Mindset Launches Global Growth Program for Female Founders

Mindset, a women-led integrated marketing and communications agency, has launched applications for its first Growth Program, a six-week, non-profit initiative designed to help female founders from emerging markets scale their businesses internationally. The program will support founders with working products who are preparing to enter markets across Europe, the UK and the US.

The inaugural cohort will include 15 female founders who will take part in a speaker-led curriculum focused on raising capital, developing investor relationships and managing their own communications. The program will run from 21 September to 23 November, with applications open until 30 August and the selection process continuing through 6 September.

To qualify, applicants must be from a country listed by the World Bank as an emerging economy, although they can currently be based anywhere in the world. Eligible markets include India, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Brazil, Bangladesh and Mexico, among others. The complete list of eligible countries is available through the program.

Key Highlights:

• Mindset’s Growth Program will help 15 female founders from emerging markets expand internationally
• The program will provide training in fundraising, branding and communications
• Participants will also gain access to mentors, investors and journalists

“At Mindset, we work with female founders every day, and we keep seeing the same barriers,” said Dina Mostovaya, Founder and CEO of Mindset. “Women still have less access to capital, less than 2% of global VC funding reaches women-founded companies, and fewer people opening doors for them. For founders from emerging markets, breaking into more developed economies can make those challenges even harder. We built this program to give fifteen founders practical guidance and direct access to people who can help them move forward, together with an actionable playbook. It’s our mission put into practice.”

“These aren’t abstract numbers,” said Natalia Edde, Partner and Chief Operating Officer of Mindset. “They’re the reason strong companies built by capable founders with real traction never make it past their home market. As someone who has been an immigrant myself, I know how important it is to have a community around you when you’re building something in a new environment. For female founders, this is even more important, so we want these founders to have that support as they take their companies further.”

The curriculum is structured in four tracks that are led by practitioners who have first-hand experience in the subject matter: investor communications, customer intelligence, personal brand and external communications.

Taryn Andersen of Impulse4Women, THCAP Venture Capital, and EIC Jury at the European Commission will be conducting Introduction: How to Raise Capital as a Founder from an Emerging Market, which will introduce participants to the EU and the US early-stage ecosystem and highlight funds that specifically target women and emerging market founders.

Astghik Zakharyan, CEO of SIA Startup Investor Accelerator, Mossy Ventures, will talk about “Building Your Angel Round From Zero,” including how to find the right angels, how to cold call and get replies and how syndicates are formed.

Natasha Gorobinskaya, Founder, Blueberry Research Group, will lead the course “Customer Communication: What Stops You From Hearing Your Customers”, which will provide foundational information about customer communication and offer templates to help founders spot the difference between what they know about their customers and what they've assumed is true.

Beyond Vision's Business Growth Advisor, Karolina Attspodina of the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt, will teach “The Female Founder’s Personal Brand That Helps You Raise Capital,” which will explain what a strong LinkedIn profile looks like for a female founder, and how a solid personal brand can help lead to deal flow.

Erik Eklund, Founder of The Oasis and Instructor at IESE Business School will lead the course “Turning Your Story into Your Competitive Advantage,” which will cover the 60 second, 5 minute and 15 minute versions of a founder's story to help the founders make their non-linear backgrounds an advantage. And Dina Mostovaya and Natalia Edde, Founder & CEO and Partner & COO of Mindset, will be leading the “Building Your Own Comms Engine,” a founder-led DIY comms playbook, which covers when to hire in an agency.

Each 15-founder cohort will also get 1-on-1 mentorship sessions as well as live access to tier-1 journalists and investors. Program resources will be available to participants for 3 years post-graduation. It can offer the opportunity to learn and a way to get access to investor and press circles outside of South Asia, which can be a barrier to breakthroughs for Bangladeshi and South Asian founders looking to expand beyond South Asia, or even a fundraising trip that early-stage founders typically are too busy to make an initial trip on spec to learn about a market.