects funding. Without investment and in a small-scale launch, we’ve had more than 100 crowdfunding campaigns. Once we achieve our investment, that number will grow 50x. 

Fueling those projects is a community of over 5,000 curious, engaged, and excited moms and mom supporters who want to learn more about MUMZY — all with minimum marketing on our part.

We’ve been featured in over 40 online publications (check them out here:MUMZY.com/press) and have received tremendous support from mommy bloggers, celebrity endorsers and prominent business and tech outlets. Recent media coverage includes Success Magazine, Chicago Tribune, AdWeek, Built In Chicago, ChicagoInno, Crain’s Chicago Business, BlogHer, and WGN Radio

We are also in negotiations with a number of celebrity moms who have expressed interest in MUMZY including Molly Sims, Julie Bowen, Anna Farris, Jenna Fischer, Keri Russell, Liv Tyler, Nicole Richie, and Alyssa Milano. With Jessica Alba leading the pack in her success with The Honest Company, we know celebrities are eager to dip into the startup and entrepreneurial pool and many are very interested in MUMZY. 

As mentioned above, MUMZY sees strategic partnerships with mom-centric brands as a big competitive advantage to other platforms out there. Both in supporting moms to keep their ideas moving forward as well as helping promote MUMZY through their advertising and marketing efforts.

We locked in our first partnership with Revolution Foods that will come to fruition Q1’16. This will be a great opportunity to grow our community, get viable and solid projects posted, and create tremendous buzz and awareness around MUMZY in conjunction with a fellow brand that shares our mission.

We’re also in talks with the teams at Quaker, Reynolds Wrap, Allstate, Lego and the Kraft Heinz Company. In fact, even though we’re still in beta, we have been approached by some of the largest brands out there, eager to learn more and partner with MUMZY. 

Not only will partnering with brands play a role in supporting our moms and community, it will also be a strong revenue stream as well as help MUMZY reach the masses and grow our community-base and projects.

Meredith is a 29-year-old marketing executive with a three-month-old son. In the time she’s been a mom, Meredith has realized that in spite of all the new challenges and stressors in her life, she’s having something of an innovation renaissance. It seems like for every poor-performing product, painful carrying device, and sleepless night, she’s coming up with solutions for all of them.

She wants to take her ideas to the next level, but doesn’t quite know what that is or where to go for support. On MUMZY, Meredith not only has a community of like-minded innovative moms to bounce ideas off of, but access to tools and resources to help her refine her idea, and even a pool of investors and brands looking for the next big product.

Kristin is 34, a mom to two toddlers, and has recently started an online letter press business. She’s been selling her beautiful handcrafted creations on Etsy and has seen pretty steady organic growth without any advertising. Her small success has validated a market desire for her products, but with a family to support and no time on her hands, she can’t just quit her job and dedicate the time she needs to take her business to the next level. She also doesn’t want to go through a lengthy and exhaustive investment process, so she starts looking into crowdfunding campaigns. With promising traction to show, she crowdfunds to the mommy-centric audience of MUMZY who want to support fellow moms and want Kristin’s designs for their own kid’s rooms

Catherine Merritt, Founder & CEO
The mom behind MUMZY

MUMZY was started by a mom who had an idea of her own.

When MUMZY founder, Catherine Merritt, had her first son she had a great idea for a new product that would turn any handbag into a diaper bag (she still thinks it’s a great idea!). However, with little to no resources available (not to mention the overall lack of sleep!) Catherine never developed her idea. It did, however, pave the way in creating MUMZY.

Catherine believes moms are the most innovative, creative, entrepreneurial problem solvers and her dream is that MUMZY will help moms bring their ideas to life. She also believes moms can be the best support to other moms during hard times and envisions MUMZY as a way to help in those moments.

Catherine is the CEO and head of strategy, operations, and manning the overall ship. She both conceptualizes strategic partnerships and works to execute them. Catherine brings a decade’s worth of experience in marketing to and for moms.

She’s an award-winning marketer, a public speaker, a blogger, an expert within the working-mom space, and brings forth a passion and dedication to MUMZY to ensure it’s as successful as everything else she’s worked on.

This year, Catherine is a member of 1871’s WiSTEM Cohort and will be the Babson Business Center’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Sewanee University of the South. Catherine is mom to Teddy and Archie and lives in Chicago’s northshore with her husband, Ian.

Bryan Specht, Senior Strategic Advisor
High-level strategy and oversight

Once upon a time, Bryan was Catherine’s boss. She approached him one day in 2014 about an idea she had and lucky for her, Bryan was incredibly excited and passionate about the concept and growth opportunity it offered. He championed MUMZY and supported Catherine as she foraged to bring it to life. He’s also provided invaluable insight, experience and expertise along the way. Bryan has 15 years marketing leadership and played a strong role in MUMZY’s initial growth along with his agency, Olson Engage, winner of PRWeek Agency of the Year. He was a key leader in selling Olson for $309 million, 9x EBITDA, and founded a family foundation and serves as a member of multiple nonprofit boards. He is dad to Charlie and Elizabeth and doting husband to Lauren.

Mary Birkhauser, VP of Marketing

Catherine and Bryan worked with Mary for years and when the opportunity presented itself to join MUMZY, Mary jumped! Mary is in charge of all things marketing, community growth, public-facing outreach, and content creation. She brings both consumer and corporate communications expertise to life for MUMZY

Tim Rawls, Development Lead
Development and tech guru

Tim is the partner and founder of Juice Interactive, the shop that helped build MUMZY. Tim and his team have provided the creative, development and stratetgic support in taking Catherine’s sketches and bad wire-frames and bringing them to life as the beautiful website exists today. Next up on their to-do list? Building out the MUMZY app, bolstering the MUMZY community piece and always evolving and improving the main site and its functionality.

Geoff Lee, Creative Director
The creative genius behind MUMZY

Geoff is a digital-focused, tech-savvy, multi-award winning Creative Director with over 15 years of experience at some of the world’s biggest agencies. Geoff was the creative director and visionary for MUMZY as it was being built. His team created our brand look and feel as well as our logo. In addition to MUMZY, his body of work has been recognized nationally and internationally at Cannes, D&AD, One Show, London International, Art Directors Club, John Caples, New York Festivals, W3’s, Webby’s and IAB MIXX, among others.

Ziyad Patail – Project Manager
The guy who keeps plates spinning 

Ziyad is project manager who kept all the plates spinning as MUMZY was created and developed. He brings 5+ years in advertising, marketing, and project management as well as a deep understanding of campaign processes, media processes, and project life cycles as used to facilitate strategy, creative, development, and technical production.

Stephen Sinisi – Copywriter
Wordsmith  

If you like the words on MUMZY it’s because of Stephen. He’s a copywriter of almost 10 years and worked closely with Geoff and Ziyad in MUMZY’s build and look and feel. When not writing copy he’s a huge book nerd (reads about 20 of them a year) and addicted to Swedish Berries (this is a problem).

Michael Caramango – Finance/Accounting

Michael is the yin to Catherine’s yang, or the math equivalent to her English major. Michel is the overall financial bones within MUMZY, owning the bookkeeping, KPIs, goals, projections, actuals, and all that fun stuff.

Eric Sheinkop, ADVISOR
CEO, Founder of Music Dealers 

In 2008, Eric founded Music Dealers – a global music tech company that bridges the gap between bands and brands. In 2011 Music Dealers cemented a groundbreaking partnership with The Coca-Cola Company, securing Music Dealers’ position as the organization’s global music partner and earning Coca-Cola a minority stake in the company. Eric brings a unique perspective, excellent experiences and strong expertise in marrying brands with startups. He also somehow has phenomenal mom-tuition despite the fact that he’s single with no children.

Melinda Kramer, ADVISOR
Founder, Partner of Kloud Ventures, LLC 

Melinda has spent 30 years crafting solutiation at the intersection of business and technology and is the founder of KloudVentures LLC. Melinda has held leadership roles in small, mid-sized and large firms, primarily in the financial services sector. Melinda holds a BS in Computer Science from Northeastern University and an MBA from the Stern School at NYU. She devotes time for philanthropic pursuits in the areas of advancement for women, children and technology. She sits on the boards of the Illinois Technology Association, Techweek, GolfMatch, Mumzy, Hedge Funds Care/Help For Children and KatrinSchnabl and volunteers for Between Friends Chicago and the LaSalle Language Technology committee.

Eric Cohen, ADVISOR
CMO, Founder of Macaroni Kids Media Platform

Eric Cohen is co-founder and CMO of Macaroni Kid, a media group that has grown to more than 550 influencers, covering more than 5,000 towns and communities, serving clients including Disney, P&G, Starwood Resorts, Unilever and more. Eric works tirelessly to empower the Macaroni Kid Publishers to achieve their goals, and he connects brands with moms through these amazing influencers. As the “Macaroni Dad,” he has appeared on TV, lectured on marketing at colleges and universities, and has contributed his expertise to numerous publications. Eric knows something about building a strong online community of moms as he and his wife, Joyce, have done exactly that.