XLH is the only healthcare accelerator to receive the national SBA award four times; $50K grant will fund innovation in Kentucky and underserved states in the Southeast
Louisville, Kentucky – XLerateHealth (XLH) is pleased to announce that it has been recognized among the nation’s most innovative and promising small business accelerators by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Growth Accelerator Fund Competition (GAFC). This is the fifth year the award has been active and the fourth year that XLH has received this recognition. XLH is the only healthcare accelerator and one of only two accelerators nationwide to receive the award four times. XLH is the only Kentucky-based accelerator to receive the $50K award in 2019.
Based in Louisville, Kentucky, XLH was developed to cultivate and grow promising healthcare innovation in underserved areas. The SBA’s recognition of XLH as a leading accelerator underlies the success of XLH’s main initiative, a 12-week bootcamp that connects startup company leadership with resources to help bring their solutions to the marketplace.
“We are honored to receive recognition for a fourth year from the SBA,” says Jackie Willmot, CEO & Co-founder of XLH. “Since 2013, we have supported over 80 companies across a range of healthcare and life sciences domains and we are especially proud to continue supporting innovation in areas that are typically under-resourced.”
The award is a part of the SBA’s Growth Accelerator Fund, a competition launched in 2014 to award leading small business accelerators and incubators monetary prizes totaling $3M per year to support innovation. The 2019 competition placed emphasis on accelerators that work with small companies in high-tech and STEM markets. The recipients, spanning 39 states and territories, must focus a minimum of 60% of their competition-related work on entrepreneurs and small businesses that represent underserved populations, or are located in areas of the U.S. that are historically underfunded by national scientific institutions.
XLH plans to allocate the awarded funds to further advance training and mentoring for life science focused entrepreneurs in an effort to help them understand the path to commercializing their technologies and how to successfully apply for SBIR/STTR funding in underrepresented states in the Southeast, including Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Puerto Rico, South Carolina and West Virginia. XLH supports this work through its Southeastern XLerator Network, one of four shared accelerator hubs supported by the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program at NIH, which funds research and development partnerships between small businesses and academic institutions.
About XLerateHealth:
Founded in 2013, XLerateHealth (XLH) exists to cultivate and grow impactful healthcare innovation in the Midwest, Southeast and other areas of the country where great innovation often goes unrecognized and underfunded. XLH supports the development of healthcare innovation through the XLH Accelerator, an early-stage healthcare accelerator that helps start-ups commercialize their business and attract funding and the XLerator Network, a partnership with 24 academic institutions to support R&D development in the NIH’s Southeast Institutional Development Award (IDeA) states.
XLH has evolved to become one of longest standing healthcare accelerator programs in the U.S. In January of 2019, the accelerator program expanded to Flint, Michigan.
Find out more about XLH by visiting www.xleratehealth.com. XLH is on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter @XlerateHealth.
