TatuNurse at Fast Forward accelerator
TatuNurse was chosen for the 2021 Fast Forward Accelerator. The Fast Forward Accelerator accelerates social impact for tech non-for-profit companies. Over the years, the accelerator has graduated 59 tech non-for-profits who have gone on to impact more than 88 million lives and raised more than USD 275 million. We were thrilled to be part of this experience. Here is why we enjoyed this accelerator:
- The Fast Forward team cares: When some one really cares about you and your work, you feel it. Though we were far away in Uganda and with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, we were not left behind. The two founders of Fast Forward, Kevin Barenblat and Shannon Farley personally engaged with us every week in what they call “office hours”. This was a good time to talk about whatever challenges, both personal and professional that we were facing. We also had “circles” where we simply shared about our week with the other co-founders in the cohort. Amazing, right?
- The Fast Forward accelerator enhanced our story telling: We spent a lot of time working on our pitch decks and our story telling. This is very important. Remember, Steve Jobs said: Story teller is the most powerful person on earth. The accelerator unleashed our story and made our pitch stronger than we could ever imagine. We spent many hours practising our pitches and one-liners. Fantastic, right?
- Fast Forward alumni were inspirational: Every week, we had a session with alumni who have gone on to do amazing work all over the world. We learnt a lot from their stories and the challenges they have conquered. Inspirational staff!! I remember one of the alumni, Grace Garey, founder at Watsi, sharing about how founders can find balance and take care of themselves. This was a timely talk for me who was adapting to life with a new baby and in-between several jobs to survive.
- We met mentors from top tech companies: We had micro-mentoring sessions with Google, Atlassian, Github, Twilio, Akamai, Okta, Bloomberg, etc. Staff from these companies have a lot of experience as you would expect. They gave us enormous feedback and advice that will stay with us forever. To make it more interesting, the Fast Forward accelerator matched us with a company in Singapore, MomoCentral, that worked with us on our user interfaces and even helped set up our Amazon web services instances. This gave us a big push. By the end of the accelerator, we had launched our Free App to more than 200 nurses in Uganda.
- We raised funds: If you have been to other accelerators, you know that it is not every day that you raise funds during an accelerator. The fast forward accelerator gives each of the cohort companies USD 25K funding. And guess what? We raised even more funds at demo day. Amazing! Big boast to kickstart our journey.
Thank you Fast Foward!!