Ventures: Navigating a Shifting Field

Below are snapshots from Ventures, offering a closer look at how they are navigating shifting market conditions, longer timelines, and increasing pressure across the systems they operate in.

Read together, they begin to reveal patterns: where friction is appearing, how conditions are evolving, and how founders are adapting, evolving, and redesigning what’s possible within them.

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Māori designer Kiri Nathan has spent decades reclaiming and redefining indigenous fashion—centering culture, identity, and storytelling in every piece while building platforms for Māori visibility on global stages. Through her Glen Innes studio, she has long been committed to growing not just a brand, but an ecosystem of Māori design—mentoring emerging designers and creating space for collective expression.

In navigating a shifting and often extractive fashion industry, Kiri has witnessed many designers struggle under broken rack-rate models that fail to sustain creative livelihoods. In response, she has initiated a new structure—Kāhui Collective—a shared platform that brings together emerging designers into one physical and relational space, with a business model designed to meet them where they are.

By centralizing resources, visibility, and support, this collective approach has the potential to shift individual precarity into shared strength, allowing a new generation of Māori designers to rise together—signaling a move from isolated creation to ecosystem-level resilience.

Trish Miller has evolved SwemSchool from offering swim lessons to designing inclusive pathways into water for all ages—creating youth employment through lifeguard training, addressing cultural barriers like hair care, (patented new bathing cap) and supporting intergenerational healing.

Now, with plans to acquire a facility and renovate to include 2 pools, classrooms, and office space, which Coralus provided the foundational $100,000 loan as seed capital for her facility acquisition, she is stepping into a new phase. This move has the potential of increasing the number of students from 1000 a week to 6000.

With it comes greater risk, responsibility, and friction, signaling not misalignment, but a deeper level of agency where the venture begins to redesign the conditions it once navigated.

STEM Minds started with Anu Bidani, a mother, leaving a bank career of 20 years to create a STEM program to meet the learning needs of her children. Coralus provided funding for this initial foundation and it helped build Anu’s confidence. This expanded into food systems, climate response, and workforce development, with a focus on immigrants.

Anu has attempted other expansion plans into the US and India but learned that often it isn’t the business that’s wrong—and more because the surrounding systems aren’t stable enough to support it. A pivotal moment came with the integration of agri-tech, through a significant grant tied to agri-tech / food systems. This has transformed learning into hands on employment in real-world challenges.

Wanona Satcher launched Mākhers Studio by creating housing for veterans using shipping containers—guided by the belief that great things happen in small rooms.

Today, Mākhers has crossed $1M in revenue, with two significant contracts offering modular affordable spaces and urban design. Their first out-of-state project was secured in North Carolina, necessitating legal and insurance readiness. This marks major expansion opportunities that have led to growing the team and acquiring property to bring to life a Manufacturing & Innovation Campus—alongside new ventures like her biotech company Pearl Dynamix.

This move pivots Wanona into asset backed financing and seeking AI solutions for supply chain risk analysis, aiming for early-stage funding for development.

Kai XR

What began as a way to bring virtual field trips into under-resourced classrooms has evolved into a full, multisensory learning ecosystem combining VR, AI literacy, career readiness, STEM, and creative making.

What emerges from Kai’s journey is a signal to us all: innovation is no longer the privilege of tech hubs and urban centers. It is flowing from the edges such as from the rural area known as the Black Belt Region where traditionally all the plantations were during slavery in Alabama.

It is surfacing through new forms of intelligence—where students once labeled “special needs” rise as leaders who are learning how to dream. This was confirmed in a recent research study on the Kai XR platform that shows 100% of teachers agree it supports special education and IEP goals, with 83% of kids wanting to read more and 91% understanding STEM’s real-world use.

At GOGO Foundation, Sarah Gun is not just preparing women for employment—she is helping break cycles of disadvantage by centering care in systems that were never designed to hold them, achieving a 51% placement rate at a fraction of the cost.

GOGO is demonstrating that when women are truly seen, valued, and supported through continuous, relational care, they don’t just find jobs—they rebuild their lives, restore their sense of self.

This reveals a new model of transformation that reframes what we understand as worth and wealth itself – something the current system struggles to see, fund, or sustain.

From its early roots as a modular farming product placed in communities, Brandi DeCarli has led Farm from a Box through a strategic evolution from equipment to ecosystem: a climate-smart infrastructure and data platform built to strengthen resilient local and regional food systems.

Shaped by years of field deployment and market learning, the company has expanded from modular infrastructure into a more scalable platform, connecting the infrastructure, financing, data, and market pathways growers need to become more productive, profitable, and resilient.

With next-generation eco-modular field units, an upcoming lease-to-own subscription, an expanded data platform, $2.2M in executed LOIs for international public-private value chain projects, and a strong U.S.-based pipeline, Farm from a Box is entering its next phase with clearer market pull and a model designed to scale across SME farm ecosystems.

2026 Product Catalog

Kristina Freeman of Grow Your Mind describes how systems like education and procurement are built around measurement, comparison, and compliance, pushing people to chase rankings, prove value, and tick boxes—often at the expense of what truly matters. Grow Your Mind has continued to grow from strength to strength, now supporting over 300 schools across Australia and many more individual educators. In 2025, they released their book How to Be a Fantastic Sensational Good-Enough Kid, which has become a bestseller, selling over 10,000 copies.

These founders see the constraints of systems clearly, yet choose to orient their work toward real impact, even when incentives pull elsewhere. In this environment, relationships—the foundation of social and academic thriving—are often sidelined by layers of process that “dress up” rather than transform outcomes. Their insight points to a different path: strip systems back to their essence, centre human connection and wellbeing, and rebuild in ways that are simpler, more relational, and genuinely supportive of thriving—not just performance.

Gotcare is Canada’s largest consumer-directed home care platform—delivering responsive, on-demand support—so that older adults, people living with a disability, or those recovering from an injury, can live their best life at home.

Gotcare is deployed nationally, having served over 10,000 people across 120 remote and rural communities, and is on track to $10M revenue this year. The company delivers flexible care, combining scheduled in-person visits, on-demand visits, and 24/7 in-home monitoring.

This tech-enabled model of care isn’t just more convenient – it increases the amount of care people get while paying care providers more. On average, people receive 1.75x visits for the same care budget, while providers earn 15-20% more per hour.

Gotcare is a certified Living Wage Employer, B-Corp, and has been named a Top Growing Company by the Globe and Mail every year since 2023.