Over the past few years, StartX has emerged to help founders from Stanford build their companies. The accelerator seeks to take advantage of all the resources at the university, as well as the wide range of tech companies nearby, to improve the ecosystem of Stanford-affiliated startups.
StartX provides support and resources to founders that get accepted to the program, which include workspace and $100,000 in credits toward services to help them get their companies off the ground. And unlike other accelerators, StartX gives these perks without asking for equity in return.
The most important part of the program, though, might just be the network of mentors and entrepreneurs available to founders who take part. The community of tech founders associated with Stanford includes 40,000 companies, and many of their founders are happy to pay it forward to work with teams which are part of StartX.
To participate, a startup has to have at least one Stanford-affiliate founder on its team. Those companies submit an online application, and then go through rounds of interviews before they’re chosen to participate. Interviews include both a technical screening and a cultural screening to make sure they will be strong members of the StartX community.
With all that in mind, StartX is focused not just on helping individual companies to thrive, but growing the community as a whole. By organizing knowledge and mentorship within that community more efficiently, the accelerator believes its startups can become stars not just in Silicon Valley but around the world.
This is the eighth episode of a TechCrunch TV series called Incubated. Please join us each week to find out how different incubators and accelerators help out startups that participate in them. Check out previous episodes of Incubated here:
- Incubated: How The 500 Startups Accelerator Helps Startups Get Noticed
- Incubated: Capital Factory Uses The Austin Community To Lead Startups To Success
- Incubated: Inside Matter.VC’s Structured Approach To Helping Media Startups
- Incubated: How Amplify.LA Helps LA-Based Startups Grow
- Incubated: Y Combinator’s Approach To Finding And Helping Startups Become Big Winners
- Incubated: Media Camp Helps Startups Get Connected With Hollywood Decision-Makers
- Incubated: MuckerLab’s Hands-On Approach To Accelerating Startup Growth
- Incubated: How StartX Helps Stanford-Affiliated Founders Get Their Companies Off The Ground