Founder Fellowship

A signature program of NYCEDC’s Venture Access NYC initiative, the Founder Fellowship is designed to improve access to capital and networks for underrepresented founders across all tech-enabled sectors.

Each year, the Founder Fellowship supports a diverse community of New York City tech startup founder teams with much-needed access to resources and networks to help them grow their companies. Selected teams are placed in Founder Fellow cohorts led by NYCEDC’s program operators. All Fellow teams receive unique value and offerings including:

• Individualized work plans to identify key needs and interests
• Cohort convenings to discuss challenges and receive business administration support
• Connections to capital providers and potential collaborators
• Access to mentors and advisor network

The 2025 Founder Fellowship will include the following five program partners, each operating a cohort of the program:

• Chloe Capital, a venture capital firm investing with a gender and diversity lens in climate, health, and workforce innovations.
• Company Ventures, a NYC-based seed-stage venture firm offering a zero equity, mentor-led program designed to help founders fundraise more successfully.
• Gold House Ventures, an ecosystem that equips entrepreneurs with critical capital, tools, and connections through its venture fund, accelerator, and global membership of creative and business leaders.
• Newlab, a global venture platform for critical technology startups that are building our sustainable future, focused on lowering barriers for startups to commercialize faster.
• Visible Hands, a venture capital firm that holistically supports early-stage, underrepresented founders in building high-growth startups.

NYCEDC's investment in the Founder Fellowship program is resulting in nearly $1 million in dilutive and non-dilutive capital commitments catalyzed by its private sector partners to be invested across tech startups selected to the 2025 program.

Fellow teams also have access to perks from NYCEDC’s startup ecosystem partners, including:

• OpenAI, the AI research and development company behind ChatGPT, will provide up to $5,000 Application Programming Interface (API) credits to each participating Fellow team.
• Lex Mundi Pro Bono Foundation, which matches select qualified social impact entrepreneurs with skilled Lex Mundi attorneys for free or low-cost transactional legal support to help grow their organizations and ultimately scale impact. In the last two years, 10 Fellows have received pro-bono legal support from Lex Mundi Pro Bono Foundation.

Since launching in 2022, the Founder Fellowship program has served more than 250 NYC-based founders and co-founders across 168 tech and tech-enabled startups, selected from more than 1,400 applications. During their Fellowship cohorts, Fellow teams have collectively hired more than 100 new employees, raised more than $22 million, and increased their combined company valuation by at least $161 million. Approximately two-thirds of Fellow teams to date have least one female founder, 77 percent have a Black, Latinx, and/or Asian founder, and 15 percent have at least one LGBT+ founder.

Each Fellow team can consist of up to two founders of a tech or tech-enabled startup company, with at least one founder residing within the five boroughs of New York City. Companies can participate in up to one Fellowship cohort at a time, and may not participate in another accelerator during the duration of the Founder Fellowship program.

NYCEDC’s objective in creating the Venture Access Founder Fellowship is to eliminate barriers to entry into the venture-backed community and to build a more inclusive tech ecosystem in NYC. To this end, NYCEDC strongly encourages Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and women founders to apply to the program. Anyone can apply to participate in the Venture Access Founder Fellowship; Fellowships will be awarded without regard to sex, gender, gender identity or gender expression, sexual orientation, age, religion, creed, partnership status, marital status, disability (including use of a service animal), race, color, national origin, alienage, citizenship status, military status, or any other class protected by City, State, or Federal law.

If you're interested in applying for the 2026 Founder Fellowship program, fill out this form to be notified when applications open.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about Venture Access NYC, email [email protected].