The Founder Institute, the World's Largest Startup Accelerator, is committed to narrowing the gender gap in high-tech startups.
In 2011, we introduced the Female Founder Fellowship program, which would allow females to apply to the Founder Institute for free ($50 value), and also provide a free Course Fees to our best female applicant in each city ($700 value). At the time, only 16% of Founder Institute companies were founded by females.
Since introducing the program, our overall number of female-founded companies has increased over 65%, to a total of 28%. This is more than twice as high as most other startup accelerators, and we now have helped launch over 3,100 female-founded companies - but there is still plenty of work to be done.
The Female Founder Fellowship for the Portugal 2025 Founder Institute is now available, but to be eligible you must apply by the Early Admissions Deadline (jun 22, 2025).
The recipient of the Lisbon Female Founder Fellowship will be recognized as a promising female entrepreneur with the utmost potential to become a successful technology founder. Not only will they gain acceptance into the prestigious Founder Institute entrepreneur training and startup launch program, but also they will not be required to pay a Course Fee to participate.
The Founder Institute provides promising entrepreneurs an opportunity to “learn by doing” and launch a company through structured training courses, practical business-building assignments, and expert feedback from a large network of business mentors. Based in Silicon Valley with chapters across over 200 cities and six continents, the Founder Institute has helped launch over 7,500 companies that have created over 30,000 new jobs.
I want to see a point in the not too distant future where 50% of all the new startups are founded by women or have women in the founding team"
- Adeo Ressi, Founder & CEO of the Founder Institute
To learn more about the Female Founder Fellowship program, and to see where else it is available, visit http://fi.co/contents/fff.
