Camelback Ventures is committed to empowering entrepreneurs to create impactful solutions that address systemic inequities in Education and Conscious Technology. We offer a rigorous accelerator, the Camelback Fellowship, for innovative and driven entrepreneurs.
The Camelback Fellowship is a 16-week program that supports the development of both founder and venture. Since 2015, Camelback has supported 163+ entrepreneurs (many of whom have been recognized in Forbes 30 Under 30, received fellowships such as Echoing Green and Richards Draper Kaplan, and collectively gone on to raise over $50 million).
94% of our Fellows and alumni identify as Black, Indigenous, people of color and 63% identify as women and/or non-binary.
We support Fellows in the Education sector who drive social change by improving educational outcomes and access, including schools, programs, and products in early childhood, K-12, higher education, adult learning, and alternative pathways. We also support Conscious Technology ventures that use innovative tech solutions, particularly in health & wellness, community development, policy & advocacy, and workforce readiness.
Our program is designed with the psychological safety of the entrepreneur in mind, fostering a supportive community of aligned peers. Entrepreneurship takes a significant physical and psychological toll, often exacerbated for leaders from marginalized communities by financial responsibilities, social isolation, and dealing with gendered and racialized aggressions. The psychological safety we create allows our entrepreneurs to become the best versions of themselves, empowering them to grow exponentially and instilling confidence that ripples through their organizations, communities, and ultimately, the nation.
We emphasize our support in five specific areas: coaching, capital, connections, community, and curriculum. Many undervalued entrepreneurs lack access to these resources, and our experience has shown the importance of building community leaders who can drive impactful change. The Fellowship is held two times per year as a hybrid experience featuring an in-person kick-off and graduation as well as weekly virtual sessions in between. In addition, Fellows and coaches meet weekly to make progress on venture specific goals. Outside of Fellowship programming, Fellows will dedicate time for independent venture development. Key dates will be announced for travel and programming prior to confirming Fellow selection.
To learn more, click on one of the “5 C’s” below or keep scrolling to learn about all aspects of the Fellowship.
Camelback gives each Fellow their own coach. This dedicated 1:1 coaching enables regular strategy, accountability, and thought partnership. Coaches can help with anything from listening to your pitch to making introductions to analyzing pricing strategies.
Since we began, we have found that the impact of unrestricted capital empowers entrepreneurs exponentially. So, we have fine-tuned a funding strategy to be able to support all of our Camelback Fellows in a “friends and family” stage with an investment of $40,000 in each venture. Fellows have used this money for a variety of things, such as running a pilot program, hiring an app developer, going full-time on their venture, traveling to high profile industry conferences, buying new equipment, and funding the development of new community spaces.
Camelback facilitates the building of important relationships for Fellows in a number of ways, both during and after the Fellowship. There are opportunities to meet with investors and strategic partners throughout the program. Camelback also provides our founders with access to specialized support through our Expert Bench. Folks have used advisors from the Bench to design new pitch presentations, secure legal assistance, engage with fundraising specialists and meet with wellness coaches. > Find out how you can get involved
The entrepreneurial journey can often be a lonely one, but it doesn’t have to be. For undervalued entrepreneurs, the space to connect and learn from like-minded peers with similar challenges and successes is essential. Creating a supportive community enables these entrepreneurs to share experiences, foster collaboration, and build lasting relationships that contribute to their growth and resilience. We think our Fellows tell it best; read their stories and explore their work.
We prioritize the hustle over the hype. Having studied the top reasons why startups fail, we understand that undervalued entrepreneurs face additional hurdles. Our curriculum is designed to address these specific challenges, providing actionable insights and strategies to help Fellows build sustainable, impactful ventures. Our programming features our own content in combination with workshops with content experts, focusing primarily on helping our founders to identify strategic partnerships, speak with confidence about your ventures to different audiences, generate revenue/income and strengthen the internal structures of your ventures so that you’re better able to deliver to your communities and more ready to grow (if that’s what you want). At the end of the fellowship, our hope is that the foundations of your ventures are sturdier and you’re more confident to take up space as entrepreneurs.
The five Core Competencies we focus on include:
• Be Strategic
• Pitch Ready
• Stakeholder Development
• Project & Budget Management
• Hiring & Management Teams
Since 2015, Camelback has supported social impact entrepreneurs across the United States who are committed to making positive changes in their communities. We take pride in our diverse cohorts across lines of race, gender identity, education, and socioeconomic status.
Empowr teaches software development to high school students of color, establishing the school-to-career pipeline. Upon graduation, we work with our partners to help them secure six-figure careers.
Aimée Eubanks Davis is the founder of Braven. She was inspired to start this innovative nonprofit based on her deep passion and belief that our next generation of leaders can emerge from everywhere.
Liberation Journeys partners with educators and students to co-design learning experiences and school culture initiatives that center student voice, identity affirmation, and racial justice.
Suma believes community-led technology is required to advance financial independence and quality of life for low-income people, people of color and other frontline communities. Launching in Portland in late 2022 by providing affordable housing residents with low-cost, secure and easy to use access to clean mobility services, our proprietary, multi-sided, web-based suma platform grows to offer affordable food, transportation and utility goods and services to frontline community members in Portland and other cities.
Lele Art Lab is leveraging the power of art to unify and inspire young learners to care for the planet. We host pop-up art programs and run an outdoor art lab. We turn beaches into classrooms and marine debris into art. We use ART as a language of exploration and put the A in STEM education. We are the first South Florida art program to run a pop-up art lab using a special push-powered vehicle.
Poder Capital is a fintech company focused on creating affordable financial products for Latinx small business owners (SMBOs). Our 1st product is a 50K – 500K loan that leverages social underwriting (i.e. borrowers will raise the 1st 5-10% of the loan from their community) to validate credit worthiness & risk. This approach tackles a major barrier – traditional underwriting.
Alicia has sunsetted Abloom and is establishing a new venture, Selah, at the intersection of wellness, tech and travel
Movement Genius is a radically inclusive digital wellness studio providing movement classes to support mental and emotional health. Our programs provide stress relief techniques, mindful movement classes, and non-exercise activity thermogenesis to help manage anxiety, stress, poor sleep, and low self-esteem.
BLOC is a professional networking platform for black collegians on the rise. Connecting black collegians in a national bloc through the web and high power programming, BLOC works actively to close the black collegiate employment gap by 2025.
LiftEd is a tablet academic & behavior tracking app for special education teachers & related service professionals, that saves educators time, accelerates student learning outcomes, and provides increased transparency to schools and parents.
Phoenix International is a nonprofit that manages innovative public charter schools in rural communities that primarily serve students of color. Our first school site is in Southern Maryland, Phoenix International School of the Arts (PISOTA). Learn more at pisota.org.
Creative Reaction Lab is training Black and Latinx youth to design healthy and racially equitable communities. To create systems-wide change, we’re taking two approaches: 1) pioneering an equity-centered form of creative problem solving, and 2) creating a collaborative youth-led, community-centered movement challenging racial inequities in the education, media, health, and government sectors.
DivySci is an AI communication analytics tool. We provide leaders feedback on how to improve their communication tactics to align with increasing collaboration, inclusive perspective-taking, and removing cognitive biases.
Our mission is to help at-risk youth recover from trauma. Our vision is to change the paradigm of mental health services by making evidence-based support accessible to all kids. By reducing the impact of trauma, we will improve graduation rates among youth who use our service. We will help break the school-to-prison pipeline by reducing the number of incarcerated youth. Our long-term goal is to help build resilient cities where all youth are connected to the services that they need to succeed.
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