MAIA launched earlier this year with a straightforward, single-minded goal: to compile a huge list of women-owned businesses and turn it into an easily-searchable online directory.
By developing a platform that made it easy to find women-owned businesses, MAIA founders Kateri Ruiz and Angel Rowell hope to make it easy for consumers to find and support female entrepreneurs across the country.
Eden Prairie-based MAIA officially launched in late April, and now has more than 700,000 businesses from across the country listed on its site. But this is just the beginning, Ruiz and Rowell told Minne Inno. There are around 11.5 million women-owned businesses in the United States. MAIA aims to eventually reach all of them.
"These businesses are the bread and butter of our community," Rowell said. "But often times people don't think about them or know they exist."
MAIA's mission started as a weekly shopping goal for Ruiz and her family. The Ruiz family has six members, five of which are women. Since women make up around 83 percent of their household population, Ruiz wanted 83 percent of the household's spending go to to women-owned businesses.
"That proved impossible," Ruiz said. "I failed with that goal month over month, and that wasn't ok with me."
Ruiz set to work compiling data about women-owned businesses across the country. She found that many organizations had their created lists of women-owned businesses in their community, but kept the information private. Ruiz wanted to make this internal information public and easily accessible for everyday consumers.
Ruiz, MAIA's CEO, and Rowell, the chief operations officer, left their full-time jobs to focus on building their own women-backed venture. Prior to founding MAIA, Ruiz worked in the staffing industry for nearly two decades, developing workforce solutions for Fortune 500 companies. Rowell served as a project manager and photographer before joining the venture. Together, Rowell and Ruiz have been bootstrapping MAIA for nearly a year.
Business owners can create a listing on MAIA's site if one of the owners is a women with a 50 percent or greater stake in the company. MAIA's basic listings are free, and companies can purchase a premium listing for $100 annually, which allows them to add photos to their page and appear higher in the search results.
MAIA's founders said that two of their favorite women-owned businesses in the Twin Cities are Sweet Jules, a caramel shop in Minnetonka started by two sisters, and Urban Growler, Minnesota's first and only women-owned microbrewery.
Rowell and Ruiz spent nearly six months trying to come up with a name for their startup before landing on MAIA, an acronym for the names of each of Ruiz's four daughters. She said that the girls have also adopted their mother's mission of buying from women-owned businesses.
"Every time we get a package delivered, they'll ask: 'Mom, is this women-owned?'" Ruiz added.
As MAIA's directory continues to grow, its creators hope that the platform will become a valuable resource for consumers and business owners alike.
"What we envision having is this awesome community where women-owned businesses have the light and love and exposure they need to reach consumers and jumpstart a successful business," Ruiz said.
