A Start-Up Program For Women In Mobile Tech
Source: Emily Glazer
This story also appears in our sister blog Digits.
When it comes to programs that nurture new start-ups, women often don’t make the cut. A new “start-up accelerator” hopes to combat that gender disparity in at least one booming market: mobile technology.
Women Innovate Mobile opened its application today to start-ups with a woman founder or co-founder and a product that is related to mobile. The accelerator will offer two to five start-ups free New York office space, mentoring and coaching, access to venture capitalists and other investors in addition to $18,000 in seed funding, $10,000 worth of product development and design support, and $10,000 worth of mobile marketing promotions.
“Companies and entrepreneurs that have the opportunity to participate in an accelerator program are given an advantage because of their access to networks and mentoring,” says Kelly Hoey, co-founder and managing director of Women Innovate Mobile. “There are a lot of women entrepreneurs out there but without access to networks, without access to feedback and mentoring and guidance and funding.”
Even though the rate of additional start-ups each year is at a 15-year high, women represent only 35% of start-up business owners, according to a recent study by research group Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
One Internet start-up seed fund and incubator program called 500 Startups is a leading investor of women, with around 25% female founders or co-founders in its portfolio, said Dave McClure, venture capitalist and founding partner at 500 Startups, in July.
And some programs already cater to women, including NewMe, a start-up accelerator and incubator for businesses geared toward under-represented minorities in technology; and women-focused organizations like Astia, Golden Seeds, the Pipeline Fellowship and Women 2.0.
Women Innovate Mobile is adding to this effort with a focus on mobile technology, which Hoey says is the next wave of tech development, essential for a wide range of sectors from banking to education.
Some big names have teamed up with Women Innovate Mobile. Experts from successful New York-based start-ups like Gilt Groupe and Foursquare in addition to angel investors or venture capitalists from First Round Capital, Formula Capital, Sequoia Lab, Golden Seeds and Women 2.0 have signed on as mentors.
“When I started out … I could count the number of female founders on my two hands,” says Tara Hunt, chief executive officer and co-founder of Montreal-based Buyosphere, a website allowing users to bookmark products they want to buy. Hunt will serve as a mentor to the start-ups, and says she hopes to spread her connections with venture capitalists, angel investors, start-up founders and “movers and shakers in the Valley and New York and beyond.”
The application closes February 1, and Women Innovate Mobile will narrow it to about 15 finalists by February 15; participants will be announced by March 1. Two individual private angel investors will provide initial funding but asked not to be named, Hoey says. Women Innovate Mobile is also in discussions with about five Fortune 100 companies, she says, “who have a keen interest in mobile and supportive of women” to act as sponsors.
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