Accelerating Female Founders Program round 1 recipients

Round 1 recipients of the Accelerating Female Founders Program delivered a diverse range of initiatives to female founders across Queensland, to support every stage of their innovation journey, and their participation in key industries and technologies.

All programs listed below were available to Queensland-based female founders with innovative businesses, or female leaders within an innovative business or the innovation ecosystem.

These programs, and other support for Queensland female founders are delivered under the Backing Female Founders initiative.

Startup Onramp Female Founders Program

Startup Onramp Female Founders Program

Applications closed

This program had four key components:

• mentoring from experienced founders and investors on any aspect of your startup or startup idea
• startup skills development in essential concepts and best practice in your own time
• the Female Founders Pre-Accelerator, an eight-week part-time virtual incubator for female founders ready to launch and grow their startup
• individual advice and guidance on preparing to raise capital.

View the Startup OnRamp webinar for people interested in starting a high-growth business

Who should apply?

Female founders anywhere in Queensland, working in any sector and building innovative products or services who are tackling national or global markets.

More information

Contact: Colin Kinner 
Phone: 0411 122 976 
Email: colin@startuponramp.com
Website: https://www.startuponramp.com/femalefounders

Grow National – a Food and Beverage Accelerator Program

This two-stream program offered support and resources to help businesses thrive and grow, fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation within the local and wider food and beverage industry

Seed to Sprout: a one-day workshop for food and agribusiness start-ups looking to turn their fledgling businesses into viable operations and established businesses wanting to ensure their fundamental food business basics are covered.

Ready and Ripe: a 10-week intensive program for established businesses looking to scale their distribution, production and market access beyond their current operations.

Who should apply?

Food, beverage and agri businesses in the start-up and scale up journey. Businesses should ideally be located in the Greater Sunshine Coast, Moreton Bay and wider South-East Queensland region. The ideal cohort members are open to collaboration, innovation, and actively contribute to nurturing a vibrant and interconnected food and beverage ecosystem.

More information

Contact: Rebecca Gillingham 
Phone: 0419 651 157  
Email: info@foodagribusiness.org.au

Female Founders Fast-track: Elevating Queensland Rural, Regional and Remote Female Founders by Leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Innovative Growth Strategies

This program, executed through the Women in Rural, Regional and Remote Entrepreneurship (WiRE) Program elevated innovative Rural, Regional and Remote (RRR) Queensland founders by helping them to discover, understand and use innovative business growth strategies and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools.

This was achieved by offering participants a personalised transformative business growth experience to more effectively: identify new opportunities; innovate their products and services; expand their reach and acquire more customers; improve their business systems and efficiency to level-up their sales; become part of an incredible network of female founders; access new resources, expertise, and prepare for funding opportunities; and make the most of innovative business strategies and Artificial Intelligence tools.

Who should apply?

Female founders in rural, regional, or remote Queensland who wish to start, grow or scale their innovative ideas, products, services and businesses. The program aims to support various industries, especially in tourism and agriculture. Migrant and refugee female founders are encouraged to participate in advancing their inclusion in the Queensland innovation ecosystem.

More information

Contact: Retha Weisner 
Phone: 07 3470 4519 
Email: wiresupport@wireprogram.com

Launch Y(E)P Incubate & Launch Y(E)P Accelerate

Launch Y(E)P Incubate was delivered to two cohorts. Launch Y(E)P Incubate was designed to launch entrepreneurship projects into the innovation space. The incubate program was for early-stage ideas that could be new businesses, or new ideas to make an existing business more innovative and/or scalable.

Launch Y(E)P Accelerate is a business growth program in Far North Queensland which ran over 12 weeks. The program was delivered online and with meetups throughout Queensland with the inclusion of a Gold Pass at the week-long Tropical Innovation Festival in June 2024.

The program was offered to two streams of applicants:

Tech-oriented businesses to scale through new customer acquisition, new market entries or new investment; or,
Innovation-ecosystem leaders to accelerate their strategic thinking and program design, connections and collaborations/partnerships.

Who should apply for the 12-week Accelerate Program?

Launch Y(E)P is regionally focussed. The majority of founders / ecosystem leaders will live and work regionally, with in-person involvement located in Cairns. Non-regional participants must have either personal factors that limit involvement in other accelerators and incubators or offer products/services that help people living in regional Queensland live happier, healthier and/or wealthier lives.

Recent initiative to support female founders

Launch (YEP) also delivered the Launch Y(E)P Intensive one-day program on 12 March 2024. This one-day program worked with participants to explore, unlock and clarify innovative ideas.

More information

Contact: Kate Montgomery
Phone: 0431 911 721
Email: kate@launchyep.com

Elevating Female Founders Program

This program focused on building connections within the cohort as well as the wider ecosystem, by meeting female founders where they are in their journey and applying a range of bespoke 1:1 industry-specific, challenge-specific advice as well as cohort-based activities moving businesses to the next stage, whether from problem statement to idea or from one customer to 10. 19 companies completed this program.

More information

Phone: 07 3316 5777
Email: info@rivercitylabs.net
Website: https://rivercitylabs.acs.org.au/

Change the Ratio: Bridging the Gender Gap in Sportstech

This program strove to increase the success of female founded sportstech businesses in Queensland, by connecting female founders with national sportstech peers and an international network to systematically explore entrepreneurial foundations.

The Australian Sports Technologies Network has partnered with US-based organisation Women in Sports Tech (WiST) to provide specialised programs, events and activities for women in sportstech, including pre-accelerator, mentorship, webinars, masterclasses and education workshops, aimed at increasing the diversity and innovation capability in the sector.

The ASTN completed their Pre-Accelerator course with their core group of six female founders on 23 November 2023. The feedback from these female founders was fantastic and ATSN were excited to continue working with this group of female founders who would continue to participate in group mentoring sessions with their US-based partners, Women in Sports Tech (WiST) throughout the first half of 2024.

ATSN’s second phase of the program commenced, with more female founders joining their group for their Masterclass Series. The first event was on 29 November 2023, with three more Masterclasses held in 2024.

More information

Contact: Amy Crosland 
Phone: 0450 725 552 
Email: amy.crosland@astn.com.au

iActivate: Regional Female Founder Accelerator

Curated by women who are experts across the social impact sector, the program gave participants clear and actionable steps for defining goals and intended outcomes, understanding business-for-good ecosystems, applying sustainable and innovative business models, prototyping for-purpose startups, storytelling, collaborating, scaling and measuring impact.

The 14-week online program supported 19 regional Queensland female founders to grow their impact. Sector experts facilitated weekly workshops and knowledge sharing sessions, and participants flexibly worked through iActivate’s online modules to deepen learning.

More information

Email: socialinnovation@cqu.edu.au

Female Founders Forward Accelerator Program (FFFWD)

A comprehensive business development, education and training program for female founders and leaders. FFFWD was a locally based, yet globally focussed program providing world-class training and materials, access to the best mentors, exposure and game-changing opportunities to take purpose-driven, innovative enterprises to the next level. More program details, including information on the 13 inspiring purpose led businesses is available on the Impact Boom website.

More information

Contact: Sarah Ripper 
Phone: 0409 059 687 
Email: sarah@impactboom.org
Website: https://www.impactboom.org

Business and Technology Accelerator Roadmap Development Program for Female Founders (Accelerating Female Founders)

This program provided six female founders with expert technical and business advice and tools to accelerate the development of their technology or product. They developed a roadmap to become investment ready and well-positioned to apply for grant funding. The technology expertise ARM Hub offered included artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data analytics, robotics, and automation. More details on the fantastic women who participated in this program can be found on the ARM Hub website.

More information

Contact: Angela Reed 
Phone: 0430 197 158 
Email: angela.reed@armhub.com.au

Boosting Business Innovation Masterclass

This two-day workshop, plus Business Advisory Service, supported women in existing businesses and entrepreneurial start-ups across all industries to investigate, build, or transform their business model for growth. The workshop gave businesses an understanding of how to reimagine the future of their business, using modern tools and design practices to innovate or invent their business model in a structured way.

Focused on embedding long-term capabilities in the business, participants worked on real-world solutions guided by facilitators and expert mentors. On completion of the workshop, participants were provided one-on-one Business Advisory Services to develop their idea further and assist in completing a 12-month Growth Roadmap.

More information

Contact: Tanya Egerton 
Phone: 0482 568 100
Email: tanya@circulanation.org