Female Founders Alliance (FFA), a community dedicated to accelerating the success of women-founded venture-scalable companies, has acquired New York-based Monarq Incubator. The combined entities will make FFA the largest network of women and non binary venture-scalable founders, investors and industry leaders in the US, with substantial footprints along all major tech hubs nationally.
Founded by Irene Ryabaya and Diana Murakhovskaya, Monarq Incubator is a VC-focused accelerator program for women. Since 2017, 32 companies have graduated from the program and have gone on to raise more than $10M in venture capital. Notable graduates of the program include HauteHijab, Robyn (a rebrand of FertileGirl) and Cosynd.
“FFA and Monarq share more than just a mission – we share founder DNA,” said Leslie Feinzaig, CEO of Female Founders Alliance. “Our two communities and accelerator programs were built by women founders, for women founders. We are uniquely able to build programming that accelerates the success of women in our space, and now along with founder cred, we have scale and a national footprint. I am so excited for what we can achieve in this next stage of FFA.”
Monarq Incubator founders have each launched new endeavors. Murakhovskaya recently announced the launch of The Artemis Fund (www.theartemisfund.com), a $20 Million venture capital fund investing in female led companies nationally. Ryabaya launched Warmintro, a mobile-based tool to meaningfully connect community members at scale through events, introductions, and online discussions. Said Ryabaya: “We chose FFA as our buyer and partner because their mission perfectly aligns with Monarq’s mission of supporting women founders so we know our community is in good hands.”
About FFA:
Female Founders Alliance is a network of women and non-binary founders of venture scale companies, along with investors, executives, influentials and startup advocates. Our mission is gender parity from the top down by accelerating the success of women-founded startups.In 2020, the FFA will host Ready Set Raise, an accelerator dubbed the Y Combinator for Women by TechCrunch, The Champion Awards, Access in 6 cities across the US, and multiple online forums. Our community has thousands of members nationally and in 2019, nearly 3k professionals actively participated in 17 activations online and offline.
