Women in Tech Accelerator US

About the Program

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.

Problem Statement

Over the past 30 years, the share of venture capital funding received by all-women founding teams has remained disproportionately low, averaging only 2.4%, limiting diversity of ideas in the market and potentially preventing solutions to global challenges from reaching it. 

Women entrepreneurs in the US, particularly those from historically marginalized and overlooked communities, including BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities, face significant funding gaps and exclusion from traditional capital resources, resulting in underdeveloped startup ecosystems and opportunities missed for economic growth and innovation.

Eligibility

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.