Supporting Female Entrepreneurship

Her Startup is a program designed as a response to the challenges faced by female founders in the entrepreneurial landscape.

Her Startup is a unique combination of proven entrepreneurship training, seed funding, and mentoring to offer comprehensive and long term solutions to the funding issue of female led start-ups.

About

The objective of the program is to provide guidance and invest in African+Women-led early-stage companies with high growth potential in emerging industries.

The Program can be divided in four main steps

1) Selection of the applicants
The selection will be done based on Her Startup and Founder’s Institute criteria. These criteria include:

  • African company
  • Female founder of CEO
  • Tech-enable business
  • 18-35 age bracket
  • Monthly gross revenue of not less than $500
  • Unique Value Proposition
  • Operation of business not less than 6 months
  • Maximum 20% of selected companies will be Fintechs
  • At least 15% of selected companies will be from Francophone Africa

2) Training
The applicants selected will perform an intensive 4-month training from the Founder’s Institute accelerator program.
Costs of the training will be covered by the program and founders will receive an allowance in stages during the training.
The applicants who successfully complete the training will get a certificate and will be eligible to apply for funding.

3) Funding
The remaining start-ups will pitch their business model to the program Investment Committee to obtain a funding of 5,000 USD in average.
The funding will be a convertible revenue based financing.

4) Mentoring
The funded start-ups will be provided a 1 year mentoring from seasoned entrepreneurs and experts with monthly meetings and ad hoc requests.

Our Mission

Boost women’s confidence and ability to grow their start-up through targeted skills development and access to financing

Program

Her Startup is a unique combination of training, funding, and mentoring.

Entrepreneurship Training
A 14-week intensive training program for participating female entrepreneurs facilitated by the Founder Institute (FI). Renowned as one of the world’s largest pre-seed accelerator programs, FI is adept at transforming ideas into fundable startups and startups into global businesses.
Startup Capital
Successful graduates of the FI accelerator program will pitch to an investment committee for seed financing of up to $5,000.
Mentorship and Support
Founders will receive comprehensive support for continued success. This includes 6 months of mentorship, access to co-working space, and healthcare coverage for 1 year. Based on performance, graduates will receive support for additional capital raise.
Entrepreneurship Training
A 14-week intensive training program for participating female entrepreneurs facilitated by the Founder Institute (FI). Renowned as one of the world’s largest pre-seed accelerator programs, FI is adept at transforming ideas into fundable startups and startups into global businesses.
Startup Capital
Successful graduates of the FI accelerator program will pitch to an investment committee for seed financing of up to $5,000.
Mentorship and Support
Founders will receive comprehensive support for continued success. This includes 6 months of mentorship, access to co-working space, and healthcare coverage for 1 year. Based on performance, graduates will receive support for additional capital raise.

Featured Stories

Mentors

Founding partners

Tomorow Foundation

Tomorrow Foundation is a Swiss charity foundation based in Geneva aiming at supporting international cooperation, fairer economic policies, and improving living conditions through technology and skills development in Africa. The Foundation believes that learning by doing, empowerment, autonomy, and collaboration have greater effectiveness than traditional assistance through funding or turnkey solutions.

Khalil Suleiman Halilu Foundation

Khalil Suleiman Halilu Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to leveraging technology to bridge social gaps for early development, founded by Khalil Halilu, the Executive Vice-chairman and CEO of NASENI. They provide enablers in the form of mentorship, technical/intrapersonal assistance, and funding to young Nigerians who are driven to innovation in tech-related fields whilst helping create products and services with significant impact on development in Nigeria. While the foundation believes in equity, it is also aware of the social challenges faced by women and as such focuses most of its program, particularly on women.

eha Impact Ventures

eha Impact Ventures is a philanthropic impact investing enterprise that supports early stage, high-impact, female-led businesses in Africa. Unlike traditional business financing, we offer flexible and innovative financing paired with high-quality, local, shared business resources to ensure business growth and success. Their vision is To improve the wealth and health of African women, their families, and communities.

News

Her Startup, an initiative aimed at addressing the challenges faced by female founders in the

Empowering Female Entrepreneurs in Africa, Her Startup Launched by KSH Foundation, Tomorrow Foundation, and EHA

FAQ List

With our internal selection criteria, a minimum of 30 and a maximum of 50 participants will be selected and sent to FI, who will then conduct the final screening of 10 founders who will make up the first cohor

The program is open to female founders, co-founders or CEO from all over Africa. However, there will be a stronger focus on West Africa at the program launch.

The 4 months Core Program from the Founder’s Institute is split into three tracks designed for all kind of founders at the pre-seed stage. It covers the following topics: vision & mission of the business, customer development, revenue & business models, pitch mastery, mentors, legal & equity, go-to-market & scale, product development, investor progress review, co-founders & team, growth, funding.

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