Tech Equity Working Group
Powered by GET Cities Chicago
Collaboratively designing city-wide solutions and collective infrastructure
to address gender and racial inequities for Chicago-based tech founders
About
The Tech Equity Working Group (TEWG), an initiative of GET Cities Chicago, is a rolling cohort of accelerators, incubators, funds, and mission-aligned ecosystem supporters designing city-wide solutions and collective infrastructure to address gender and racial inequities for Chicago-based tech founders.
Past successful piloted projects of the Tech Equity Working Group include a Venture Scout Fellowship that works to support aspiring marginalized venture capitalists (now hosted at TEWG member Chicago:Blend), and a Chicago Tech Desk that includes grants and consultation for marginalized entrepreneurs to tech-enable their businesses.

Seed Founder Cohort
The goal of the GET Seed Founder Cohort is to move the needle on equity in tech by funding and supporting nine Chicago-based, women-founded tech startups.
This initiative was co-designed with the founders themselves, ensuring that their feedback was incorporated and their voices were heard at every stage of implementation.

How We’re Supporting The Founders' Journey To Their Next Round
The GET Cities Seed Founder cohort is the first time all of our 17 current Tech Equity Working Group member organizations are collaborating to solve one big challenge together.
The participants of the Seed Founder Cohort receive assistance in reaching their next funding milestones and additional opportunities to network and connect with investors, clients, and corporate sponsors.
We’re kicking off network building with a road show in San Francisco to bring exposure to the exciting founders coming out of Chicago and to build connections across a broader national ecosystem. Since Chicago represents a tech hub with the highest number of women-owned startups in the country, we’re excited to test solutions locally that could be applied in other cities.

Fundraising

Corporate Connections

Public Relations Consultation
Seed Founder Journey
Learn more about the #GETseed Founders and their road to success

Why Seed Founders Need Investment
(and why now is the time to invest)
Building a business from scratch is not for the faint of heart. The seed phase is the most crucial phase for startups, because this is when the business idea proves its market viability. But proof-of-concept comes with some costs—usually in the form of infrastructure, marketing and development. Businesses in the seed phase haven’t always earned revenue, and without seed funding, they are unlikely to progress further. Entrepreneurs from marginalized populations—women, trans, and non-binary people, particularly those who are Black, Latino/a, Indigenous, or people of color—are at an even greater disadvantage.
On average, companies with teams that are all men are typically awarded 300% more funding than women and BIPOC-founded companies in the seed phase. Marginalized founders on the whole often lack the connections needed to secure seed funding, while studies show that potential investors have a skeptical bias against women and other marginalized founders when compared to founders who are men. Without vital seed funding to realize their products and ideas, many women and BIPOC-founded startups aren’t even given the opportunity to succeed.
The system does not stack odds in the favor of these marginalized groups, which ultimately means that the greater population is missing out on life-changing ideas and innovations. If we are going to address gender and racial inequities, we must build new systems—and that can’t happen without investment at the seed phase.
Click Below To Read More About Why Chicago Seed Founders Need Support Now
“One of the key ways we work to increase equity in tech is by finding the points of leverage in the system where a small change can make a big impact. Only 20-30% of seeded companies move on to Series A.
But once you get there, the odds of success nearly double, making this a catalyzing inflection point if we want to increase the number of successful marginalized founders and the amount of capital they receive.”
Current Members of the
Tech Equity Working Group

















