CATEGORY TAG

Amex Ventures Teams Up with Project W to Support Women Founders

Partnership is a critical component of how Amex Ventures supports founders: we partner with them to bring new products and services to market, grow their companies, and benefit our mutual customers. Today, I’m excited to announce a new partnership we’re kicking off to help empower women founders: we’ll be working with Project W, an initiative dedicated to helping women build great companies, on SPARK, a program to support and resource early-stage female founders.

With female founders receiving less than 2% of venture funding¹, the work Project W has done since 2016 to support women entrepreneurs is crucial. In that time, the organization has helped over 175 women founders through programs and partnerships that provide them with education, support, and monetary resources. Lynn Loacker, founder and managing director of Project W, recently told me: “Project W was started to help ensure women founders are served in an equitable way. By working with the Amex Ventures team, we can strive to further even the playing field for them during a critical stage of their entrepreneurial journeys.”

Working with Project W, my leadership team, along with other executives and subject matter experts here at American Express, will provide over 25 women founders of early-stage startups focused on consumer commerce, B2B and enterprise capabilities with support through:

• Two pitch events, where we’ll give selected founders feedback on the presentations they’re using to raise venture capital.
• A one-day Women Entrepreneurs Boot Camp (WEB) where cohort members will spend the day in person in NYC with Project W and American Express subject matter experts as well as Amex Ventures investors, and dive into strategies for scaling their businesses to prepare for Series A funding.
• Alumni programming that will include mentorship and ongoing networking opportunities with startup founders, Amex Ventures investors and operators.

I’m so excited to launch our work with Project W, meet the founders participating in SPARK, and hopefully make a meaningful difference in the trajectories of their companies. I’m also excited to share more about their companies with all of you in an upcoming blog post. So, stay tuned for that. In the meantime, you can apply for SPARK and read more about Project W. .

Published Date July 20, 2023

¹ https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/18/women-founded-startups-raised-1-9-of-all-vc-funds-in-2022-a-drop-from-2021/