Tag: Diversity

In April, we announced a 3-year, $30 million commitment to the AWS Impact Accelerator, a series of programs is designed to help high-potential, pre-seed startups led by underrepresented founders succeed. We also launched the first of these programs, the AWS Impact Accelerator for Black Founders, and today we’re excited to announce the startups that will make up this inaugural cohort. Meet the startups, and learn more about this exciting opportunity.

Learn more about the new program that will provide up to $225,000 in cash and credits for early stage startups led by Black, women, Latino, and LGBTQIA+ entrepreneurs, as well as training, mentoring, and technical guidance. Then hear from three founders about what access to capital and resources means for the next generation.

Co-Founded by CEO Julie Despraz, Swedish startup Alloverse has developed an open-source platform for virtual collaboration that is being used to build the spatial internet. The company’s platform and tools enable users to create virtual workspaces and 3D applications to populate them. We recently sat down with Despraz to chat VR, sustainability, and celebrating even the smallest of wins.

There’s been plenty of attention paid by the media to the problems of facial recognition software in recent years. Invasion of privacy, for one, and high potential for misuse, for another. AIH Tech, a Toronto-based computer vision company, has set out to solve the problem that most other facial recognition technologies have faced in their bedrock: racial bias.

Sage Franch and her co-founders at Crescendo have all faced their own set of barriers in their work lives, whether that discrimination was based on gender, race, or any number of other cultural biases that can be endemic to many workplaces. They founded their startup to help companies learn about — and improve — their cultural competency, with software designed to promote diversity and inclusion.

Sarah Nahm is the CEO at Lever, a software company in San Francisco that’s building modern talent software to help companies power their next-generation recruiting. For Nahm, a typical day is shaped by a series of highly intentional interactions with her team. Some of these are scheduled, some are serendipitous, all are crafted to prime her employees, and therefore her company, for success.

How do you build a product and hire technical talent when you’re a non-technical founder? Former founder and CEO Richard Howard, currently on AWS’ startup business development team, shares his thoughts.

Jonno Southam leads Venture Capital (VC) business development for AWS in Europe. He is also an Amazon ‘Bar Raiser,’ a role dedicated to maintaining the high hiring bar. Here, Jonno shares his thoughts on the hiring process and his experience at AWS.

Hiring the right people for your startup is one of the most important things that you will do as a founder. Beyond finding product/market fit, it’s probably the most important thing that you’ll do. Before joining AWS, I’d interviewed and hired a bunch of people as the CEO and Co-Founder of the live event startup Shortcut. Amazon, however, is the only employer that has actually taught and trained me how to properly interview and hire. I’d now like to share some of those lessons here because I think they are critical and particularly applicable to startups.

David Ponraj, Founder of Startup Space, talks about how the platform connects founders with the resources they need to start their business, how his early experiences building a company shaped his vision for the Tampa-based startup, what’s putting it ahead of the curve.