It’s that time of year again. That’s right, it’s time for startups to ready their applications for the 500 Startups Accelerator. And, just like last time (and the time before), the Dave McClure-backed incubator will be taking its applications on AngelList.
Not surprisingly, 500 Startups Accelerator is looking for many of the same things in its seventh class that it was looking for in its sixth. And its fifth. And fourth. The program tends to have a lot of diversity — that includes, you know, international companies, as well as companies with female founders. In its sixth class, for instance, 70 percent of participating companies were from overseas.
500 Startups founding partner Christine Tsai said there’s no real mandate to have such a largely international cast. But the firm’s international partners do a good job of recruiting and passing along startups that are interesting from various parts of the world. For those who forgot, 500 Startups has partners focused on a number of different markets beyond Silicon Valley, including Japan, Latin America, India, China and Southeast Asia.
It probably doesn’t hurt that using AngelList for its application process means that 500 Startups gets a greater diversity of applicants, when compared to it just relying on friends and family to refer startups to it. In fact, that’s part of the reason that 500 Startups switched over to AngelList in the first place — so that it would receive applications from companies that it had never heard of, and was unlikely to find out about through its typical referral process.
The incubator will be looking for startups in e-commerce, SaaS, family, ed tech, video content, financial services and food tech.
Applications will be accepted through August 16. At that point, 500 Startups’ partners and mentors will begin reviewing the applications, with decisions expected during the week of September 9. The seventh batch will begin on or around October 7, 2013. Those who wish to apply can go to angel.co/500startups.