These startups will be accepted into the ISDI Start incubator, an intensive program designed to commercialize their ideas and launch them to market.
In 2019, only 14.8 percent of European start-up founders are female. That number inched up slightly the following year to 15.5 percent in 2020.
The accelerator program from Spanish business school, ISDI, is working towards raising that figure higher. In its latest cohort of startup incubatees, 53 percent were women, including those that were just accepted into its prestigious “ISDI Start” incubator.
The eight-year-old Madrid-based digital accelerator, which is also part of the business and technology school, runs “ISDI Start” as an intensive accelerator program for its students.
Designed as a free venture incubation program for students and alumni graduating from ISDI, the Start program prepares entrepreneurs of early stage startups for market-readiness.
The four startups – Womanhood, Hulahoop, Lualo and The House of Padel – have been chosen to progress to the next stage of acceleration and mentoring: commercialization and product launch.
The four companies will work at turning their ideas into market-ready products over the course of two-months in a comprehensive incubator program led by experts from ISDI. The founders of these startups will interact with business mentors, subject-matter experts as well as have all the resources related to technology, marketing, legal, and talent acquisition.
“Our objective is to support our brilliant ISDI students to convert their ideas into market-ready products,” said Jesus Tapia, Head of ISDI Accelerator. “Since 2014 ISDI Accelerator has been building one of the most robust innovation ecosystems in Europe which includes government agencies, leading global corporations, successful startup founders, and a vast network of investors and business mentors. We’ve done everything to leverage this network for the next stage of innovative companies to lead Europe which are coming out of ISDI.”
To get to where they are, the four early-stage startups all passed through a rigorous process of training and analysis. The process works like this: The startups are coached with a “Teams Session” that matches startup founders with potential core team members to help them grow their businesses. That is followed by “Pitch Day,” where the most promising startups are selected to progress to the “Bootcamp” — a seven-day intensive training course that covers topics such as defining your business model, technology, product planning, prototyping, go-to-market strategy, and workshopping investor pitches.
The Bootcamp is capped off with a “Jury Day,” in which startups take the knowledge they’ve accumulated and apply it toward a final pitch to a jury which votes on the startups move on to the next phase of the incubator.
This finally culminates to a “Demo Day,” where these four startups will present their companies to the ISDI Investors Club, a community of 182 investors ranging from private investors, family offices, to corporations interested in investing in early growth projects.
The four women-led startups that will present at this demo day on December 20th, 2022 are listed below:
- Womanhood : The first Spanish-language application in the world that addresses menopause with technology, science and data so that women can take control of their own health and find what they need in one place, including: information, recommendations and products.
- Hulahoop : The ultimate entertainment and media platform built for creators’ financial independence that is based on the blockchain.
- Lualo: The Customer to Customer (C2C) platform created to efficiently rent any object by the hour, day or week.
- The House of Padel : The best way to enjoy your vacation while practicing your favorite sport, Padel, and building your international network of players.