Accelerating Angels’ First Fund Backs Multiple Women

Accelerating Angels’ First Fund Backs Multiple Women-Led Tech Firms

The women-founded investment startup, launched in 2022, has backed nine businesses to date with more to come.

Accelerating Angels took on a challenge in 2022 to raise a fund committing capital to women-led startups.

Its co-founders knew they’d have an uphill battle to close the funding gap women entrepreneurs face. According to a study by the Founders Forum Group, only 2 percent of global venture capital went to female founding teams in 2025. Recent culture wars have made luring investors even more difficult. But Accelerating Angels has always focused on a key message: not investing in female founders is a missed opportunity.

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In April, the women-founded investment startup closed its first fund, totaling $2 million. “In a challenging fundraising climate, I’m just really proud to have been able to raise the fund and do it with a grassroots effort,” says CEO and fund manager Cindi Englefield. “For a first-time fund manager and woman fund manager, I’m proud to be able to overcome the challenge of that and get 46 investors to see the value of what we are doing.

“Women-led startups generate two and a half times more revenue per dollar invested, and women-led tech firms bring 35 percent higher returns. And companies with at least one female founder outperform by 63 percent. Those stats are what we are founded on,” Englefield says.

Englefield and co-founder Mary McCarthy were part of the Women’s Small Business Accelerator in Dublin, which McCarthy co-founded, and X Squared Angels, a woman-focused investor group started in 2013.

To date, Accelerating Angels’ first fund has invested $850,000 in nine women-led tech firms, in areas from nonprofit administration to biotech.

“We won’t look at a company that doesn’t have a woman leading it with 30 percent or more equity, because of those performance stats. And our thesis is that they have to have revenue and traction. They manage their time and money well, they’re capital efficient,” Englefield says.

Dasi Simulations is one of Accelerating Angels’ portfolio companies. It creates patient-specific, AI-assisted simulations for heart-valve surgeons. Accelerating Angels invested $100,000 in 2023. Teri Sirset formed the company with Ohio State University researcher Lakshmi Dasi in 2020 and has received FDA clearances and is Medicare approved.

Sirset says the company closed a funding round in late April and has raised $17 million. Accelerating Angels was the first investor. “One hundred percent, it’s been difficult as a woman. When I would pitch to venture capital firms led by men, we didn’t get very far and once the initial pitch was done, there was never any follow-up, feedback, really nothing,” Sirset says. “They were the only angel group that took a chance on us as a woman-backed company in ’23, and that gave us something to stand on.”

Englefield says it’s also important to focus on opportunity for women on the other side of the table by educating and involving new investors. Plans are in motion for a second fund, but Englefield and McCarthy are now driving membership and scouting prospects to build their portfolio to 12 to 15 companies.

“I do this for impact and investment. Because women are creating companies that are solving some of the big problems I see that need to be solved in the world,” Englefield says.

Co-founders: Cindi Englefield and Mary McCarthy

Business: Women-founded investment startup

Funding: Closed its first, $2 million fund in April, raised from 46 investors

Cynthia Bent Findlay is a freelance writer.

This story appears in the Summer 2026 issue of Columbus CEO. Subscribe now.