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Raise of the Month: Sheertex
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TechTO Retail: Katherine Homuth
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An Intimate Conversation with Katherine Homuth
Watch on YouTube ↗First seen on the TechTO stage in 2019. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Katherine ↗
In their words
Imagine that you're recruiting, much like Christopher Columbus, to go on the first journey across the Atlantic. What would you tell people? Chances are we'll die — but if we don't, we're going to go down in history. And this is a little bit what it's like to be a startup founder.
Nylon started in tights and is probably in pretty much every single thing that everyone is wearing today. Spandex started in tights. I very much believe that ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene will start in tights, and 10, 20 years from now it'll be in pretty much everything that we wear.
At any point in time, all you're trying to do to raise money is give someone enough doubt in their doubts that they're like, 'I don't want to miss out' — and that human psychology runs pretty much all of investing.
if we were going to do something we wanted to do something that would really leverage our superpowers
we've decided to not optimized for week over week or even month over month right now
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Quick answers
What does Sheertex make?
The world's first unbreakable pantyhose. Existing textile fibers weren't strong enough, so Homuth went outside textiles to ballistics and knit tights from ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene. Customers average 20-50 wears versus 3-4 for typical tights.
What did Katherine Homuth do before Sheertex?
Her first job was marketing at Ecobee. She then founded ShopLocket, an early Stripe partner sold to PCH International, and Female Funders, sold to Highline Beta. She wrote O'Reilly's 'Funded,' a guide to raising a first round.
How has Sheertex been funded?
It went through Y Combinator and raised a US$4M round led by Founders Fund, with angels including Joe Mimran, Michele Romanow and Dan Debow. By January 2025 Homuth had raised about $200M in equity plus roughly $50M in debt. In 2025 SRTX arranged a roughly US$40M round backed by H&M, EDC, BDC and Investissement Québec — the deal under which Homuth stepped down as CEO.