Less than 1 in 5 businesses globally are run by women.
CAMPUSTYCOONS spoke to Michelle Kwok, co-founder of FLIK, a global portal that aims to change those numbers.
FLIK is a platform that allows female founders / leaders and female apprentices to browse each other, connect, and pursue an apprenticeship. Female founders get help on their businesses, early access to ambitious talent, and connect with a network of strong female leaders. Apprentices train 10 hours a week or less for 3 months in a meaningful project under a founder, gaining valuable skills and experience with mentorship. FLIK has students from top universities signing onto the portal now as well as Forbes 30 Under 30 leaders and other distinguished women across 23+ countries with each founder and apprentice being verified and approved to retain community integrity.
Brief History
After struggling to connect with female founders and mentors while at Next 36, Michelle and Ravina created FLIK. The original plan was to get to know prominent female visionaries and share their inspiring stories on their platform – they incorporated FLIK and created a website within 48 hours, and soon had the opportunity to interview distinguished women like Samantha Barry, Editor-in-Chief of Glamour Magazine and Genevieve Jurvetson, Co-Founder of Fetcher. They were even invited to cover a talk by Michelle Obama.
Their stories posted on FLIK received responses from young women in 20+ countries across the world, all asking how they could connect with amazing female leaders themselves. FLIK morphed — they re-launched as a global portal allowing ambitious young women to apprentice under top female leaders. Applications poured in from beyond North America; women from Rwanda, Lebanon, Bangladesh, Estonia, Germany, and the Netherlands, among others, have come to FLIK to boost their careers and companies.
“The community has grown to over 2,000 game changers, and we are starting to see the impact we are creating by connecting diverse, talented women with mentorship opportunities that we both had struggled to find not even a year ago. Our ultimate goal is to increase women-led ventures on a global scale.”, says Michelle.
Read on for an inspiring interview…
What is your mission, and do you see yourself continuing with this effort even after graduating?
We’re entering a startup accelerator right now and this is our full-time career so yes! We’ve applied for a couple others.
What was the source of your initial funding for FLIK?
We bootstrapped FLIK with some of our own investment, then began to apply for grants and were successful!
Who all have been influential in this journey?
Our family and friends have been incredibly supportive throughout our journey and have always been key in spreading our mission through word of mouth.
A special shoutout to LOI’s team (Joanna, Annika, Manisha) for helping us gain the exposure, mentorship, and connections we needed in a critical time of growth!
What are some challenges you’ve come across as student entrepreneurs?
Time management – balancing school, working, and starting your business, but if you’re really serious, you can go all into your startup but you might have to sacrifice participating in extra-circulars or limiting your working hours.
How much time do you and your team spend working on your company?
We work on this full-time.
Do you see academics getting affected?
As an entrepreneur, discipline, determination, and diligence are key, so your academics shouldn’t be severely affected. You should be able to find a balance but this might take time, which is okay. A reminder though you’ll have to balance MUCH MORE as a full-time entrepreneur out of school.
What is the one thing that keeps you going?
Knowing that there are so many women out there who are underrepresented, under-resourced and don’t have the same equitable resources to scale.
There is so much room for growth in female entrepreneurship and so many gaps to fill. Young women need to feel empowered that they can start their own businesses and female founders of today need help to scale and find success so that they can amplify their message.
Less than 1 in 5 businesses globally are run by women. We are changing that.
What are some things you wish you knew a year (or two) ago?
We were both STEM students a few years ago, studying medical sciences / cell biology and now we’re in our dream jobs in social enterprise / tech. I don’t think we really would wish for anything else; we probably wouldn’t have believed what you would tell us. Honestly, everything happens for a reason.
How do you prioritize your activities in a day/ week?
We schedule everything we do, down to the last minute, even if I’m just going out to get something from the store. I even make my friends schedule time with me so I know what I’m doing when.
Every weekday is the same for me (Michelle).
I wake up at 7, run 8-16 km in the morning, stretch, shower, take calls with apprentices or founders on FLIK, eat around 11/12, work on my daily to-do list, eat dinner, and work until 10pm when I watch Netflix or call friends, then sleep.
My priorities are my physical health, work, and my social relationships, so I make sure there’s enough time for all.
About the founders (FLIK)
Michelle is a born and raised Vancouverite – medical science student turned social entrepreneur. She grew up in the most traditional of households, receiving a stack of anatomy cards and a stethoscope for her birthday when she turned eight. Her family always wanted her to become a doctor. She spent her summers performing research in infectious diseases at Imperial College London, neuroimaging at UBC, or paediatric gastroenterology at BC Children’s Hospital and didn’t really know there were other opportunities out there. In university, Michelle felt kind of stagnant in her narrow curriculum and really explored, taking advantage of her freedom. She cold-emailed brands she respected, networked with executives on LinkedIn and ended up getting so many non-medical opportunities. She worked with brands such as Hey Y’all to expand across Canada; helped manage a startup digital marketing agency; worked with Bumble to build leadership events and got to work with brands like the Toronto Raptors and Headspace. This world was crazy and it was called entrepreneurship. Michelle switched her degree to finish school early, texted her parents she wasn’t going to medical school, applied to and entered a startup accelerator program called Next 36. For this program she was moved out to Toronto with 36 other young entrepreneurs and was randomly roomed with Ravina where their journey started.
Ravina is a born and raised die-hard Albertan. Growing up, she was also destined for a path in medicine, fascinated by science, yet, she had a myriad of interests and often found herself self-teaching anything she could get her hands on. Ravina placed no limits on her dreams, despite her personal circumstances. She spent a majority of her childhood as a primary caregiver to her father, who battled Multiple Sclerosis until his passing. Overcoming loss was difficult, but she channelled this emotion to create an impact on other people’s lives. She spent her youth mapping out solutions that could solve some of the world’s most pressing problems, creating programs to advocate for marginalized people alongside government, innovating on technologies to increase healthcare access to under-resourced areas, developing recommendations for the United Nations, and even being named to Alberta’s Top 30 Under 30. On top of that, she started a fashion blog (apparently before it was a trend) and created meaningful content to share her creative side with the world. With so many opportunities under her belt, Ravina searched for her next adventure and decided to apply for a program called Next 36. Out of thousands of applicants she was selected and randomly roomed with Michelle.
The two had actually met briefly before Next 36, a year prior, but neither thought they would ever meet the other again.
Check them out at www.weareflik.com
