How these founders landed a no-strings $10,000 grant for their startup

Free money is hard to come by, but nonequity grants do exist for founders just starting out.

One opportunity is an Amber Grant, which awards three $10,000 grants to women entrepreneurs every month and an additional $50,000 to three of that year’s monthly grant recipients. The program, which began in 1998 and is administered by nonprofit WomensNet, honors 19-year-old Amber Wigdahl, who died before she could become an entrepreneur.

The application is simple. Founders must simply explain 1) their business idea and 2) what they would do with the money. There is also a $15 application fee.

In a world of million-dollar checks, $10,000 may seem small, but Founder Brew spoke with June’s winners to find out how that money is supporting their business.

As Harvard Graduate School of Design classmates, Schola Eburuoh and Sophia Cabral-Casino cross-enrolled in an MIT course, “AI Ventures,” where they were prompted to start a business. The duo bonded over home maintenance headaches and brainstormed an app, FiXA,where anyone can snap a picture of an in-home issue and get either DIY guidance or connected to a local pro.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you two meet and decide to build a home maintenance app?

Schola Eburuoh: In 2024, we took a class at MIT. We’re both Harvard grads from the [Graduate] School of Design. We did not know each other, but we both took this class at MIT, and they tasked us with building a business from a problem that we see in our everyday lives…I was searching for someone to do this course with me because it’s all AI and tech, and I was like, “I have no idea.”

I found Sophia, tracked her down, and gave her a call. We ended up getting coffee, and we were just talking about our problems in our homes…She had a drain that was not working and was like showering at the gym…and I had a refrigerator that was broken at the time.

How did you hear about the Amber Grant?

Eburuoh: We put in money individually when we first began FiXA, and gave ourselves this timeline, this runway to go forward. From there, we found the Amber Grant actually through email chains…the Visible Hands—they’re an awesome organization and accelerator—and each month, they share a list of different grant opportunities. We also are part of the Harvard Innovation Lab that had shared the Amber Grants. Between one of those two, we found the grants and found other grants, and from there have been applying.

Why did you apply?

Eburuoh: We are fully bootstrapped since we’ve been building FiXA.

Sophia Cabral-Casino: We’ve had conversations with VCs, and it’s never felt right for us…We weren’t ready to be there yet. We still talk about it, and we don’t eliminate that possibility. We want to grow, and we want to scale.

How are you going to use the $10,000?

Eburuoh: It’s such a great help for us. We filed a provisional patent, and that’s one of the first things that we’re going to be able to do now is finally have our nonprovisional full patent filed…That’s really big for us, having that security of our IP…We’re seeing about $3,000 for this patent.

Cabral-Casino: That’s, I think, one of our biggest expenses right now.

Eburuoh: We have pretty good contractors that are incredible. But, building out that network has been extremely time-consuming, as one might expect. Having one of our first hires be that outreach support is extremely important at this stage that we’re in right now, so it’ll also be going toward help to manage our contractor network.