[NEWS] Ready, Set, Raise — the Y Combinator for female founders — announces second cohort – Loganspace

About one-fourth of the startups inY Combinator’ssummer batch had a female founder. Now not the most disappointing statistic whilst you imagine this: Companies with at least one female founder bear raised simplest about 11% of venture capital funding in the U.S. in 2019, in line withPitchBook. Companies with female founders exclusively bear raised excellent 3%.

There is so great room for development.

To shut the funding gap, capabilities tailored to female entrepreneurs are working tirelessly to mentor and incubate upstarts in hopes of impressing venture capitalists.Ready, Feature, Lift, an accelerator program built for ladies folks, by ladies folks, is amongst the contemporary efforts to back female and non-binary founders elevate more greenbacks, or, a minimal of, assemble relationships with traders.

The accelerator program, created by the Seattle-based completely mostly community of startup founders and traders known as theFeminine Founders Alliance, is on the present time announcing its second batch of companies, a community that involvesa sextech industry, anAI-powered instrument for podcastersand aline of workwearcreated for ladies folks who work on farms, construction websites and manufacturing facility floors.

Ready, Feature, Lift has partnered with Microsoft for Startups to originate entrepreneurs $120,000 in Azure credit ranking, to boot to technical and industry mentoring from executives of the Redmond-based completely mostly plot huge. Diversified contemporary companions encompassBrex and Carta, two neatly-funded companies that thought to lend the pork up of their executives to coach entrepreneurs about startup finance, valuation and fundraising phrases. 

“Both FFA and Microsoft acknowledge a foremost lapse in alternatives given to ladies folks and non-binary founders,” writes Ian Bergman, a managing director of Microsoft for Startups, in an announcement. “We stay up for our persisted work together to promote this main shift in the VC panorama.”

“My trip fundraising used to be undeniably fashioned by the reality that I’m a lady, and on the time used to be a brand contemporary mom,” Feinzaig, who previously based an edtech startup, toldSeattle Change Magazineearlier this three hundred and sixty five days. “A three hundred and sixty five days later, I used to be about to present up. As an alternative, I started a Fb community, including the total founders and tech startup leaders I knew. It used to be the community that I main, made up of folks that knew precisely what I used to be going thru. That’s how the Feminine Founders Alliance used to be born.”

FFA’s Ready, Feature, Lift provides its companies childcare at some stage in the six-week program, at some level of which companies work one-on-one with experienced coaches earlier than a demo day that can happen on October 16th. 

Here’s a peep at Ready, Feature, Lift’s sophomore class of startups:

• Echo Echo:AI-powered instruments for podcasters.
• Give InKind:Coordinates pork up thru foremost lifestyles events.
• Honistly:A provider of extended auto warranties to back with temporary money wants.
• Juicebox It:Modernizes erotica with a chatbot that is arousing and tutorial. 
• Panty Drop:A personalised intimates browsing trip for ladies folks sizes XS-6XL.  
• The Labz:A platform that protects and memorializes ingenious assert pattern in valid time.
• More difficult:Purposeful, neatly-fitted workwear for ladies folks in the educated trades.