Homuth stepped down as CEO of SRTX in March as part of a pending fundraising deal.
The founder and former CEO of SRTX is pivoting from high-tech textile manufacturing to memory software for companies, just as the startup she once led closes on key financing and elects her replacement.
“We’re running companies with amnesia. Founders forget the lessons they swore they’d never repeat.”
Katherine Homuth
In a Substack post today, Katherine Homuth announced she is launching a new venture, Oomira, to build companies a “queryable” archive of every decision they’ve ever made. Homuth’s announcement comes as her previous textile startup, SRTX, has appointed CFO Timothy Leyne as interim CEO and closed more than half of a much-needed $40-million USD fundraising deal set to close in July, as first reported by The Globe & Mail and confirmed by BetaKit.
In late March, Homuth announced she was stepping down as CEO of the textile startup, which manufactures Sheertex rip-resistant tights. Homuth’s departure came as part of the fundraising round, as SRTX contended with trade uncertainty around United States (US) tariffs. SRTX temporarily laid off roughly 40 percent of its staff in February amid the tariff threat.
Homuth described Oomira, which has yet to officially launch, as a software backend layer that contains data about a company’s institutional memory—including business decisions, who made them, and how they panned out.
“We’re running companies with amnesia,” Homuth wrote. “Founders forget the lessons they swore they’d never repeat. Teams re-pitch failed ideas like they’re new. People rerun tests they already buried.”
According to the post, Homuth’s idea was borne of frustration. She decided to try and create an accurate memory layer for businesses last summer after attempting to use ChatGPT to write a movie script based on SRTX’s journey. Despite her crafting a detailed spreadsheet and timeline of events, “The machine didn’t get it,” she said.
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Homuth envisions a four-phase development process. First, she plans to offer archival services to a few companies this summer, then a beta platform for companies to build and interact with software layers containing historical data by the fall. Third, she hopes to launch a developer platform, and finally, she wants Oomira to offer a simulator for companies to model outcomes based on past data.
Homuth said that Oomira hopes to work closely with clients such as startups, venture capital firms, and manufacturers to build an archive of their past decisions and data. The service, which Homuth plans to take a hands-on role in delivering at first, will cost clients $50,000 USD in total: half up-front and half after delivery.
Oomira plans to transition to a subscription-based model, Homuth said. She added that she is using generative AI to build Oomira, which she hopes will serve companies that are building on top of existing large language models.
“Like any company founded in 2025, the entire build, from architecture to design, dev, and marketing, is being superpowered by other generative AI tools,” she said.
Homuth told BetaKit that she is not planning to fundraise for Oomira, at least at first, but rather to rely on customer revenue to fund operations. Right now, the team is just Homuth with “a tight crew of specialized contractors.”
“The goal is to stay lean, focused, and insanely execution-oriented until revenue becomes predictable enough to justify headcount,” Homuth said. “I’m not interested in building a bloated org chart; I’m building infrastructure.”
The announcement breaks a months-long social media silence from Homuth, who had previously been candid online about the struggles of fundraising for a hardtech company. On The BetaKit Podcast, Homuth said she felt as though she had “lost her voice,” and that posting publicly about fundraising challenges felt like “ripping a band-aid off.”
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But in a LinkedIn post today, Homuth hinted at how her outspokenness impacted her journey at SRTX.
“Turns out being open about not having it all figured out, isn’t always welcomed,” Homuth wrote. “It can feel a bit like wearing white pants to a tomato sauce tasting: brave, but not particularly well-advised. A few months later, I’m no longer part of the Sheertex story. The reasons are layered, and the blanks are yours to fill in.”
One of the deal terms for SRTX’s latest fundraising round was that Homuth and any future SRTX CEO sign a communications and social-media policy, according to The Globe & Mail.
Homuth told BetaKit that she is developing a “Founder Constitution,” a resource of templates to help other startup founders avoid the mistakes she’s made in the past.
Homuth founded SRTX in Muskoka, Ont., in 2017 as Sheerly Genius. With more than half of its target $40 million USD financing secured, SRTX has raised approximately $270 million USD in debt and equity to date, according to the company.” It was valued at roughly $350 million USD in 2022.
The founder previously built hardware platform ShopLocket, which was acquired in 2014 by global manufacturing and design company PCH and angel investing group Female Funders, which was acquired by Highline BETA in 2017.
Feature image courtesy The BetaKit Podcast.
