Deadline: January 30, 2026
Applications are open for the Village Capital/Standard Chartered Foundation US Women in Tech Accelerator 2026. The US Women in Tech Accelerator, in collaboration with Standard Chartered Foundation, was designed to empower 10-12 women-led, impact-creating, tech-enabled startups to scale their solutions, create jobs, and drive economic mobility nationwide.
Despite growing awareness of the funding gap for women founders, all-women founding teams have received an average of only 2.4% of venture capital funding over the past 30 years, highlighting barriers to innovation, economic growth, and equitable access to resources. The 2026 US Women in Tech Accelerator is designed to help address these gaps by supporting early-stage founders as they strengthen their businesses and prepare for growth.
Benefits
- Financial Analysis: Access to 1:1 coaching with an investment analyst focused on building a financial model and financial narratives.
- Grant Capital: Two (2) startups will be selected by their peers to receive USD 25K in grant capital to further scale their solutions.
- Mentorship and Networking: Engage in opportunities to network and receive mentorship from investors, strategic partners, founders, and business leaders.
- Milestone Development Plan: Create a personalized milestone development plan for investment readiness, growth, and impact, using VilCap’s online milestone-tracking tool.
- Peer-to-Peer Learning and Evaluation: Access to Village Capital’s signature approach to shifting power dynamics in investment decisions by placing entrepreneurs at the center of the due diligence process.
Eligibility
Eligible startups must:
- Be a legally registered, US-based, for-profit business with fewer than ten employees.
- Be led by at least one full-time founder who identifies as a woman, including cisgender, transgender, and non-binary individuals.
- Be revenue-generating with less than USD 100K in annual revenue.
- Have meaningful customer or business validation (not limited to revenue; it can also be successful pilot studies, number of users, and/or strategic partnerships).
- Have a minimum viable product (MVP) and raised less than USD 1.5M in equity.
- Be tech-based or tech-enabled and address one economic mobility and/or access to essential services in the following areas:
- Increase access to affordable, high-quality healthcare, wellness resources, and critical medicines.
- Equip and connect care workers to provide higher-quality care and increase access to care.
- Amplify and strengthen community-integrated solutions.
- Create innovations in education that expand access and increase quality.
- Broaden accessibility to essential services for marginalized and under-resourced communities.
- Reduce barriers to employment and career advancement by creating new pathways, offering training and upskilling opportunities, and building professional networks.
- Empower individuals, families, and underserved communities to increase financial literacy, build financial resilience, and long-term stability by improving access to essential financial services.
- Advance economic mobility for low-income or other underserved communities by building generational wealth through career advancement, home ownership, and/or savings and investment opportunities.
- Create access to essential services that unlock economic opportunity.
Application
For more information, visit US Women in Tech Accelerator.
