IT ALL BEGAN IN 2014…

Within just a few months of beginning an evening MBA program at the University of St. Thomas, a major life event in and of itself, F-BOM founder and CFOO Lindsey Taveren also attended WisCon for the first time. It changed her life. She, a lonely internet feminist slogging through Reddit and other online circles, had finally found a real life feminist community.

While sitting through an  Intro to Marketing class that summer Lindsey began brainstorming a way to recreate WisCon’s IRL community of feminist positivity on the internet. She envisioned a site where women would help build each other up and support each other’s achievements. After writing lists of keywords and inspiration in notebooks, Lindsey came up with HerStoryArc.com. Born that same summer, Her Story Arc was and is dedicated to finding and praising honest and progressive stories of women and girls in the media.

In 2014 Cecelia Isaac, F-BOM co-founder and CMO, fortuitously began attending the same local writer’s critique group as Lindsey. Never missing a chance to recruit highly intelligent and interesting people, Lindsey roped Cecelia into being a co-editor of HerStoryArc.com. One of their early ideas was to feature a different book every month on the site, accompanied by a review, in order to help promote women authors.

It didn’t feel like enough. As self-published authors themselves, both Cecelia and Lindsey had experienced the difficulty of getting their work in front of readers. They also felt uncomfortable having so many women writing articles for HerStoryArc.com and not getting paid for their labor. There had to be a way to pay the writers and help other authors out in the process. School, day jobs, and relationships kept them busy though, and a solution had yet to present itself. During this dry spell of inspiration, Lindsey and Cecelia started up the Twin Cities, MN chapter of Geek Girl Brunch in 2015, creating another IRL font of positivity and feminism for local women.

The light bulb moment finally arrived in the summer of 2016. While sitting in a Strategic Management class Lindsey began putting a real business plan into place. That’s when things began to heat up. She presented the plan to Cecelia in August of 2016. Shortly thereafter a friend and fellow nerd-feminist came up with the name F-BOM. (Obviously, we fell in love with it.)

That idea was just the beginning. In between then and now has been a lot of hard work. F-BOM never would’ve come to be without the contributions of many individuals. We’d like to thank everyone who worked through problems, developed ideas, critiqued, advised, supported or otherwise volunteered their time to F-BOM.

The future is looking good for F-BOM! In 2016, our business plan won 3rd runner up in the University of St. Thomas Fowler Business Concept Challenge thanks in great part to the support of Professor Mo Fahnestock and Lindsey’s classmate and fellow presenter Jasmine Kwan (whose slide creation skills are second to none). Look for us in the coming months at conventions, on Facebook, or in the forums!

With a lot of blood, sweat, and sometimes tears, Lindsey, and Cecelia have poured themselves into realizing this dream. We look forward to the adventures ahead!

LET’S BUILD THE FUTURE OF F-BOM TOGETHER.