Deadline: 23-Aug-20
Women Who Tech has launched the COVID-19 Tech Challenge to fund innovative women-led startups across HealthTech, BioTech, Civic Engagement, EdTech, FinTech, Future of Work, and more.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed societal and industrial vulnerabilities and diverse perspectives are vital to address these unique challenges. The COVID-19 Tech Grant is designed to fund women-led ventures focused on solving the biggest health, education, Future of Work, civic engagement, and financial issues that’s contributing to solutions related to the COVID-19 global pandemic. Your startup may have launched before or after the pandemic started and focuses may include:
- HealthTech and BioTech: Address and scale a range of health initiatives, including preventative/hygiene behaviors, supporting health workers, scaling telemedicine, contact tracing/containment strategies, treatment and diagnosis development.
- FinTech: Creating financial access and solutions for consumers and businesses.
- Future of Work: Adoption of artificial intelligence in the workplace, and the expansion of the workforce.
- EdTech: Alternative learning environments and tools for students, teachers, and entire school systems
- Civic Engagement Tech: Tech solutions that improve the lives of citizens, increases public participation in improving government and infrastructure and or helps connect people to local communities, resources, and opportunities.
- Your venture must be at the prototype stage, or have already launched. You may not apply if you are only in the concept stage. Note: A prototype is an initial model built to test your product; it is not just a design or a wireframe.
- Your company must have either raised, at minimum, a seed round of at least $50K, or be generating monthly recurring revenue.
- You cannot have raised more than $5M from combined sources.
- You must have a full-time team of two or more people.
- Your startup must incorporate technology into the approach of your product, which allows the company to rapidly and massively scale in a manner that traditional, independent small businesses cannot. Please note that using tech (i.e. hosting a blog, selling products on your website, or using social media in your marketing) does not qualify as using tech to scale on a mass level nationally and globally.
- Fast growing with degrees of innovation.
- All ideas must be original work or an improvement upon an existing idea without infringements.
- You are a technical founder or you have a technical cofounder..
- You must be a woman-led startup, defined as having at least one woman founder or cofounder on the team.
Prize Information
Women Who Tech will award one Innovation Grant of $10,000, and one Impact Grant of $3,000.
Eligibility Criteria
- Your startup must be located within North America.
- Agencies or consulting businesses are not eligible unless you have created a product that fits the above criteria.
- The (co)founder applying for the grant must be a woman. Note: Women Who Tech uses an inclusive definition of “woman” and “female”, and they welcome transwomen, genderqueer women, and non-binary people who identify as gender-nonconforming, female, and/or woman.
- All applications must be submitted in English, and all pitches must be given in English.
- No applicant may reach out to judges, sponsors, and/or partners in advance of the grant process advocating for their startup. Anyone who does will be disqualified. If you have any conflicts of interest, please reach out to the Women Who Tech team prior to submitting your application.
- Startups who have been awarded a grant through the Women Who Tech Startup Grants Program may not re-apply. Finalists who were not awarded a grant, and finalists of previous Women Startup Challenges are eligible to apply.
- Women Who Tech reserves the right to select and reject grant applicants at any time.
- All grant finalists are required to virtually participate in the Women Who Tech Startup Grants Program pitch series.
For more information, visit https://womenwhotech.com/