Sternlieb wanted to call her product Ruffy Rice, but she couldn’t use the word “ruff” for trademark reasons. When talking with others about her business idea, she kept stressing that the product would only be used when dogs were under the weather, not when they were healthy. Eventually, it dawned on her that “under the weather” would become her business’s name. “No one had trademarked Under the Weather for an animal company before,” says Sternlieb. “You couldn’t touch it if you were a human product or a weather product or a human illness product, but no one had used it for an animal company, so I grabbed it.”

Since Sternlieb is also an artist, she drew the logo for Under the Weather: a portrait of Ruffy with an umbrella and a thermometer. Then she faced the challenge of creating her first product: “I sourced my chicken. I found the best freeze-dried white meat chicken in the US. Their minimum orders are 1,000 pounds, so I had to get a space at Vermont Commercial Warehouse for my pallets of rice and chicken.”

She soon found a small space where she began mixing ingredients by herself before packaging and labeling them. After sending out samples and cold calling retail shops, she was thrilled when Pet Food Warehouse agreed to sell and distribute her chicken and rice diet. Soon other stores began adding it to their shelves as well, and she realized she would need more than one product.

In addition to all the hard work, Sternlieb experienced some very good luck: “All along the journey I was very fortunate to get great advice from local people. One of the best pieces of advice I got was to call Dale Metz, the former CEO of Food Science. I sent him a LinkedIn request and asked him if he would meet for coffee because I had an idea. I already had my pouches of product, so I brought them with me.”

Sternlieb says that when she showed Metz the product, he responded with “Why didn’t I think of that?” Metz turned out to be an invaluable contact for Sternlieb. “He knew so many people in the industry,” she says. “He introduced me to a wonderful woman who helped me with my marketing and formulators who helped me with my soft chews, and at the same time that we were getting our soft diets up and running, he was starting his manufacturing company Green Mountain Animal, LLC, and now we do everything together. Our product is manufactured right here on Patchen Road in South Burlington.”

Today the company sells 36 products—22 in retail outlets and 14 in an enhanced line sold by veterinarians. These include six different flavors of bland diets, functional soft chews and gel supplements for cats and dogs and a separate line of hemp soft chews for dogs. “I source the best human-grade, white meat, cage-free chicken,” says Sternlieb. “The pumpkin—chefs use it in bisque. Our beef is grass fed. Our salmon is wild USA caught. Our bison is free range. All of our bland diets are the best freeze-dried human-grade meats you can find in the United States.”

Under the Weather is now experiencing exponential growth. “We have to move fast. It is a simple idea. I can trademark it, but I can’t patent it,” she says. “We are first to market. We are in 1,200 stores now and shipping to seven different countries.” Yet what means the most to Sternlieb is knowing she is making a positive difference: “I’ll get calls from people saying, ‘My dog was really sick, and this was the only thing he’d eat.’ It makes me so happy to know that this product is helping people and their animals.”

The company also donates products to shelters, and after Ruffy’s death in 2014, Sternlieb started Ruffy Rescues: “We have saved the lives of close to 1,000 dogs. We pull them from high kill shelters down south, quarantine them, spay and neuter them, and vaccinate them, and then they go to loving homes with a pouch of Under the Weather. We also sponsor a spay and neuter program with All Breed Rescue. We’re making animals feel better, and with the money made, we’re also saving animals.”

Creativity, experience, community, perseverance, and luck—Sternlieb knows that these are the reasons she has been successful: “When you have ideas, don’t wait until someone else implements them. Make them happen yourself and find the right people to help you. If you love animals like I love animals, it’s not like work. It’s a joy. And Vermont is the perfect place to start a business like this. This is my home. In Vermont I could meet the right team and find the right people.”

Mamava founders Christine Dodson (left) and Sascha Mayer. (right)

A Mamava lactation pod.
photos courtesy Mamava

Mamava: Founders Christine Dodson, COO, & Sascha Mayer, CEO

On Labor Day 2006, Sascha Mayer read Jodi Kantor’s New York Times article that described a two-class system for nursing mothers returning to work after the birth of their babies. For executives at Starbucks, lactation rooms were readily available, offering women ease and privacy to pump. For baristas, on the other hand, the only option was to try to use the public restroom during their few minutes of break time.

The article hit close to home for Mayer and her friend and coworker Christine Dodson. According to Dodson, “When Sascha and I were pregnant while working at a design studio, we both had offices with doors so that when we came back to work, we could pump in private. There was a woman who had a baby around the same time Sascha did, and she worked the front desk. Coworkers tried to be supportive by covering for her when she needed to pump, but she didn’t have any real options. She had to depend on other people. So we experienced this two-class system firsthand, and our experience, together with the article in the Times, planted the seed for what would eventually become Mamava.”

Since they already worked in a creative environment at Solidarity of Unbridled Labor (formerly JDK), the women were able to take advantage of the problem-solving minds and generous resources that their employer had to offer.

“We both recognized how fortunate we were to be working at a company that supported us developing this idea, which is unusual for a start-up,” says Dodson. “As a design studio we were trying to come up with ideas that solved problems creatively, and Mamava rose to the top. Sascha and I were fully scaffolded. We had our day jobs, where we were allowed to carve out some time to work on this idea; we had resources in the form of designers and creative thinkers who were helping us develop it—and not just for us. The co-owners of the design studio were actually co-owners of this project, too, so they had equity in it as well.”

The founders of Mamava knew it would be a long road: what began with an idea sparked by an article in 2006 didn’t become a prototype until 2013. Yet their passion for the project never waned.

“The incubation period was long because we continued to serve our clients, so when the studio was busy, we wouldn’t work on it for months and months at a time. What really propelled us forward was passage of the Affordable Care Act—and the Fair Labor Standards Act within the ACA—which set forth a mandate that employers with more than 50 hourly employees had to have a lactation room,” says Mayer. “That really made the business case at that point. Then we had to find outside sources to build a prototype, and we had to convince friends and family to invest. We built a prototype in 2013 and installed it at the Burlington airport, which gave us a case study to show that the product did indeed work and was being well received. This proof of a viable product allowed us to reach out to angel and venture investors.”

Fresh Tracks Capital, a local seed and early stage venture capital firm, served as Mamava’s lead funder in 2015. “This was the same time that we moved into our own office space,” recalls Dodson. “Sascha started full-time, and we hired our first employees. So if we think of when the business really started, it was 2015.”

Today, there are Mamava Lactation Pods in 45 airports as well as in other public settings like stadiums and convention centers. Companies like Toyota and Amazon have added units where their workers need them—closer to the manufacturing lines and within the large distribution centers. Private companies have also purchased pods. In fact, 80 percent of sales are inbound; companies contact Mamava. There are now over 500 Mamava lactation suites across the US and Canada. For easy and secure access, Mamava’s free locator app unlocks public Mamava pods with a proprietary Bluetooth-enabled SmartLock. The app also helps moms find thousands of places to pump or breastfeed on-the-go.

Mamava’s mission is to create a healthier society through a changed cultural perception of pumping and breastfeeding that affords every woman the opportunity to nurse her child regardless of her circumstances. It’s all about choice.

“We never want people to think we are hiding moms who are breastfeeding for the comfort of others. We want all moms to have a choice when it comes to breastfeeding or pumping,” says Mayer. “Our hope is that the deliberate nature of the Mamava design—the choice of architecture—is a beacon to all moms across all demographics. We want them to feel that breastfeeding can happen here, and that they are supported.”

Dodson and Mayer pursued the dream of Mamava long after it would have served them personally. Their kids are now all between the ages of 12 and 19. Yet they didn’t give up on the idea simply because it no longer applied to them. They wanted new mothers to have choices, and they didn’t want to see them struggle.

“More women are initiating breastfeeding. At least 83 percent are trying,” says Dodson. “But 24 percent of new moms go back to work in two weeks, and many work in jobs that don’t provide the support or opportunity to pump.”

Vermont has proven to be the perfect birthplace for Mamava. “The director of Burlington International Airport took a risk to install the prototype in the airport,” says Mayer. “That wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t in Vermont. Vermont is a place where unique, independent thinking can lead to the creation of new businesses.”

For the fourth quarter of 2018, Mamava is launching an initiative to build their brand in Vermont; they would like to grow their business in their own backyard by inviting more local companies to partner with them.

At their offices in Burlington, every so often a bell can be heard. As Dodson explains, “When the bell rings, a Mamava gets its wings.” And each time that bell rings, nursing mothers get more choices.

Stacey Rainey (left) and Mary Cullinane, founders of Community Barn Ventures, Middlebury. photo courtesy Community Barn Ventures

Community Barn Ventures: Stacey Rainey & Mary Cullinane, Founders & Partners

Stacey Rainey and Mary Cullinane first met while working for Microsoft in 2006. During the five years that they worked together, they became best friends. Even after Rainey left Microsoft to move to Vermont in 2012 for a position with Middlebury Interactive Languages, she and Cullinane kept in touch. “As I was getting ready to leave that organization, Mary and I talked about what we might do together in Vermont,” says Rainey. “Those conversations started in earnest in early 2017, and we opened the downtown Middlebury location of Community Barn Ventures in December of 2017.”

Community Barn Ventures is an interesting name for a business. According to Cullinane, “Stacey came up with the name. We were talking about different iterations of what we wanted our company to be like.

Stacey fell in love with Vermont many years ago, and I fell in love with it through her family’s eyes coming to visit. We have always appreciated the structures of barns throughout the landscape. In fact, I ended up building my house in the shape of a barn when I moved up here. Also, we wanted to provide services and support to the community we were living in; Stacey took those two ideas and put them together, and we got Community Barn.”

Moving from conversations and ideas to offerings and services within a year is a phenomenal feat that not many start-ups could accomplish. So how did they do it?

“We both come from backgrounds that have been very much goal oriented. We know how to put a plan out there and how to keep working the plan,” says Rainey. “When you’re working with your best friend it makes it a lot more fun, and you push each other. Sometimes you make mistakes. We make a number of mistakes every day, and we don’t let that get in our way.”

For Cullinane, it’s all about starting. “You have to do due diligence, but at some point it becomes a leap, and that’s difficult for some people. We did our homework and talked to a number of people to refine our concept, and then took the leap, and every day we’re glad we’ve done that.
We also bring balance to each other. It’s good to have those competing influences to move things forward.”

Community Barn Ventures is located at 44 Main Street, in the heart of downtown Middlebury. They have been busy since the moment they opened their doors

“We haven’t had to do traditional marketing. We have continued to foster relationships that we’ve had from our previous work experiences, and we’ve developed new ones from being downtown and getting involved in new and different conversations,” says Cullinane. “Stacey’s really good at navigating in a very thoughtful way the things that are going on in the Vermont community at large. You can’t own a business called Community Barn and just sit by yourself in your office; she can find the events and meetings we should be attending and make connections between people.”

Fostering relationships and creating strong communities is at the heart of the mission of Community Barn Ventures—helping entrepreneurs and growing businesses succeed while also supporting the local community. Their offerings include Community Barn Development, Community Barn Raisings, The App Farm, and Community Barn Provisions, which is part of their long-term vision. Their client base is extremely diverse. They work with multimillion-dollar companies as well as with individuals who are pre-revenue, and they have plenty of success stories.

One of those successful clients is Caroline Corrente, founder of Haymaker Bun Co. Corrente is a pastry chef living in Middlebury after attending pastry school at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. She has perfected a yeasted brioche dough.

“She bakes in her home kitchen and is finding a way to make it work with a partner in the restaurant industry and a small child at home,” says Rainey. “You can find her Haymaker Buns in many places in Addison and Chittenden counties. We are helping her think about where she can go from here as far as introducing other products, expanding to other markets, and operationalizing her production and delivery. She is an amazingly hard worker, and we get great samples, too!”

According to Cullinane, “there are so many people in Vermont who are passionate about what they do or make, but they don’t have the skills to get from where they find themselves currently to where they want to go, and that is what we can help them with. Our careers have supported the development of stronger communities. When people come together, that gathering just makes the experience better. We love sharing ideas; if there’s a problem, let’s get a bunch of smart folks together around the table and figure it out. The problem should never be a deterrent. Let’s just bring people together to solve it.”

Of course, economic development has many layers to it. One of those is the advisory piece that Community Barn Ventures is currently involved with as they continue moving toward Community Barn Provisions. An additional piece is the App Farm. Some challenges that businesses face can be solved with a better use of technology.

“They might not think that solution is possible, but the App Farm creates a community-like structure and allows these problems to be solved by the creation of technology,” says Cullinane. “We see that happening in the construction industry with a couple of clients that we are working with now.”

What makes work fun for Rainey and Cullinane is the diversity of conversations that they have on any given day. “Stacey and I like to solve problems. Those problems can be large scale or smaller scale,” says Cullinane. “Sometimes in small businesses you are juggling so many balls in the air at once that you don’t have time to sit back and solve all of the problems you have to think through, so having an extra set of eyes is helpful, and we like to provide that for our clients.”

If you need someone in your corner as you look to begin or grow your business, consider barn storming with Community Barn Ventures.

Diane DeBella has spent over 20 years examining women’s issues as a writer, teacher, and speaker. www.iamsubject.com.