Tales from a Female VC: WIFAX

Barbara Bickham -

The Women’s Innovation Fund Accelerator is an Opportunity Zone/Impact Fund with 3 prongs in their mission.

First, is that we use acceleration techniques to grow and scale emerging tech companies.

Second, companies must be gender balanced at the C-Level. At minimum, an equal amount of men and women.

Third, we help the companies become fundable and sustainable. We work with under-represented founders and local communities to create the next generation workforce, entrepreneur and investor.

Our fund is creating its own IP around ecosystem building, funding structures and sustainability.

Our accelerator is unique in that we prepare companies to become fundable and sustainable. We provide 6-weeks of due diligence training, in which we package the companies for funding; and 2 weeks of sustainability training to help them create a sustainability plan.

Our accelerator is fully online so we can serve more founders and they can interact with our ecosystem better.

Our core values are Growth. Equality and Sustainability. Our fund encompasses 6 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Since we’ve founded the fund in Feb 2019, our core has not changed.

The 6 Sustainable Development Goals that we encompass are:

  1. No poverty
  2. Gender Equality
  3. Decent Work & Economic Growth
  4. Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure
  5. Reduced Inequalities
  6. Sustainable Cities & Communities

Our name Women’s Innovation Fund Accelerator covers these 6 goals.

Women’s shows we work for Gender Equality and Reduced Inequalities. We do this by funding and helping companies that are Gender Balanced at the C-Level. Companies are in Opportunity Zones to help gain funding within their local community.

Innovation shows we work for Decent Work & Economic Growth; Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure; and No Poverty. By bringing Emerging Tech (Blockchain, AI, AR, IoT, Quantum, Robotics) to these under-served communities, we can create high-skilled, high-paying jobs.

This creates a larger ecosystem, which can bring supporting jobs to the area. This helps bridge the economic gap. By investing in under-served and under-represented founders, we can bridge the funding gap and help build wealth within the community.

Fund Accelerator shows we work for Sustainable Cities & Communities. Not only does the company have sustainability plans, we use sustainable practices within the fund as well.

We are very proud of what we’re building here at WIFAX (https://wifaxvc.com). We look forward to seeing how it will grow.