Apply for second round of Conscious Venture social enterprise accelerator

The Conscious Venture Lab, a Columbia accelerator with a social enterprise bent, is seeking its second round of entrepreneurs to spin out.
Applications are available online and may be submitted through Aug. 31
“As we near the end of our first cohort the CVLab is poised to become one of the leading business accelerators in the United States focused on purpose driven companies,” Jeff Cherry, the lab’s executive director, said in a release.
The lab, part of the David B. Wolfe Institute for Conscious Entrepreneurship, is a partnership with the Howard County Economic Development Authority. The lab has a coworking space at the Maryland Center for Entrepreneurship in Columbia.
Five companies (including one nonprofit organization) will be accepted into the new class, and the lab will invest $25,000 to $50,000 in each, taking between five and 10 percent equity in the companies they house. The program runs from October through next March, according to the release.
Seven companies are in the first cohort, currently wrapping its class, including beauty products startup Shea Radiance, commerce startup Spend Consciously and Just Good, a marketplace for socially-sourced products.

“The CVLab program offered the opportunity to dive deeper into what it means to intentionally create and execute conscious ventures with purpose and impact,” Matt Colbert, CEO of Spend Consciously, said in the release.