The accelerator for female entrepreneurs FourthWave kicked off its newest cohort featuring four Sacramento companies.
The 16-week program matches entrepreneurs with business mentors and coaches to help them get positioned for funding.
The program, in its fourth year in Sacramento, is now virtual, which allows participation from startups throughout the state and nationwide. The previous cohort included a woman from South Korea, said Nancy Perlman, founder of FourthWave.
FourthWave finds companies through various networks, and some of the entrepreneurs reach out to participate in the program, Perlman said.
This is the fourth cohort to work out of Sacramento, where the program has the support of The Carlsen Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at California State University Sacramento and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, among others.
Perlman started the program in Los Angeles in 2017 to address the problem that women represent about half of startup entrepreneurs, yet female founders only raise a fraction of the investment in startup companies.
Alumna of FourthWave have gone on to raise more than $40 million, said Robert Nelsen, president of Sac State, during the new cohort’s launch meeting Thursday over Zoom.
The local entrepreneurs include:
- Chelby Gill, founder of Boummeringue, a reverse logistics service for fashion brands that have a high volume of returns. The company collects items for return, repacks them, labels and routes them for its customers.
- Liz Tang, founder of EpiReminder, which makes a small device that couples with a smartphone app to make sure that lifesaving medications, like epinephrine, are always nearby and at the correct temperature.
- Lilly Khorsand and Gabriela Chavez, founders of Pink Lemonade, an e-commerce and education portal for vaginal and menstrual health. Pink Lemonade won best in show at the most recent Sacramento Entrepreneurship Academy in the spring.
- Anna Von Wendorff, founder of Scopi, a tool for primary care practitioners to accurately diagnose chronic nasal conditions, many of which are inaccurately diagnosed at the primary care level.
FourthWave launched in 2016 with a pilot program in Los Angeles. After receiving a grant from the city of Sacramento, FourthWave launched its inaugural Sacramento program in 2017.
Participants pay $400 to go through the program, which Perlman said is a nominal fee to increase participation.
“We’ve never had anyone drop out of the program,” she said.
At the new cohort’s launch Thursday evening over Zoom, each of the entrepreneurs introduced themselves by sharing personal stories.
“It’s an opportunity to share something personal and connect with each other,” Perlman said. “We want to introduce these women on an authentic level. You can hear elevator pitches all day long. We wanted it to be more personal.”
Local companies that have gone through the program include Flexia Pilates, Hamama, Emtrain, HomeZada and Foodom.
