In early July, ProWellTech covered the Envision Accelerator. The program was put together by a group of students and recent graduates, often with some early venture capital experiences, to help give some young startups a boost while shaking up the industry's diversity metrics.
Now on the other side of the official schedule of their first batch and in its investor week, Envision shared a number of stats related to that first cohort and talked about plans for its second.
What I appreciate about the Envision group is that by simply going out and creating their own accelerator, they have shown that it is possible to attract a diverse group of startups to a program. How much does it vary? Let's find out.
The Envision cohort
According to data provided to ProWellTech by Annabel Strauss and Eliana Berger from the Envision team (more about them here, if you're curious), 17 companies joined the first group. Of these 17 companies and their founding teams, about a third of the founders were black, about one in five were Latinx, and over 75% had a female founder.
These are impressive metrics, frankly, especially when we consider what other groups have achieved in the last few sessions. Even the founders of Envision distort the youth, it's no surprise, as the effort was actually made up of the students creating a program for their fellow students, with a three-to-one bias in favor of undergraduates over graduate students.
Below we will list the participating companies with links to their sites, as usual with this sort of accelerator summary.
But, before we do that, a few notes on how the first batch went. When we last talked about Envision, they were still raising funds to raise more capital to give to select companies. The idea was to provide $ 10,000 in equity without shares, along with an eight-week program of lectures, networking and hands-on help from the Envision collective and a group of consultants.
According to Strauss and Berger, Envision was able to raise all the money it needed to provide funding to its select companies, although not all teams raised the full $ 10,000, with the duo noting that the amount varied according to need.
It won't be clear for a while if companies that have gone through Envision's first class will manage to raise more capital, scale, and be successful. But for the Envision team themselves, the first round went well enough that a second attempt is around the corner.
And when it comes to that second push - or class, really - Envision remains in a rush. After putting together his initial cohort while building his own organization on the fly, the group will begin its second batch in October, giving it some breathing room between the cohorts.
There is a reason for the rush, however. First, Envision wants to add two weeks to its schedule, bringing the accelerator to a total of 10 weeks to include more training and, to fit it into the current semester, October was the starting month. Strauss and Berger noted that some students are taking leave during the first semester of this academic year.
Read more about Envision itself when we hear more about how the first batch attracted investor interest.
Here are the companies of lot one:
- Adora: Adora is a personalized digital campus visit platform that makes engaging visits accessible to all.
- Devie: Devie is a parenting coaching app that guides parents through challenges in a personal, accessible and usable way.
- Forage: Forage is a mobile application that provides real-time pricing in grocery stores so families can save money.
- Holdette: At Holdette, we produce professional workwear with real pockets for women entering the workforce for the first time.
- Justice Text: Justice Text produces video evidence management software to produce fair results in the criminal justice system.
- Klara: Klara is a data science platform that transforms the way consumers discover skin and hair care products.
- Mindstand: Mindstand helps leaders identify implicit bias, employee engagement, and culture that fit their internal communications.
- MODE: MODE helps people discover and buy clothes through a personalized social shopping experience.
- Mylabox: Mylabox is a cross-border e-commerce marketplace that allows SMEs in Latin America to access high-quality overseas products.
- Nibble: Nibble is a platform that solves food waste by helping restaurants sell excess food and ingredients at a discount.
- Pareto: Pareto is building a quick start workflow library that startups can implement for operations as they scale.
- Schefs: Schefs is a platform for college students to facilitate and participate in themed conversations during a virtual meal.
- UrConvey: UrConvey is a secure app that makes it easy to share with people you know by leveraging your network.
- Vngle: Vngle is a decentralized grassroots news network that brings "various angles" of local reality coverage to news deserts.
- Wellnest: Wellnest is a joyful journaling app that raises awareness by prioritizing user experience, voice and insights.
- Winkshare: Winkshare is a secure messaging app designed for modern relationships. Your relationship, your business.
- Yes: Yes, it rewards valuable opinions across the web. Evaluate anything, earn rewards for accuracy, and earn status.