Day by day, women are surging into entrepreneurship and startups. BusinessWire writes, “Women entrepreneurs grew by 48% year-over-year, outpacing their male counterparts by 22%.”
Women dominate the national startup scene, launching companies at three times the rate of men, yet only attract about 4% of venture capital investments. That is why FourthWave was born in 2016, modeled with a pilot program in Los Angeles. After receiving a grant from the Sacramento mayor’s RAILS Fund, FourthWave launched its inaugural Sacramento program in 2017.
“FourthWave is charting a new course in business culture with innovative curriculum designed to facilitate our entrepreneurs’ growth as impactful, conscious leaders,” said Nancy Perlman, founder of FourthWave.
The organization is focused on providing access to funding, mentorship, and leadership development for female founders. In 2020, FourthWave stepped into a strategic partnership with the Carlsen Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Sacramento State to jointly administer its annual accelerator program.
FourthWave is committed to changing the narrative around gender equity and believes a core part of the story is seen through an economic lens. Investing in women is one of the most effective ways to reduce inequality and increase economic growth. This paradigm has proven to be true domestically and internationally, in economies of every scale. FourthWave envisions a world where women receive at least 50% of investment funds.
The essence of FourthWave
What makes FourthWave unique is its paramount focus on leadership. It works with founders to instill a firm foundation of conscious leadership, creating a win-for-all culture that encompasses the companies, their customers, and investors.
The FourthWave accelerator dedicates an equal effort to leadership training and business coaching, the development of sound startup business fundamentals and preparedness for external funding. Founders engage in bold conversations about leadership, identify the gaps to building and scaling their businesses, and develop strategies for attracting capital that supports their values.
FourthWave’s leadership philosophy does not focus on “what you do,” but rather “how you do it.“
We believe leaders act from one of three mindsets:
- Leaders operating from the “To Me” mindset believe that things happen to them, requiring them to react.
- “By Me” leaders believe in their own power to create and approach their activities from the mindset of creative action.
- “Through Me” leaders understand they are a channel for creativity and power and work to call forth life’s highest idea of itself.
The program’s second core focus is developing sound business fundamentals. Through a series of business assessment processes, founders work with FourthWave coaches to identify and resolve gaps in their businesses, which then enable them to scale. This work serves as the foundation for the program’s third core focus, funding.
Securing funding requires founders to possess a strong set of tools, led by confidence, a solid pitch deck, and access to capital. FourthWave works closely with cohort members to fine-tune their pitch decks and help them identify funding sources specifically suited to their businesses, in turn providing opportunities to present to prospective investors.
The future is female-led
Collectively, FourthWave alumni have raised more than $40 million in venture capital, concurrently generating new jobs and increasing revenues. Here are three of them, and what they have accomplished:
Janine Yancey: Founder and CEO of Emtrain, which provides revolutionary eLearning and analytics to companies that measure the impact of social dynamics in the workplace. Emtrain solutions go beyond compliance to develop inclusion, ethics, and respect as professional competencies. With more than 500 enterprise customers, including Cisco, Netflix and the New York Times, Emtrain is improving our workplaces. Emtrain has been featured as one of the fastest growing California companies by INC. Magazine.
Camille Richman: Founder and CEO of Hamama, whose grow kits are the easiest way to eat and grow veggies, enabling their customers to have fresh superfoods at home year-round. Hamama has raised venture funding and scaled its business rapidly in Sacramento, becoming the leader in the grow-at-home microgreen segment.
Ishita Shah, Ph. D.: Founder and CEO of Matrubials, which is developing novel mammalian milk-protein derived peptides for treatment of severe bacterial infections. Shah’s research was done at the UC Davis Foods for Health Institute. Matrubials has completed Y Combinator, won a Sacramento Region Innovation Award, and raised initial funding.
If you are a female founder looking to grow as a leader, scale your startup, and access mentorship and capital, please join us.
The Carlsen Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Sacramento State serves as a regional hub and platform for providing approachable and accessible entrepreneurial education, community, and support to enable startup founders of all backgrounds to explore and launch their ventures.
Cameron Law is the executive director of the Carlsen Center, a passionate ecosystem builder, and a proud Sacramento native.
Cheryl Beninga, co-founder of FourthWave and managing director of Wai Mohala Ventures, and Nancy Perlman, founder of FourthWave, contributed to this article.
