Mallory Pace, News Editor
March 6, 2023
To kick off Women’s History Month, the University of North Florida hosted the eighth annual PS27 Female Founders Forum on Friday in a sold-out event that welcomed inspiring guest speakers and the chance to build meaningful connections between fellow women founders in the community.
The event was centered around “embracing equity” and the value of supporting women founders through a sense of community and other resources needed to succeed in the workforce.
Addressing a room filled with waves of women wearing red, Jaclynn “Jax” Brennan was the first speaker to motivate the crowd with her story and experiences. Brennan is the founder of Fylí, which stands for ‘tribe’ in Greek and ‘family’ in Latin. Fylí is a Network as a Service (NaaS) business for early-stage female founders, offering education, accountability, mentorships and funding opportunities.
When Brennan left the corporate fashion world a few years ago to begin a brand-new technology company for the fashion industry, she was met with failure. But the failure of the tech company showed Brennan the needs of women founders like herself and inspired her to start her own company dedicated to helping women in business to find resources, guidance and accountability throughout their journey.
Her story exemplified the process of turning failure into inspiration and the importance of building a tribe and community that will constantly support you along the way.
“I was going to women’s networking events, but they weren’t talking about raising capital. I just felt like there was a need, there was a lack and that’s why I created Fylí,” Brennan said.
Taking the stage next was Sarah Kauss, the original sole founder of S’well water bottles—a brand that started with just one 17-ounce bottle and a pure desire to reduce single-use plastics, turned into a multi-million-dollar company with now a wide variety of products dedicated to displacing plastic bottles and pledging millions of dollars to organizations that help communities across the world.
While attending the University of Colorado Boulder, Kauss learned about the global water crisis that prevents millions of people from access to clean, drinking water. Trying to find a reusable water bottle that was also stylish proved difficult for Kauss, so she developed the idea of a bottle that could also be an accessory, thus ‘Can’t Live Without It’ was born—the original name of S’well.
After being advised to shorten the name to something catchier, Kauss said that when she heard “swell,” it reminded her of old, innocent values and was an “oh shucks, kind of a word.” The original bottle design was inspired by a traditional glass milk carton, which captured the desired essence of her company—simple, practical and eco-friendly.