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For founders

Find the advisors who know your world

We build our advisors around the areas where women in Seattle are building. If your business is here, you'll find people who have done it before. If it isn't, you're just as welcome, and we'll still find you the right person to talk to.

Nine advisor tracks

Not on the list? Come anyway.

Open to all

Gaming, hospitality, logistics, legal, agriculture, something without a name yet. About half the growth in women-owned businesses is now happening outside the traditional categories, so drawing hard lines would be a mistake. Every member gets our full set of advisors, every masterclass and every peer circle, whatever the label. Several of our tracks started with one founder asking.

See how our advisors work

The AI layer

AI is why one founder can do this now

One founder with AI can do what took a funded team five years ago: research, design, build, market, support. SWELL is built for that, which is why we don't treat AI as a niche.

Building AI

Your product is the model, the agent, the data layer. You're in Applied AI & B2B Software. Your questions are about evals, inference cost, design partners and enterprise procurement.

Building with AI

You run a clinic, a brand, a consultancy, a nonprofit, and AI is how you do more than your headcount suggests. You're in your own track, tagged AI-enabled. Your questions are about workflows, tooling, quality control and what to stop outsourcing.

AI runs through all of it

Whether you are building agents or deploying them to automate repetitive operational tasks and financial modeling, you will get advisors who understand the tools reshaping every industry.

How we tag you

We ask what you build. We also ask how you build it.

Track only tells us half the story. A bootstrapped consultant and a venture-backed software founder can share a track and need completely different rooms. So we tag two more things, and they shape who we sit you next to.

How you're building

  • Services
  • Software
  • Physical product
  • Marketplace
  • Licensed practice
  • Nonprofit or social enterprise

How you're funding it

  • Revenue-funded
  • Grants and loans
  • Angel
  • Institutional venture

Where you are

  • Exploring
  • First paying customers
  • Growing
  • Hiring a team

Nearly 90% of women-owned businesses (opens in a new tab) in the US have no employees, and most are funded from savings rather than investors. We're built for that reality first, and we serve venture-track founders properly too. Neither path is the real one here.

Two layers of support

Two layers, so nobody falls through

Track advisors

They know your world. The person who took a product from a farmers market into regional retail. The one who sold software into health systems. The one who scaled an agency past solo.

Functional advisors

They work with every member whatever you build:

  • Positioning & messaging
  • Pricing & packaging
  • Sales & first customers
  • Capital strategy
  • Finance & operations
  • Legal & IP
  • First hires & people
  • Brand, design & content
  • AI inside the business
  • Founder capacity & leadership

Both show up in the same monthly rhythm: a practical masterclass, advisor office hours, your peer circle, and a feedback clinic.

FAQ

Common questions

Not sure where you fit? You fit.

Most founders sit in two tracks at once, and plenty sit in none. Tell us what you're building and we'll point you at the right people.

Join SWELL