In September, national startup accelerator and seed fund, TechStars, launched its first program focused on providing mentorship and capital to companies working in a particular space. With cloud computing and services growing like gangbusters, the company saw fit to focus on cloud-based startups, launching TechStars Cloud, a sub-accelerator that focuses exclusively on backing cloud computing and infrastructure startups.
Today, the inaugural batch of 11 cloudy TechStars startups demoed in front of what TechStars Co-founder and CEO David Cohen tells us is expected to be a throng of 350+ investors. Today’s demo showcase marks the culmination of a three-month-long program that kicked off in January and is based in San Antonio, Texas.
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Incubators are playing an increasingly vital role in acquiring meaningful investment for first-time entrepreneurs. TechCrunch reported that elite accelerators like Y Combinator receive on average one application every minute, and AngelPad reminds its participants that it is many times more selective than the Harvard Business School.
Incubators ask for a 2 to 10 percent stake in your company, a sum that could alternatively be used to attract a junior co-founder or provide meaningful ownership to the first few engineers you enlist. In return, incubators offer intensive coaching, networking with other founders, and warm introductions to likely investors. Incubators give first-time entrepreneurs and international teams alike a crucial link to Silicon Valley. → Read More
NYC-based Blueprint Health, a health-focused member of the TechStars Network, is announcing its inaugural class of startups today. The Winter program, which begins on January 9th, will be taking place in a 12,000 square foot loft in SoHo that will be shared with the NYC-based members of Health 2.0 starting later this month. Part of the loft may also be turned into a co-working space for other healthcare-focused area entrepreneurs.
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Vizify, a social tool for creating a great first impression online and a recent grad of TechStars‘ Seattle accelerator program, is announcing today that it has raised $1.2 million in seed funding from a group of entrepreneurs and investors, which includes Picnik Founder Jonathan Sposato, Founder and Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Tim Draper, Bill McAleer of Voyager Capital, and Co-founder of Feedburner Matt Shobe, among others. Vizify is also a member of the inaugural class of the Portland Seed Fund, a seed fund and 90-day accelerator program that invests $25,000 in six to eight Oregonian companies every six months. → Read More
Gazelle Lab, the brand-new Tampa Bay-based TechStars Network member which just held its first Demo Day in November, is expanding its operations. The accelerator has just announced the opening of second location in Orlando, Florida, where it will be working with local academic institution Rollins College.
The Orlando team will be led by founder Richard Licursi, CEO of Florida’s Spectrum Bridge, Inc. You may remember hearing about that company as being the first to win the FCC’s approval to manage a database in the newly-opened “white space” spectrum. Licursi will be responsible for leading the fundraising for the Orlando crew, along with three other founders and support from the original St. Petersburg team. → Read More
GoChime, a graduate of the 2011 TechStars Seattle program, is today announcing that it has raised $630,000 from a host of entrepreneurs and angel investors that include Geoff Entress, who has invested in companies like Hootsuite and Cheezburger, Walter Winshall, an investor in Harmonix (Guitar Hero), Co-founder of Feedburner and former Googler, Matt Shobe, Dave Carlson (investor in Socialthing, Daily Burn), and Founder and CEO of Bigdoor Keith Smith — to name a few.
What is GoChime? Simply put, the startup is delivering relevant offers to people based on real needs they’ve expressed across their social media profiles. In other words, it’s direct marketing for social, something which GoChime Co-founders Matt Walters, Josh Emert, and Austin Evarts are convinced has not yet been done successfully. → Read More
Startup founders are the new reality TV stars. No, really! Today, the exec producer of the TechStars TV show on Bloomberg TV, Cameron Casey, is announcing his plans to film a second startup-focused reality show. This time, the show will follow a group of entrepreneurs out in L.A., courtesy of a partnership with the StartEngine accelerator.
But here’s the big news: this time, the show is planned as a multi-season series for a network. → Read More
Today, another TechStars Network accelerator comes online. Greenville, South Carolina’s “The Next Big Thing,” as it’s called, has been running in stealth mode since its founding in February 2011. But now, the incubator is ready for submissions. Companies can apply for the program starting today up until the window’s closing on April 20th.
The Next Big Thing’s initial program will begin in summer 2012, culminating in a Demo Day in September. → Read More
Last week, Erick wrote about the dramatic increase in startups and early-stage businesses we’ve been seeing over the last few years, likening the phenomenon to the Cambrian Explosion. In these fertile times for startups, naturally, there’s plenty of funding to be had: In the last year, according to CrunchBase, there were more than 1,100 seed/angel funding rounds, up from 855 in 2008.
There are fewer barriers to startup creation now than ever before, and as businesses pop up left and right, so have the incubators and accelerators that provide these companies with the early fuel they need to build their products. Y Combinator, one of the more well-known startup incubators in the world, is now receiving over one application every minute, for example, and recently expanded the size of its classes to keep pace with demand. → Read More
The Kinect has proved fertile ground for hackers and innovators all over the world, from individuals to student teams to established researchers. But as yet there haven’t been many commercial applications. Microsoft and TechStars are hoping to turn the creativity and momentum associated with the Kinect into some functioning startups.
Applications are being taken through January 25th; ten will be chosen and given the opportunity to participate in a three-month incubation program at Microsoft — and get $20,000 in seed funding. Got an idea for a new device, service, or method of using the Kinect’s low-cost real-time depth sensor? This could be a good opportunity — if you can afford to move to Seattle for a while this Spring. Don’t worry: the program is in the downtown area, not Redmond. → Read More
After graduating from TechStars Boston this spring, Brightwurks, a startup that makes web-based productivity tools with an emphasis on customer service, launched a new product called Help Scout that aims to bring quality email support to small businesses.
The problem the startup hopes to address, as Brightwurks Co-founder and CEO Nick Francis sees it, is that, while the majority of companies feel that great customer service is mission critical to their business, on the Web, most still fail to interact with customers effectively. Part of the problem is that current solutions for customer relations offer a user experience that is automated and inherently impersonal. → Read More
Startup incubator and network TechStars has raised $24 million in new funding from the Foundry Group, IA Ventures, Avalon Ventures, DFJ Mercury, SoftBank Capital, SVB Financial Group, RRE Ventures, Right Side Capital Management, TechStars Alumni, and several individuals. TechStars is actually already directly funded by over 75 venture funds and angel investors, but this new funding will be used to offer every single new TechStars company an additional $100,000 in funding in the form of a convertible note immediately upon acceptance into TechStars.
TechStars, which launched in 2007, is a “startup boot camp” for tech entrepreneurs in which selected startup receive up to $18,000 in seed funding (or $6,000 per founder up to three founders in exchange for 5 percent of the company), three months of mentorship from successful entrepreneurs and investors, and the opportunity to pitch to angel investors and venture capitalists at the end of the program. → Read More
Exclusive - Startup accelerator TechStars, arguably one of the best of its genre in the world, is today announcing the launch of its first thematically focused business kickstarter. Dubbed TechStars Cloud, the sub-accelerator will focus exclusively on backing cloud computing and infrastructure startups, and companies that work with OpenStack.
For its first thematically focused accelerator, TechStars has attracted some high-profile mentors, including Pat Condon (founder of Rackspace Hosting), Jeff Lawson (founder & CEO of Twilio), Brad Feld (Foundry Group), George Karidis (CSO of SoftLayer), Jud Valeski (co)founder & CEO of Gnip), Rajat Bhargava (founder & CEO of StillSecure, Interliant), and many others. → Read More
I’m here in St. Petersburg, Florida this morning to learn more about the newest TechStars Network member, Gazelle Lab. This 3-month, mentor-driven program is Tampa Bay’s attempt to establish itself as a home to entrepreneurial innovation and a place where early stage startups are fostered. Today, the Lab launched its first full round of startups, after having previously launched a “beta” group of just 3 companies earlier this year. The launch includes 6 startups, with a diversity of focus ranging from the fun (a mobile adventure quest game) to the practical (an app that listens to your car to help you save you money). The startups will demo in front of investors later this year.
Today, seed fund and accelerator, TechStars, will be hosting its “Demo Day” in Boulder, where it will showcase its 12 newest startups. The accelerator expects over 500 people to be on hand, including investors and venture funds, who will be on hand to vet the young founding teams and potentially take out those checkbooks.
Founded in 2006 in Boulder, TechStars has expanded its operations to include New York City, Boston, and (most recently) Seattle, where the accelerator holds seasonal programs for 10 to 15 startups, investing up to $18,000 of seed capital in each team at a 6 percent equity stake. And, so far, TechStars has proven valuable to its entrepreneurs; according to TechStars’ website, 81 percent of its alumni remain active or profitable, 10 percent have already been acquired, with 8 percent having gone out of business.
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Move over American Idol, and move over Survivor? There’s a new reality show (okay, documentary-reality series) in town, but luckily no one’s getting voted off the island. In this tech TV version, it’s startups and their founders iterating, scrambling through feature sets, and competing for the affections of investors.
It’s a great premise, as the reality surrounding an early-stage startup can be a kinetic one: It may not quite be the car chase in Bullitt, granted, but it’s certainly tense, fast-paced, and, if founders play their cards right, can have significant bearing on the future success of their company (for the better). → Read More
TechStars NYC killed it today with its first ever Demo Day in New York City. I’ve been to a lot of startup pitch events, and I felt that the caliber of the companies and pitches were better than most other incubator and startup events in New York (which makes me feel really good about our own Disrupt NYC event coming up in May). The room was packed with investors too, including Union Square’s Fred Wilson, Roger Ehrenberg of IA Ventures, Howard Lindzon, Mo Koyfman of Spark Capital, and John Borthwick and Andrew Weissman of betaworks. The energy and interest level was up a notch from what I’ve witnessed before.
Right out of the gate the pitches were strong. I’ve already written about would-be Craigslist killer Friendslist, tablet publishing platform OnSwipe (watch video), smart digital signage startup Immersive and crowdsourced learning site Veri (watch another video). But I want to highlight two more Demo Day startups that impressed me: Nestio and ThinkNear → Read More
So many companies have tried to topple Craigslist, and they have all failed. Jonathan Wegener thinks they’ve all done it the wrong way. Today at Techstars Demo Day, he introduced Friendslist, a listing service that taps into your social network without requiring the middelmen (your friends who connect buyers and sellers) to do any work. “Craigslist obliterated the classifieds newspaper industry,” he acknowledges, but Craigslist is now “a scary place.” In between the the legitimate listings, there are “lots of scam listings and half of the postings are duplicates.”
Friendslist offers a cleaner interface to start, but that’s nothing new. What it does is connect buyers and sellers, or people who are looking for jobs and people who are hiring, through the people they know. Yes, Oodle does this to some extent on Facebook Marketplace, but Friendslist takes a slightly different approach. If you know your friend Mark is a great designer and you are looking to hire a designer for your startup, you would post your jobs listing to his Friendslist, which shows the listing to all of his Facebook friends. Mark acts as the middleman, but he doesn’t have to do anything. → Read More
As tablets become the preferred digital reading device, every publisher out there is creating their own iPad apps. And soon they will have to create Android apps and maybe RIM Playbook apps and HP WebOS apps too. Or they can keep on publishing on the Web and display their websites differently to people who visit them via tablet browsers.
OnSwipe is a new digital publishing tools company that wants to make mobile browsing as swipe-friendly as a tablet app. The startup will be showing its software today at TechStars NYC Demo Day. I got a preview from co-founders Jason Baptiste and Andres Barreto when I visited the TechStars New York office last week (see video above). They are setting out to prove that the browser is the only app you’ll need. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
