Equitable Innovations Accelerator Program Update
August 18, 2022
Our Equitable Innovations Accelerator (EIA) with support from the Washington State Department of Commerce has provided 10 tech start-ups with non-dilutive philanthropic grants, programming, and access to mentors and coaches. Alongside WTIA (Washington Technology Industry Association), the EIA provided a curriculum that covered a variety of actionable and stage-appropriate topics including fundraising best practices and fundamentals, sales for early stage startups, marketing fundamentals, product and customer development strategies, building the team, and company essentials like legal and accounting. Curriculum was customized based on the needs and goals of the participating companies.
Cohort members were also placed into small learning pods depending on the stage and specific needs of their company across different functional areas. These pods were assigned business mentors to address specific business needs.
In addition to this curriculum, the leadership development curriculum was developed by Dr. Julie Pham, the Curiosity Director for Find Ventures. It was focused on helping founders foster a curiosity based culture on their teams. The cohort will engage in connection, communication skills, and self-awareness exercises and provide the cohort members the opportunity to learn from one another.
Since the beginning of the program, nearly $250,000 has been disbursed to EIA companies to reach valuable milestones. To date, participants have:
- Hired new staff and interns
- Purchased critical materials and equipment to support innovation
- Furthered product development
- Increased brand awareness
This has resulted in acquisition of new customers, pilots and partnerships. The founders have also been able to refine their business models, strategies and products in response to feedback and lessons learned over the past few months.
We would like to thank WTIA for their continued support throughout this accelerator and beyond!
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