As we approach the end of our 16 week accelerator program, we are starting to think about who will be applying for our 2019 program. We know that the best founders have a deep understanding of the problem they’re trying to solve for and it got me thinking about where are the founders with a disability and how do we get them to apply for Remarkable? We think that there could be more people with a disability out there who are either working on something or have the seed of an idea for something…and we want to know who they are!
We’re looking for people with disability to get involved in Remarkable because we believe that founders with disability will have great insights and truly understand the problem they are solving. Designing with disability rather than designing for disability can make a big difference. As Liz Jackson, founder of @The Disabled List says “People with disability are the ultimate life hackers. They’ve been hacking their whole lives”.
There has been no better time to get involved in disability tech. Crunchbase news recently reported that VC investment in startups building assistive technologies and treatments for disabilities grew by 133 percent between 2012 and 2017 and the number of VC deals grew by 87 percent.
And Startup Muster, the largest survey of the Australian startups, shared in their 2017 Annual Report that 4.3% of startups are in the disability space. This is the first year that Startup Muster has recorded this information about disability and we expect to see this grow in 2018.
Now is an exciting time to innovate and to harness technology to improve the lives of people with disability. This is a call out to unearth the founders with disability and invite them to apply for the Remarkable accelerator program in 2019. If you or someone you know has a disability and an idea, even if you’re not ready to apply in 2018, we would love to hear from you!
