6 xx winners: Investing in Women in STEM

Hello everyone!

I can't believe in less than 10 days, we're starting the xx.

It feels like forever ago that I had no idea what I was talking about during my first meetings about funds and almost broke down. A lot of strangers took chances on me even though I had no clue what I was doing. 

Now, with the help of the best team and partners in the world, we're starting Wefunder's first ever accelerator. It's sort of crazy that we went through 200+ applications and found 6 gems that we hope to help become healthy and successful in the next 3 months.

Enough of my emotional blabbing. Here are the 6 incredible STEM women-run companies. I hope these founders set the tone for the future xx cohorts and we help them change the world. 

Let me introduce you to our amazing 6 winners: 

Ena, Erad and AJ from SF - Pyggy Bank

Pyggy Bank team is building the first bank that’s designed for teens. They are currently working on a smart savings mobile app with a component of a prepaid debit card.

Ena's apocalypse survival skill: I can pretty much eat anything (that's not poisonous). I loved eating and cooking bugs when I was a child.

Dipa, Max and Justin from Bay Area - Atlas Mental Health

Atlas is a mental health platform that brings together students, teachers, and parents (because you can’t carry the weight of the world on your own)

Dipa's apocalypse survival skill: My endless supply of puns — I can keep 'em coming like there's no tomorrow ;) 

Bryanda from Atlanta - Quirktastic

Quirktastic provides affirmation for weirdness by creating a community-building tech platform for people of color who participate in fandoms (anime, comic books, sci-fi and gaming). Think Tinder + Refinery29 for geeky, nerdy people of color.

Bryanda's fun fact: This also goes a bit into my superpower; I am a researcher. If I don’t know how to do something, I go into overdrive trying to find the answer or shooting my shot with seemingly unreachable people who I know have the answer. I have also become a lot better at building a team for Quirktastic. Our company culture is out of this world! (You can often find them using the hashtag #QuirkSquad).

Courtney, Zach and Jack from Canada/SF - Kopa

PadPiper connects students with housing for their internships. We work with students, employers, and landlords to make this happen.

Courtney's fun fact: I traveled in 8 countries by myself just to prove to myself that I could. (The countries were Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa if you're wondering.) Also, I made it onto my university's Division 1 Varsity Squash team even though I had never played before, and I became captain for my last two years in university.

Lucy and Shirley from Canada - Wave

Wave is a social sharing platform built around small groups. Wave takes the best parts of group messaging (e.g. low-pressure, straightforward posting) and combines them with the content discoverability on social networks.

Shirley's fun fact: Given a choice between fight or flight, I’m on team flight all the way! Games like Assassins taught me that hiding and running help me survive far longer than an offensive approach. That being said, my most useful survival skill would be running long distances quickly. I ran a marathon last year and I still am able to run around 10-20 km easily on a whim.

Lucy's fun fact: I moved to Canada from China when I was 11. I learned English in the same year and somehow ended up getting 1st place in my middle school’s public speaking competition.

Kate from Canada - Ensembl

Ensembl is reimagining the way we design, manufacture and sell cookware in order to create innovative, thoughtfully designed, space efficient products that fit the way we live today: in small spaces.

Kate's fun fact: I love animals and helped to start an international dog rescue organization in Toronto (Save Our Scruff); I helped them become a charity and sit on their board. Last but not least, I absolutely love to bake and find the combination of precision and creativity good stress relief. I particularly enjoy baking for other people (I can’t eat it all myself) and like to capitalize on access to a hungry audience whenever I have the chance.