At the recent Launchpad 2022, the founders of Makua were amazed to see so many companies focusing on solving problems caused by social global warming including transportation, packaging, marine life, etc. And when they learned more about the work life balance - biking, mt biking, surfing, kite surfing - they started exploring how to move their HQ from Southern California to Santa Cruz. We would love to see this company set up shop here. Learn all about the Makua journey from the co-founder Amy Dugan. And if you think this company should move to Santa Cruz, let them know in the Comments below.

What is Makua?

Hi, I’m Amy, Co-Founder of Makua, and we are changing the way younger generations donate to charity.

Makua is a micro-philanthropy app on a mission to make giving a core part of everyone’s life. People can explore the best nonprofits, get inspired to give, and easily make donations. They can see what causes their friends’ support, work towards micro-philanthropy goals, and feel part of something bigger than themselves.

Every new member will get $10 free to donate to a cause they care about on the app, paid for by brands and philanthropists. Brands get to use donations as a form of marketing and positive brand recognition, and philanthropists can cultivate the future of philanthropy while multiplying their impact.

It’s a hub for donating that will benefit the entire ecosystem. Join the #MakuaMovement to raise humanity.

Why did we start Makua?

Before my partner Forrest Skerman-Stevenson and I founded Makua, I was running a consulting business called ‘Online Biz Academy’, helping female entrepreneurs build successful businesses.

One of the first exercises I had my clients do, was write down their top-four aspirations.

Out of 500+ women I spoke with, 9/10 of them had “donate to causes I care about” or “be a philanthropist” as one of them.

This didn’t surprise me, since I too wrote that as one of my top aspirations.

I’m not certain how they went about their philanthropy goals - but I know how I went about mine.

It started with the intention of donating to causes I cared about. I felt excited to get involved, make a positive impact, and feel part of something bigger than myself.

But I didn’t know where to begin.

I began googling and found myself stumbling around a lot of articles, dated 90’s looking charity websites, and donate buttons that didn’t work.

In most of my donating efforts, I wouldn’t even get a thank you message. I felt no sense of community, and it seemed like I was throwing my time (and money) into the void.

So I brought this up to my partner Forrest, who has built successful tech startups in the past.

When I met Forrest in Greece a few years ago, he had just quit his last venture ‘theUp.co' in London, which was innovating the hospitality sector. He had grown the biggest phone charging network in Europe and created a payments platform powering 35,000 venues, but he didn’t feel inspired by the products he was building. He said he’d only start another business that’s driven by a deeper purpose.

When I brought up my struggles as a donor, the dated charity sector, and the ‘micro- philanthropy app’ business idea, he just couldn’t believe it didn’t already exist.

We decided to pursue it.

Makua was born in California where I’m from, and we wanted the brand to echo Cali vibes - opposite of the current charity look.

We thought, if we’re going to change the way younger generations give, we need to rebrand the sector from ‘old-dusty-guilt-driven’ to ‘fun-inspiring-positive.’

The name Makua aligned so perfectly with our vision - it’s Hawaiian for ‘parent,’ ‘guardian,’ or ‘one who cares for another’ and our vision for Makua is to raise humanity.

I’d say we’re both very spiritual, and share a personal vision of being our highest selves. We are inner-work focused, meditate daily, don’t drink or take substances and eat a predominately vegan diet. We spend a lot of time learning about our oceans, food, animals, mental health, and more, and we always end up in deep conversations discussing how we could best contribute.

The question is always how can we contribute at the root? And the solution comes down to the people.

We believe by making giving a core part of people’s lives, everyone will feel higher, inspired, care much more, and be connected to a deeper purpose.

Raise humanity to raise our world.

The one thing that kept us up at night

I spent the next month speaking with nonprofits, donors, friends, and everyday people, and in doing so, the need for Makua became stronger.

As I did research, Forrest began designing the product. We were confident in the problem, and that we’d build the best product...

However, the one thing that kept us up at night was, how can we scale to millions of users, in an economically viable way?

In his last business, Forrest developed a new advertising platform called BrandUp that enabled brands like Guinness and Heineken to advertise to customers at the point of purchase.

He knew that if we were to truly innovate the nonprofit sector, we had to approach it from a completely new perspective.

Forrest told me, “Imagine if we could direct all of our marketing spend back into our nonprofit partners, instead of spending money on big tech platforms.” Looking at the landscape he realized that if we could tap into other parties that already donate to charity, we could leverage a portion of their donations to grow our product, negating the need for our own marketing spend.

We then fleshed out our brand and philanthropy model, which would become our key to scaling. Brands get to use donations as a form of marketing and positive brand recognition, and philanthropists can cultivate the future of philanthropy while multiplying their impact.

We thought hiring engineers was hard...

Before we started raising money, we were trying to wrap our heads around hiring engineers. How were we going to build this? I had a strong sales background and Forrest had a strong product background, but neither of us knew how to code.

We spent days calling up everyone we knew in engineering, picking people’s brains, trying to understand what our “tech stack” should be, and looking for a technical advisor.

After interviewing multiple technical advisors, we brought Victor Essnert on board, the Director of Engineering at ClassDojo. This was a great start, however, all we kept hearing was how challenging it was to hire engineers in the current climate.

Minutes after Forrest and I were discussing our concerns on how we’d find engineers, I received a text message from a friend of a friend named Leland Reardon, “Hey! How are you?” I hadn’t spoken with him in over a year, but then it clicked... Leland was a full-stack engineer and a math wizard. I immediately responded, “Leland! I think I have an opportunity for you...”

He started building Makua the following week and went on to help us hire our core engineering team.

As we did interviews with various engineers, we found it easy to attract talent, since everyone aligned with our mission and believed in what we were building.

But the person who believed in it most was Nelson Sachse.

Our initial strategy was to combine in-house engineers with an agile agency. We spoke with several agencies, but the one call that really inspired us was with Nelson, who was really passionate about what we were doing and said he couldn’t wait to share our finished product with all of his friends.

However, a few days later he sadly informed us that his team had no availability. He then reached out again, this time from his personal email.

He said he loved what we were building, feels confident in the product and growth strategy, and would like to help us build this long-term. He asked to join our team and left the agency soon after.

Everything was coming together on the tech side, and it seemed like the universe was working in our favor.

How we got the Founder of Evernote on board

After bootstrapping Makua from our savings for several months, we were getting to the point where we needed to raise investment to take it to the next level.

Within one month, we’d secured $400,000 from friends, family, and angels in our network.

We ended up chatting to an old friend in the tech space who loved what we were doing and introduced us to Phil Libin, the Founder of Evernote. We ended up on a call with Phil, and when he heard our growth strategy, he said he’d never seen anything like it. He was impressed with our innovative approach and thought philanthropists would love to partner with us.

Phil both invested in Makua and committed to putting half of his annual donations through the Makua app to fund our referral model. Our first philanthropy partner! He is currently in the process of connecting us to his philanthropy network (The Walton Family Foundation and more).

By this point, we had secured initial investment for our pre-seed, and began focusing on building the product and putting together partnership materials.

Where we’re at now and the next steps

As of now, we have assembled our core engineering team, the Makua MVP will be ready by September, and we are building a waitlist of beta users. Forrest and I are focusing on securing partnerships with brands and philanthropists before launch, as well as raising investment for the remaining $250,000 of our pre-seed.

We just spent the last few weeks in Santa Cruz, where we were lucky enough to meet Doug, share our vision for Makua, and spend an afternoon kitesurfing together, Santa Cruz has it all!