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The 2021 Women’s Venture Competition is open for applications until May 15, 2021, 11:59 PM Eastern Time.

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About the Women's Venture Competition

Program Overview

The AIM-HI Accelerator Fund is proud to present a first-of-its-kind venture competition for women entrepreneurs leading innovative early-stage cancer-focused companies to receive equity investment of up to $1 million from AIM-HI and co-investors. We take the approach of entrepreneurial training & mentoring, thus creating a high impact not only on cancer therapeutics development, but also on women scientists’ participation in entrepreneurship opportunities.

The life sciences industry suffers from a lack of gender diversity. Women entrepreneurs are being overlooked for raising seed-stage money when launching a new company. AIM-HI, through its partner organization, National Foundation for Cancer Research, has decades of close working relationships with the word’s top medical research institutions and a rich history of supporting women scientists. In addition to our own network, AIM-HI wishes to expand the cadre of women entrepreneurs through open competition.

Program Details

The AIM-HI Women’s Venture Competition provides an opportunity for aspiring female entrepreneur-scientists in the cancer/oncology arena to seek early-stage funding from the AIM-HI Accelerator Fund. The value of this competition, outside the potential for seed stage equity investment, is:

  • Mentoring – we have a long-term focus on the entrepreneur-scientist, which is a human capital centered approach with a long track record. We look for coachability and entrepreneurial mindset in the women entrepreneur-scientists and match them with industry mentors (a value of $10K).
  • Advising – we focus on time-efficient, strategic connections and helping the women entrepreneur build out her team or provide virtual CXO services (a value of up to $100K)
  • Networking – we have a vast, selective global network of innovators, investors and influencers in the oncology subsector of life sciences industry. We will make introductions for investment and market expansion purposes (a value of up to $25K)

AIM-HI has partnered with Springboard Enterprises (www.sb.co) to bring a venture accelerator program component to women bioentrepreneurs that focus on selecting those women scientists with an entrepreneurial mindset and match them with our trusted network of venture advisors, mentors, coaches and investors. Springboard is one of the world’s first and the best-known accelerators solely focused on women entrepreneurs. Since 2000, nearly 800 Springboard portfolio companies seeking investment of financial and human capital for product development and expansion have raised $10.3 Billion, created tens of thousands of new jobs and generated billions in annual revenues. With 197 exits to strategic acquirers and 20 IPOs, Springboard entrepreneurs are transforming industries, including life sciences.

Program Impact

The intent of launching the Women’s Venture Competition program is to encourage and greatly increase women scientists’ participation in entrepreneurial ventures. AIM-HI will provide the critically needed funding to early stage oncology companies so that they could quickly generate the data that are essential for filling appropriate documents with the drug regulatory and approval agencies and enabling them to access additional new capital for their growth. AIM-HI will also provide entrepreneurial support to help increase visibility of the projects and provide connection to key experts in cancer research and drug development from our extensive network of cancer research and development global network.

Through our relationships such as with Springboard Enterprises, National Foundation for Cancer Research and Asian Fund for Cancer Research, we have global market access. Furthermore, we have also partnered with premier law firms, banks, impact investment funds, foundations and not-for-profit organizations that focus on women entrepreneurship with an emphasis on life sciences, to accelerate the success of women bioentrepreneurs leading companies in oncology. Each of these business partners provides significant support to help underwrite this program.

2020 Women’s Venture Competition

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