speaker photo

Katherine Homuth (she/her)

Founder, SRTX

Katherine Homuth is a serial entrepreneur and executive with a track record of leading high-growth companies at the intersection of software, advanced manufacturing, and consumer innovation.

She is currently the Founder of Oomira, a company building the memory infrastructure layer for AI; an open schema, ingestion engine, and simulation system designed to make structured memory queryable across tools, time, and teams. Oomira will allow individuals, companies, and developers to plug memory into the apps they already use, and eventually, simulate smarter decisions based on what actually happened, not just what someone remembers.

Previously Katherine was the CEO and Founder of SRTX, makers of Sheertex 'unbreakable' tights. Katherine invented Sheertex’s core polymer technology and raised nearly $300 million in venture capital over her tenure. She scaled SRTX from lab prototype to global brand, managing P&Ls across technology, sales, and smart manufacturing, and growing both DTC and B2B sales with major retailers including Costco, Walmart, Skims, and H&M.

Prior to her exit from SRTX in 2025, Katherine founded and successfully sold two companies: ShopLocket, a digital commerce platform acquired by PCH International in 2014, and Female Funders, a SaaS education platform for aspiring female angel investors, acquired by Highline Beta in 2017.

She is the author of Funded: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Raising Your First Round (O’Reilly Media), and has been recognized with numerous awards, including Forbes 30 Under 30, Canada's Governor General’s Award for Innovation, the King Charles III Coronation Medal, Canada’s Top 40 Under 40, the Manning Innovation Award, and as Global Winner of the Startup World Cup.

Katherine is passionate about solving hard problems, championing Canada’s long-term prosperity, and contributing to the advancement of entrepreneurship and women in leadership.

Sessions

Startupfest

The Lessons I Wish I Had Then — My Gift to You

I spent years building a company that was, in many ways, both wildly successful and personally unsustainable. This time, I’m doing it differently. In this fireside chat, I’ll share the lessons I wish someone had handed me before I started — about power, pace, people, and self-preservation. This isn’t a teardown or a walk down memory lane. It’s a gift — from one founder to another — a blueprint most people don’t realize they need until it’s too late, and the foundation I’m building my next venture on. If you’ve ever asked yourself “How much should I get paid?”, or signed a document thinking “It’s fine, that probably won’t happen”, or been told “Don’t worry, it’s standard” — this talk is for you. See More.