WaiACCELERATE
- the first ethical leadership & business acceleration program aimed at women innovators in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning and Data Science, who are ready to start a venture.
WaiACCELERATE 2020 Graduation
Join us in celebrating our WaiACCELERATE founders who have successfully graduated from the program on November 25! The TOP 3 startups recognized as the finalists are:
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The Ultimate Game-Changer - Food For Gut by Jeanet Lin
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1st Runner Up - Nina Space by Ekaterina Stambolieva
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2nd Runner Up - Which Plant!? by Kim Taylor
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About WaiACCELERATE
WaiACCELERATE is a novel business acceleration program by Women in AI. This initiative targets women innovators looking to start a business in the fields of AI, Machine Learning and Data Science.
With a focus on promoting ethical leadership and social impact, WaiACCELERATE is designed as a combination of various online modules and educational initiatives aimed at increasing the number of female-led innovative startups that use AI-related technology and are committed to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals 2030. In a span of 9 months, participants develop, nurture and grow their entrepreneurial dreams into competitive and profitable business ventures.
Since its inception in February 2020, the program became highly successful. Piloted for the Netherlands market at first, it attracted participants from across the globe. There are 25 actively enrolled women founders representing Australia, France, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, the UK, and the US.
WaiACCELERATE was initiated by Eve Logunova, Ambassador of Women in AI in the Netherlands, and is executed in 2020 by this dedicated team.
Founder of IVOW Inc
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[Cultural Intelligence]
SDG Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities
Founder of VRHTI
[HospitalityTech / VR]
SDG Goal 1: No poverty;
Goal 4: Quality Education
Founder of ETIQ
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[DataTech / Bias Mitigation]
SDG Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities
Founder of BeautyQlick
[BeautyTech / HealthTech]
SDG Goal 3: Good Health & Well-being
WHAT PARTICIPANTS SAY
“Being part of the WaiACCELERATE family has been a game changer for our startup. It’s not just the exceptional experts and workshops they lead that informs our work, it is also the doors they have opened up for us to communicate and engage in collaborative thinking with the likes of IBM, Amazon Web Services and Oracle for Startups, and to meet investors.”
— Davar Ardalan, Founder of IVOW (USA)
High-Class Mentorship
Another strategic support to the founders during the development of their AI ideas and for the go-to-market preparation is enabled via the Mentorship track of WaiACCELERATE.
There is no other organization or Accelerator in the field that provides such a highly experienced and engaged cohort of mentors.
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Ankit Chhajer
Head of Artificial Intelligence (Cora Lead Product Owner) at NatWest
Mariella de Koning
Partner at Varso Group & Member of the Rabobank Supervisory Group
Carly E. Howard, JD, LLM
VP Legal Operations at Fathym
Rani
Saad
Co-founder & President at Stanford Angels
Why more women in the startup domain?
The major development in technology is happening within the startup landscape where more small and medium scale businesses are springing up across the world at an increasing rate. Yet, the digital startup ecosystem is highly gender imbalanced where women are greatly under-represented among digital entrepreneurs.
According to the World Economic Forum’s & SAP’s 2020 report, in 2018 Europe had six women entrepreneurs (tech and non-tech) for every 10 men – the lowest ratio among the global regions. The disparity was even greater in tech – only 5% of Europe’s tech founders were female.
The history of data shows mostly men in a leadership seat. Whereas, the latest special report on women and entrepreneurship suggests that significant work remains to be done to encourage and support women entrepreneurs and their ability to build economic security for themselves, their families, their communities, and their countries.
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Amplifying gloomy projections by the World Economic Forum that at this pace, it could take more than 200 years to close the gender gap globally. Additionally, if we don’t find a solution to improving the gender parity, in particular in the field of AI, the fully automated world of tomorrow will be highly biased causing a great threat to humanity’s existence.
And that is where WaiACCELERATE comes in. Women in AI’s intention and the idea behind WaiACCELERATE is to shift the status quo towards diversity and inclusion and remove biases from AI technology. That's why we work with the best of the best to improve the current gender state of entrepreneurship and remove the limiting factors for women to become more active in the ecosystem.
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Meet the Speakers
Nancy Poleon
Founder & Owner
of BrandedU
David Beckett
Pitch Coach & Founder of Best 3 Minutes
Sarah Porter
Founder & CEO InspiredMinds! & World Summit AI
Dénelise l'Ecluse
Managing Director Continental Europe at bsi
Tech Support
Via the partnership with the leading global Tech companies - AWS, IBM, and Oracle for Startups - WaiACCELERATE team has also provided the participants with so called “Tech Labs”, offering access to in-depth Tech workshops, on-demand Tech consultations and free Cloud credits.
All of which became highly beneficial to the founders during the prototyping phase and for building their data-centered MVPs.
Strategic Partners
Knowledge Partners
AI x Design
Strategic Partners 2020
Knowledge Partners 2020
