WTIA Founder Cohort Recap: Three Years, Six Cohorts and More Than $100 Million in Funding Raised

The WTIA Founder Cohort is humming on all cylinders. To date, a total of five cohorts have graduated since the program’s 2018 inception, with the sixth set to graduate in January 2022. WTIA is currently accepting applications for the seventh Founder Cohort, slated to kick off in early 2022.

The premise behind the Founder Cohort is to help early-stage companies grow and scale over the course of a six-month period. WTIA and its partners provide founders with a clearly defined roadmap to help guide them as they navigate common startup challenges, such as increasing revenue, procuring additional investment capital, and building out their teams. To help them achieve these important milestones, members of the Founder Cohort receive mentorship, investor introductions, educational curricula, product discounts, and business development connections.

Here is a breakdown of the Founder Cohort program’s successes over the past three years, by the numbers:

Companies participated

Companies have a female founder, co-founder or executive

44%

Startups per cohort

Companies have a non-white founder, co-founder or executive

44%

Hours of classroom instruction over the course of 6 months

Cohorts have included founders from outside King County since the program went fully virtual in early 2020

20%

Beyond the numbers, the founders who’ve participated in the Cohort have found the community, connections, and access to experts and mentors to be an invaluable resource that helped them expand their business beyond what they would have been able to accomplish on their own.

Here are just some of the testimonials from past Founder Cohort participants:

As a first-time founder you have a lot of questions and very little answers, and WTIA became the first place I would turn. The broad and diverse network of industry experts, startup veterans, and other first-time founders quickly became invaluable. Ben Vaught, CEO of DemandStar

As a first-time female founder in enterprise technology, starting a new venture was incredibly hard. The WTIA program not only gave me incredible resources, but it gave me a community of other founders that have been the backbone of our success. MH Lines, CEO of Automaton

The depth and breadth of knowledge provided in this cohort is profound for first time founders and entrepreneurial veterans alike. As a first time founder, I have grown tremendously in my knowledge base through the Founder Cohort program at WTIA. Shawna Ruff, CEO of Intention Labs

As a female founder, WTIA helped to level the playing field. I’m certain that it was the connections as well as the training that helped my company secure $1.2M in funding from investors. Pradnya Desh, CEO of Advocat Technologies

The Founder Cohort program would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors:

Clark Nuber
Denali
Fenwick
J.P. Morgan
Morgan Stanley
Now CFO
Rippling
Seed IP
Wilson Sonsini

For more information about the Founder Cohort program, visit https://www.washingtontechnology.org/startup-program/wtia-founder-cohort-program/ or contact Nick Ellingson, Startup Ambassador and Director of Products, at nellingson@washingtontechnology.org.

If you’d like to submit an application for Founder Cohort 7, visit https://www.f6s.com/wtia-founder-cohort-7/apply.

Author

Nick Ellingson
Nick Ellingson started his career in software sales on the Eastside before joining the WTIA team. Now he finds new members for the WTIA community, listening to feedback about events and resources, and finding fun and creative ways to get more people involved with WTIA. In his personal time, he can be found playing video games, playing basketball, reading, writing, or spending time with friends. If the Chicago Bulls are playing, he's watching.
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