WeEmpower, Socialatom and the World Bank join forces to accelerate women-led startups in Colombia.
Socialatom has partnered with We Empower Cities, an initiative backed by the World Bank to provide mentorship, advisory and funding to women-led startups in Colombia.
In 2019 we made the commitment to bring to our investment committees at least 50% women-led companies and to add to our portfolio no less than five women-led startups.
So far 25% of our portfolio companies are led by women, and while this is more than 10x higher than the VC industry standard, there’s still a lot of opportunity to back more women-led companies.
In our mission for economic development through tech and entrepreneurship in Latin America, we strive to create not just a new digital economy for Latin America but also an economy that is more inclusive and accessible to founders from diverse gender, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds.
This partnership with WEC strengthens our value proposition to Fundadoras (women founders) with a comprehensive suite of services.
- First, a free on-line startup course is available for the Fundadoras who sign up to the platform and sign up for The Challenge.
- After the application to the Challenge is submitted, it will be reviewed by We Empower Cities and its partners to determine whether the company meets the primary criteria: scalability, gender inclusion and impact.
- The selected businesses will be mentored by relevant local and international sectoral specialists, preparing them to pitch their projects to investors at the Demo Day. Five to ten businesses will be selected and will receive a blend of advisory services, growth capital, and acceleration.
The program’s current format was successfully introduced in Panama in 2018, and in 11 countries in the Middle East and North Africa before that. Providing capacity-building, advisory services, diverse capital sources, and new local and international networks gave the entrepreneurs and businesses the tools that are a prerequisite for success.
You can learn more at https://empowercities.org/ and if you know anyone who would be interested in this program, send them my way jessica.mercedes@socialatomgroup.com ;)
