Startups, you’ve got a month left to apply to Elemental Excelerator’s 8th cohort! Our Qualifying Application takes only 5 minutes and the deadline to apply is April 12th.
During the month of March (and year-round for that matter), we recruit the most talented female entrepreneurs across the agriculture, energy, mobility, water, and circular economy sectors to apply for up to $1 million in funding, uniquely designed for steel-in-the-ground (and data-in-the-cloud) demonstration projects. You can read more about how we work with companies on our program page.
The gap between men and women fundraising for startups is no secret. Our friends at AllRaise report that only 15 percent of all U.S. venture capital dollars in 2017 went to startups with a female founder, and Crunchbase uncovered that women received only 9 percent of VC-backed deals over the past five years. Over the same time period, we’ve seen steady growth in the number of women-led/founded startups applying to ElementalExcelerator. We aren’t yet where we want to be, but we are making progress.
We are working toward a more diverse ecosystem because the data shows that we need talent from all corners of the world to take care of our planet (Project Drawdown named Educating Girls the sixth best solution to reverse climate change in their ranking of the top 100 solutions). Our approach to growing a more diverse ecosystem is two-fold:
- Finding and funding up to $1 million mission-aligned entrepreneurs who are solving some of the world’s most urgent environmental problems. If this is you, please apply today. If you know a rockstar, please refer her here or forward this email along. Our funding is designed to address gaps in accelerating the success of startups solving our most urgent environmental challenges, and the gender gap is one of them.
- Telling stories to create role models for the next generation of female entrepreneurs. We’ve included a few of the stories featuring women founders and CEOs in the Elemental portfolio below.
Storytime
Fixers, Founders, and Funders
Grist 50 | Congrats, Dawn!
This year’s list of 50 Fixers also includes some other familiar faces: Conlan O’Leary (CEO of Sighten, cohort 5) and Kevin Noertker (CEO of Ampaire, cohort 7). Congrats (and thank you) to the 50 innovators working on new solutions to the planet’s biggest problems.
Founder Stories: Christine Su of Pasture Map
Elemental Excelerator blog
Christine Su and George Lee left corporate jobs to pursue a shared vision of helping farmers build a better food system. They launched PastureMap in 2016 to help ranchers make profits building carbon-friendly meat supply chains. You’ll find our interview with Christine on the Elemental blog.
25 Badass Women Shaking Up the Corporate Climate Movement
GreenBiz (featuring our very own Dawn Lippert)
Dawn joins Christiana Figueres of Mission 2020, Lisa Jackson of Apple, and 22 more badass women inGreenBiz’s roundup of “fearless, authentic, ethical, compassionate, courageous” individuals leading our corporate climate movement.
26 Women of Color Diversifying Entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, Media, and Beyond
Vanity Fair (featuring Etosha Cave, co-founder of Opus 12, cohort 5)
“All successful entrepreneurs imagine a problem, a product, and a market. But because the default founder in Silicon Valley is male, and white or Asian, a black woman must also ‘envision herself being the person creating the product or service that is in the world,’ says Jessica O. Matthews, founder and C.E.O. of the renewable-energy start-up Uncharted Power —and then get funders to buy into that vision.” More in Vanity Fair.
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