The NYU Female Founders Fellowship is open to all NYU undergraduate and graduate student entrepreneurs, as well as NYU faculty and staff, who are actively working on a startup venture. Recent alumni entrepreneurs who have graduated within the last year (at the time of application) and who started their venture while studying at NYU are also welcome to apply.
We seek to build a diverse, inclusive cohort of fellows. We welcome applications from any student, faculty, or staff member regardless of gender, and including but not limited to those who identify as trans, gender non-conforming, non-binary, or genderqueer.
All applicants must personally demonstrate:
- Commitment to their venture: Applicants must be passionate and knowledgeable about the problem they hope to solve for their customer, and demonstrate continued progress on the venture, with the expectation that they’ll continue to work on their startup after graduation
- Demonstrated hustle including completion of a Startup Bootcamp: Applicants must be able to learn from, and take advantage of available resources. A key way for applicants to show initiative and progress is by meeting with the Entrepreneurial Institute for coaching and completing a Startup Bootcamp (most often) in advance of applying.
- Commitment to supporting gender equity in entrepreneurship: Applicants must demonstrate that they and/or their venture are advancing causes important to gender equity and/or are supporting gender equity in entrepreneurship.
- Community mindedness: Applicants must value being part of a community in order to contribute to the growth and success of the Female Founders Fellowship community. Fellows are expected to offer support to their peers, receive group support, and generally show great respect for one another.
Applicant's Venture Considerations:
Students pursuing ventures in any sector may apply (social impact, healthcare, biotech, deep tech, consumer products, enterprise technology, etc.). Independent of sector, the program has a strong preference for entrepreneurs tackling meaningful problems, building novel/differentiated solutions, and for businesses capable of radically scaling (including non-profits).
Applications will be reviewed with the following questions in mind:
- Problem Identification: Does the venture solve a meaningful problem and how well does the team understand the problem they hope to solve and the customer segment/market they plan to address?
- Idea & Competition: Is the venture idea novel and/or a radical improvement over existing solutions?
- Milestones: What progress on the venture has been made so far - what has the team done/created? Is the venture generating revenue? How do you plan to acquire customers?
- Scalability: Does the venture have the ability to scale radically? What might be the potential impact and/or market opportunity of the venture at scale?
Loan Alleviation Grant Selection Criteria:
After participating in the Fellowship (and upon graduation), Fellows may apply for the Female Founders Fellowship’s Mark & Debra Leslie Student Loan Alleviation Grants, to help pay down their student loans. To be considered for grants, applicants must:
- Have met the criteria for becoming a Female Founders Fellow (found on this website page) and been selected as an NYU Female Founders Fellow (“Fellowship” group, not “Circle” group)
- Have actively participated in the Fellowship (“Fellowship” group, not “Circle” group), by attending all monthly meetings for at least one semester/cohort cycle (with limited exceptions as approved by Fellowship program leads),
- Have graduated from NYU in good academic standing,
- Be a recent alumni of NYU (graduated within 2.5 academic years of submitting this application),
- Must still actively be working on the same venture for which they participated in the Fellowship,
- Have actively participated in at least six months of coaching through the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute,
- Have participated in the NYU Startup Accelerator Series, including participating in the:
- NYU Startup Bootcamp,
- NYU Startup Sprint, and the (exceptions apply with prior approval from NYU Entrepreneurial Institute Senior Leadership - Rebecca & Frank),
- NYU Summer Launchpad (exceptions apply with prior approval from NYU Entrepreneurial Institute Senior Leadership - Rebecca & Frank),
Those applicants who meet the above criteria may apply for grants of between $5,000 and $50,000 in grant funding, paid directly to the founder (not to the founder’s venture) for the express purpose of helping to alleviate their student loan debt.
Additional criteria will affect the amount of funding granted to each applicant including:
- The total amount of funding available to be distributed by the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute in the academic year (subject to NYU Budgetary/Financial rules and guidelines),
- The applicant’s total student loan debt amount (from NYU or another institution),
- Other personal economic factors which could affect the applicant’s student loan liability and payback schedule,
- The number of hours per week the applicant is working on the venture (is the applicant working on the venture full time or part time? If it's part time, how many hours per week?),
- The perceived progress the applicant has made on the venture while participating in the Fellowship (as determined by through participation in the Fellowship, through coaching, and/or otherwise at the discretion of Institute senior leadership),
- Preference for radically scalable ventures (preference for venture-scale businesses - e.g. those businesses which could generate $100M in revenue annually at scale; For non profits we consider how broad/deep the impact you hope to generate may be),
- Preference for highly differentiated ventures (how unique/novel is the venture's solution/business model) compared to competitors
If funding is awarded, it will be given post-graduation in the form of a grant (with proof of graduation required to receive the funds). Grants are intended to go toward the repayment of the applicant’s student loan debt.
