San Francisco, California Nov 2, 2022 (Issuewire.com) - Aiming to reduce gender inequity in capital raising, Focus Academy (Focus) today joined forces with Silicon Valley in Your Pocket (SVIYP) to create a novel program to empower women founders globally. Focus is a global activation hub located in San Francisco; SVIYP is a Silicon Valley-based virtual incubator providing start-up coaching to entrepreneurs globally. With its combined expertise, the joint venture, known as Fem-Focus, will streamline access to capital for women founders and help them overcome common biases that hinder fundraising success.
The challenges for women entrepreneurs are formidable: According to Pitchbook, sole female founders receive only two percent of funds raised. The number is higher if the co-founder is male. The outlook for follow-on funding is even grimmer. The Fem-Focus program examines the causes of these inequities and prepares women to address them head-on.
The Fem-Focus program will work with global female founders to break through gender barriers, overcome bias (inherent and implicit), disrupt funding inequities, and empower participants with "investor readiness". Using a hybrid model that has been successfully deployed over the years by the Joint Venture partners, Fem-Focus supports women founders through virtual coaching sessions and a live program that gathers participants in San Francisco for an in-depth immersion experience.
"The bias is real and presents significant barriers for female founders," says Focus Academy's Managing Partner, Kate Gunning "We aim to reverse the trends by equipping founders with novel strategies to bypass obstacles, and connecting them directly with relevant, qualified, and interested investors".
"We've built this model on a strategic framework where every female founder will receive an investor readiness assessment that provides scoring and feedback across the nine dimensions of a business. Most importantly, participants gain access and introductions to a wide network of unbiased investors," added Kal Deutsch, Partner at SVIYP
The experienced team has delivered programming and collaborated with many organizations worldwide to offer a cost-effective and beneficial mechanism for company success. Fem-Focus will work with founders, VCs, and organizations to close the gap and increase the likelihood of founders being assessed on the strength of their products/services, market needs, and commercialization potential, as well as their ability to execute, not on their gender.
To find out more contact Fem-Focus at team@fem-focus.com and sign up for the upcoming free webinar:
Negotiating Your Value with Confidence!
About Focus Academy:
Focus Academy is an innovation hub located in San Francisco, CA. preparing emerging international companies to enter and thrive in the US and global markets by providing business, market, and product development programming. At the core of Focus Academy is the belief that being part of an active community with a deep knowledge base of launching innovative technologies is critical to entrepreneurial success. Thriving entrepreneurs in our collaborative support system continue sharing best practices on operations and growth while expanding their market reach with successful product development and business strategies.
About Silicon Valley in Your Pocket:
Silicon Valley in Your Pocket powers a self-paced accelerator program that helps high-potential founders build their startups, achieve traction, and become investor-ready. Their virtual accelerator platform and proprietary investor-readiness evaluation framework empower their global community to achieve traction for their startups and can help them make solid connections with their network of angel investors, VCs, and strategic partners. To learn more, visit https://siliconvalleyinyourpocket.com/.
Media Contact
Kate Gunning
14153789831
181 2nd Street, San Francisco, CA 94105
Source :Focus Academy
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