When is Application Deadline: 31st January 2025
Program Dates
Workshop 1: April 14-16, 2025
Workshop 2: May 12-14, 2025
Workshop 3: June 16-18, 2025
In-Person Program Summit: July 14-16, 2025
A three-year initiative to support women founders developing solutions to improve economic mobility and equitable access to essential services for women, families, and communities across the US.
The US Women in Tech Accelerator is designed to tackle the funding inequities women-identifying entrepreneurs face by unlocking early-stage financial and social capital to improve economic mobility and equitable access to essential services for women, families, and historically marginalized and overlooked communities across the United States.
Each year, the program will support 10-12 tech-based or tech-enabled startups, equipping systemically under-resourced women founders with the necessary tools to grow their solutions, create jobs, and deliver substantive impact for their communities.
Type:
Entrepreneurship
Who can Apply?
Eligible startups must:
- Be a legally registered, US-based, for-profit business with fewer than ten employees.
- Be led by at least one full-time founder who identifies as a woman, including cisgender, transgender, and non-binary individuals.
- Be revenue-generating with less than USD 100K in annual revenue.
- Have meaningful customer or business validation (not limited to revenue; it can also be successful pilot studies, number of users, and/or strategic partnerships).
- Have a minimum viable product (MVP) and raised less than USD 1.5M in equity.
- Be tech-based or tech-enabled and address one economic mobility and/or access to essential services in the following areas:
- Increase access to affordable, high-quality healthcare, wellness resources, and critical medicines.
- Equip and connect care workers to provide higher quality care and increase access to care.
- Amplify and strengthen community-integrated solutions.
- Create innovations in education that expand access and increase quality.
- Broaden accessibility to essential services for marginalized and under-resourced communities.
- Reduce barriers to employment and career advancement through new pathways, training and upskilling opportunities, and building professional networks.
- Empower individuals, families, and underserved communities to increase financial literacy, build financial resilience, and long-term stability by improving access to essential financial services.
- Advance economic mobility for low-income or other underserved communities by building generational wealth through career advancement, home ownership, and/or savings and investment opportunities.
- Create access to essential services that unlock economic opportunity.
How Many Awards?
Not specified
What is the Benefit of Award?
- Financial Analysis: Access to 1:1 coaching with an investment analyst focused on building a financial model and financial narratives.
- Grant Capital: Two (2) startups will be selected by their peers to receive grant capital of USD 25K to further scale their solutions.
- Mentorship and Networking: Engage in opportunities to network and receive mentorship from investors, strategic partners, founders, and business leaders.
- Milestone Development Plan: Create a personalized milestone development plan towards investment readiness, growth, and impact utilizing Abaca, VilCap’s online milestone tracking tool.
- Peer-to-Peer Learning and Evaluation: Access to Village Capital’s signature approach to shifting power dynamics in investment decisions by placing entrepreneurs at the center of the due diligence process.