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  • New Accelerator Launches In Europe Offering Valley Road Trip

    Mike Butcher

    Mike Butcher is the European Editor for TechCrunch. A former grunge rock drummer, he became a long time journalist, and has since written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. Mike is also a co-founder and shareholder of TechHub, a co-working space/service/community with several locations... → Learn More

    Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
    Screen Shot 2012-01-31 at 14.57.20

    Accelerators, Accelerator, Accelerators! There’s a rash of them appearing everywhere, and the latest is the Rockstart Accelerator, a new startup program aimed at Europe’s most promising startups that want to hit a global scale (but then don’t they all?). However, this one has some credible partners in the shape of Google, Microsoft BizSpark, Mozilla WebFWD and StartupHouse in San Francisco.

    Oscar Kneppers, founder of Rockstart says the program is for startups from the whole of Europe. Based in Amsterdam, it’s looking for 10 teams of founders and will subject them to 99 mentors for 100 days, and combine that with an additional three-month summer program that culminates with a 25-day Silicon Valley road trip. That last point is probably not a bad idea, for obvious reasons, though Seedcamp has done this for the last few years.