Lighthouse Labs team members knew its upcoming spring cohort — the accelerator's 10th — needed to be its most special to date.
They got to work rethinking the application process and initiating additional founder outreach. The result? An application pool that grew in size and diversity.
The Richmond-based seed-stage accelerator program received 202 eligible applications for its upcoming spring cohort. Ali Greenberg, Lighthouse Labs outreach manager, said they received more than double the number of applications than in spring or fall of 2020. Of those 202 applications, 41% were from Virginia and nearly half of that group were from the Richmond region.
Greenberg said even more exciting for the team was the number of applications — 75% — that included a founder or founders who identified as underrepresented. Those groups include female, BIPOC, LGBTQA+, veteran and founders with a disability.
"I think while we of course strive for representation and entrepreneurial equity, it wasn't our explicit focus," she said. "As conversations around social justice came into the forefront, we just wanted to make this normalized. When you make the experience founder-friendly, it becomes founder-friendly for everyone."
Part of that effort included trimming the application from 60 questions down to 18, Greenberg said.
"The streamlining of the application was the key initiative, and it's broken down a huge barrier," she said. "This industry is something too focused on creating hurdles for founders to prove themselves instead of giving them the ability to grow."
Greenberg said Lighthouse also spent time reaching back out to former applicants and hosted several virtual info sessions ahead of the application deadline.
"We really leaned on our founders and mentors to actively recruit in a way we weren't able to before, and 84 companies were directly referred to us as a result," she said.
The spring cohort begins March 15 and runs through June 4. Greenberg said they plan to announce the cohort on March 1, and the hope is to have 10 members to represent Lighthouse Labs' 10th accelerator.