Announcing the next Female Founder Track — now in New York City
TLDR: We’re bringing together aspiring founders in New York City this summer for a 7-week masterclass on everything from iterating on MVPs, to raising money, to hiring, led by rockstar female founders, investors, and operators with one on one advice from DRF + First Round community mentors. If you’re in undergrad or grad school and have a proof of concept for a venture, you’re eligible. Apply here.
This past fall, we launched our inaugural cohort of the Female Founder Track in San Francisco, bringing together 16 inspiring students and recent grads for a nine-session masterclass on everything from launching MVPs, dealing with harassment, building culture, raising money, and more.
Through intimate, closed-door (and closed-tweet) dinners, we were able to get an honest view point on founding and funding a company as a woman in Silicon Valley today. Sarah Guo at Greylock shared how she came into venture and became an expert in cyber security; Lauren Farleigh from Dote shared her MVP process; Heather Fernandez at Solv told us about setting cofounder expectations; Ann Miura-Ko from Floodgate shared her thesis building process … the list goes on!
This led to great friendships, a budding community of future female founders (with two companies launched!), and that essential knowledge and confidence boost for all of our participants that makes it possible to go from zero to one.
As Alizeh Iqbal, a member of our first FFT cohort, said, “confidence is the capital before capital” and at Dorm Room Fund, we’re committed to building more of it for our founders.
We’re thrilled to be opening up applications for the second cohort of Female Founder Track for the summer of 2019, this time in New York City! This summer, we’re eager to reach students from a wide variety of schools as they congregate in New York’s tech hub for internships. Our aim is to build a community of women who take that important step from side-hustler to full-time founder.
This 7-week, 7-session masterclass, hosted at First Round’s NYC Office, will help our cohort develop skills like iterating on MVPs, understanding venture economics, fundraising strategy, and building an initial team. Each session is led by expert founders, investors, and operators. We’ll also match our founders with a mentor from the First Round community whose expertise you can lean on, and with a previous Female Founder Track participant who you can confide in as you iterate on your venture throughout the summer and beyond.
There are only two requirements: that you be graduating no earlier than December 2018, and that you have some proof of concept for the venture you’d like to work on. The proof of concept could come as research from your thesis, a conference you’ve built, an extensive survey you’ve done, an MVP, or anything else! All we ask is that you’re committed to building on your product throughout the summer, and we’ll work with you to set a reasonable goal based on your internship load and product type.
With Dorm Room Fund’s new rocking CEO and COO at the helm (who also happen to be badass women), we’re excited to continue building support for the budding community of female student founders. You can learn more here and apply here. Applications are due June 5th.
