Nicole Denholder is on a mission to help women entrepreneurs grow their businesses. Her Hong Kong-based company, Next Chapter, helped 11 businesses run successful crowdfunding campaigns in the past year. Two more campaigns are currently underway, and a third is on deck for later this summer. And now that she’s proven Next Chapter’s potential, she’s looking to expand its reach to entrepreneurs throughout Southeast Asia.
“For me, it’s not curating the product, it’s working with the entrepreneur,” Denholder said. Rather than focus on matching entrepreneurs to a particular market, Denholder focuses on cultivating talent and good ideas and empowering the leaders themselves to connect with their audiences. “The power of crowdfunding is you go and find your target market,” she said.
The company’s model proved successful for Stephanie Poon, head of the athleisure company Zarie, who achieved full funding through her Next Chapter campaign.“Working with Next Chapter has spiraled our brand awareness much more than if we had launched the products ourselves,” Poon said in an email. “The process also helped us gain insight in consumer feedback and preferences about our products.”
Zarie currently sells luxury leggings made with patented fabric technology that Poon said promotes circulation and skin health while also having a slimming effect. The company will soon launch professional-wear pieces using the technology as well. Spurred by the success of its Next Chapter partnership, Poon said Zarie “aims to become the leading technology specialist of lower body apparel for women on the go.”
Crowdfunding serves as a door-opener for companies that need funding to get off the ground or to expand their product reach. It's also especially well-suited to women entrepreneurs, according to Denholder.
“I think rewards-based funding is great for women because it takes away the gender lens,” she said. Successful campaigns also require social media savvy, storytelling skills, compelling products and direct to consumer marketing, all of which Denholder said tend to be strengths for women leaders.
Next steps for Next Chapter
However, she is already looking to increase Next Chapter's offering and wants to build a funding ecosystem for the women with whom Next Chapter works. “We’re really trying to build a broader vision there for women,” she said. The goal is to provide a network of mentors and investors from which women entrepreneurs can draw when they're ready to pursue venture capital and other types of funding.
To that end, Next Chapter will hold a satellite event during the upcoming Rise Conference in Hong Kong, a pitch competition called “Pitch Like a Girl.” The presentations will be judged by a panel of women investors, facilitating both funding and networking opportunities for Next Chapter's affiliates. In terms of expansion, Denholder said she’s already spoken with entrepreneurs in the Philippines and Indonesia who want to partner with Next Chapter to bring their products to other markets.
As Next Chapter grows its reach, Denholder expects to offer “a fair bit of business coaching” to ambitious entrepreneurs from developing markets, which will help them overcome the inevitable biases she sees women entrepreneurs in Asia confront regularly.
“There’s an assumption that they’re going to be craft-based or little businesses,” she said. “People don’t assume women are going to run a fintech business or an edtech business. There needs to be a change in perception of what women are capable of.”
Yosha Gupta, who is currently running a crowdfunding campaign on Next Chapter for Meraki, her handbag company, also spoke to the need for a change in perception.
“There are definitely huge perception issues around businesses run by female founders (e.g. lifestyle businesses versus scalable businesses or how we will balance family along with running a startup),” Gupta said via email. “But as long as we keep focusing on the unit metrics of our business, keep executing relentlessly and build meaningful networks and relationships, the money will follow.” Gupta aims to expand Meraki into markets such as Japan, Singapore, the U.K. and the U.S.
In addition to Meraki, Gupta is also the founder of LafaLafa, a cashback business based in India. She’s spent 12 years in the mobile banking and payment spaces, is a financial inclusion consultant to the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group and has raised funds for LafaLafa through 500 Startups and Vectr Ventures, both of which she praised as “champions for female founders.”
Denholder noted that in addition to changing investors’ perceptions, more women must be in the game if they’re to gain visibility. She said she has spoken with venture capitalists who have said that only one in 10 pitches they receive come from women.
“So the problem is ‘Where are they?’ rather than discrimination,” she said. Denholder added that women-focused funding options are growing. Coupled with an increased emphasis on supporting women-owned businesses from organizations such as the IFC , the opportunities are emerging.
“I think it’s a great time to be looking to become a woman entrepreneur,” Denholder said.
Business support for women, by women
Still, challenges remain, and men are still more likely to receive funding for their businesses than women. To help close the gap, Next Chapter strives to bring more women into the entrepreneurial space and position them for growth and access to additional funding. Thus far, the organization has amplified the products of a diverse range of businesses, a pattern that will likely hold as Next Chapter grows.
Quin Thong, founder of AnaByKarma, a company that sells scarves that are handmade in Bhutan, sees Denholder as a connecting force for women entrepreneurs.
Thong said she realized the power of her own business when one of the weavers with whom she works told her, “I have never been to any of those countries you talked about, but when my scarves go there, I feel I have gone there, too.”
“Nicole is to ANA what I am to the illiterate women in Bhutan,” Thong said. “She literally hand-held me through the entire process, even creating images for the rewards, choosing the wordings and more. I was illiterate in the world of crowdfunding. I felt the warmth and protection of being guided by one who knows what she is doing, probably just like what our weavers felt when ANA works with them on their journey of growth and development.”
Working with Denholder and Next Chapter was the obvious option for Meraki as well, Gupta said. She got to know Denholder while appearing on industry panels together and decided Next Chapter aligned with her values and mission for the company.
Gupta said, “It is a campaign for empowering women – for women , by women, and that just felt right.”
