Accelerator Archives - Page 12 of 18

Interview With Eric Mathews Founder Of Memphis Startup Accelerator Seed Hatchery

While some startup communities are in their earliest stages of development, Memphis’ ecosystem is going on six years old. One of the biggest drivers of that startup community is Eric Mathews, who’s Launch Your City organization has been at the center of Memphis’ entrepreneurial community for over six years.

Launch Your City is the organization behind Launch Memphis, Upstart Memphis, and Seed Hatchery, Memphis’ intense three month startup accelerator. Seed Hatchery is currently taking applications for it’s third class which will begin in February and graduate in May during Memphis’ legendary Barbecue Festival.

We got a chance to catch up with Mathews to discuss Seed Hatchery, what makes it different, and why Memphis. Check out the interview below:

500Startups Backs Bangalore Startup ZipDial

Dave McClure and his 500startups continue their jaunt across the globe. Just last week we reported that McClure had made his first investment in a German startup. Today we’ve found out that 500startups has backed a company out of Bangalore India called ZipDial.

500startups is no stranger to Indian startups. In fact, an Indian email newsletter startup called TradeBriefs is in the current cohort based 500startups accelerator program, happening right now in Mountain View.

ZipDial founded by Sanjay Swamy, Amiya Pathak and Valerie Rozycki is a mobile marketing engagement platform that works based on a missed call. A call is initiated and then disconnects after one ring and then sends a text message.

“We’ve been impressed at how effective ZipDial has been for us, usually 2-5 times more effective than Facebook or just SMS. We see its value for brand and SME advertiser clients and are excited to see it grow globally,” Satyan Gajwani, CEO, Times Internet (who participated in the funding round along with 500Startups) told SiliconIndia

“500 Startups has proven repeatedly to add value with its global network of mentors helping their portfolio companies grow. Working with the fund is strategic for ZipDial as we invest in our international expansion into other emerging markets,” says Valerie R. Wagoner, CEO and Founder of ZipDial, as reported by Silicon India

Linkage:
ZipDial is on the web here.

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Miami Getting A Health Tech Startup Accelerator

Health tech is a huge space. It, along with its sibling, “bioscience” is one of the fastest growing segments of startups world wide. Health tech focused accelerators can be wildly successful, especially “everywhere else”.

In startup communities “everywhere else” it can be easier for investors to understand health tech, as opposed to the latest, greatest, social local mobile event discovery app. Presumably, health tech startups have a direct path to helping people, fighting sickness or driving costs down.

Lift1428, an innovation design, strategy and communications firm, the Miami Innovation Center at the University of Miami Life Science & Technology Park and its developer, Wexford Science + Technology, and the UM Miller School of Medicine, have teamed up for Project Lift Miami, a new health tech focused startup accelerator in Miami, reports the Miami Herald.

The new Project Lift Miami accelerator is a 100 day program for new startups and entrepreneurs. They will select between 10-15 startups and entrepreneurs to participate in the program. Each startup will receive between $20,000 and $30,000 in seed funding.

However, like most accelerators, this program is not about the funding. All of the teams will have access to a nationwide network of top level mentors who have committed to the startups well beyond the 100 day program.
“There’s so much regulation and there are privacy issues and other barriers to entry that are different in the healthcare industry. Having the access to the environment we have here to test your idea and prove your concept is a great advance,” said Robert Chavez, Executive Director of Project Lift, who is also executive director of business intelligence at UM’s Miller School, told the Herald “That kind of mentoring you won’t get at a general accelerator.”

Linkage:
Apply now for Project Lift

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DreamIt Ventures Philadelphia Graduates 15, Here’s A Song About it

Earlier this month DreamIt Ventures graduated their fall Philadelphia class. DreamIt Ventures holds accelerator programs in their hometown of Philadelphia, New York, Israel and a new program that started this year in Austin Texas. The fall Philadelphia class was their 7th class to graduate the program.

Here’s a list of all 15 startups that pitched at Investor Day:

Altair Prep: An SAT tutoring service that remotely connects students with leading tutors.
Applique: A drag-and-drop tool for creating mobile apps.
Betterific: Helps you share and find ideas to improve product development.
Brideside: An online boutique that helps brides build up their wedding experience together with their wedding party.
CallGrader: Lets companies collect marketing data and analytics from phone calls.
Charlie: Prepares you with information about a contact before you meet up with them.
Cloudamize: Offers tools to help companies manage and optimize their cloud services.
FlagTap: Helps websites increase user engagement, and tells them exactly what their visitors are doing.
Mor.sl: A combined recipe and grocery delivery service.
NinjaThat: An online marketplace that lets businesses outsource tasks to students.
PeerActive: Brings together game dynamics with e-commerce.
Spruceling: An online marketplace for parents to sell their kids’ used clothes.
TrendBent: A personal style engine for men.
Vizy: Lets you record and store virtual memories in physical places.
ZenKars: Offers a peaceful online marketplace for buying used cars.

Philadelphia’s class ended demo day with a song. Check out this awesome video below courtesy of TechnicallyPhilly’s YouTube Channel.

Linkage:

Check out DreamIt Ventures here

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Accelerators Everywhere Else Are Still Great For Startups

After Thanksgiving many startup and tech sites feverishly began telling the story of doom and gloom for startups, follow on funding and startup accelerators.

This vicious news cycle began with the Dow Jones VC Edge report released at the end of November. The report highlighted many positive things, including growth for some key areas in high growth potential tech sectors both here and abroad. Fred Wilson, the principal at Union Square Ventures and a respected authority in the startup and VC space, was quick to point out that VC funding for consumer web and mobile companies was down 42% in the first 9 months of 2012.

The Dow Jones report coupled with Wilson’s commentary sent a tremor through Silicon Valley that we could be on the cusp of a bubble.

While startups and high growth potential technology companies are contributing to job growth, what’s not being considered is the fact that his down turn in VC funding may actually be more of a leveling off.

The same week the Dow Jones report and the Wilson piece came out, Paul Graham, founder of YCombinator sent out more troubling news. Again, interpreted at some of the startup and tech sites as bad news.

Graham had explained how the next cohort of YCombinator companies would receive less funding. The very next day Graham again took to the YCombinator blog to let everyone know that the class size was shrinking as well.

For a startup accepted into the program it instantly meant prestige and validation, not to mention a huge six figure seed investment. Reading the news from Graham made people all around start doubting the accelerator model. PandoDaily quickly opined. Erin Griffith, a writer for Pando Daily, said “We know accelerators are headed for a shakeout- but do they“? Griffith pointed out that there were over 100 startup accelerators across the country churning out thousands of startups with only a 10% success rate.

But what’s really happening in accelerators and across the startup space, is that people are getting more conservative in the valley because they’re used to a culture of ginormous funding rounds and even bigger exits. Everyone knows the story about Color. Everyone’s also seen the value of the Instagram Facebook deal diminish as Facebook’s stock went down hill fast. Truth be told, even after the $1 billion dollar Facebook deal, Instagram still had less than 25 employees when they moved into Facebook’s offices back in September.

That billion dollars really produced a lot of jobs right? Consider the fact that the $1 billion dollar Instagram Valuation was more than the New York Times is currently worth and they employ over 10,000 people.

The real question about accelerators is really about whether the goal behind an accelerator is to help yield larger than life venture investments or is it about building companies with solid foundations and solid founders. It is about the cash or the wave of now more educated entrepreneurs who may not get their first startup entirely off the ground but may hit a home run or even just a double in the next go round?

It seems accelerators with the real goal of producing these crazy funding rounds and crazy exits are no better than public schools who are just teaching whatever standardized test it is to graduate the next class.

The beauty about accelerator programs “everywhere else” is that the startups in the programs are being taught important lessons about starting up, business and even life.

It’s awesome that YCombinator and TechStars have mentor networks that read like a “Who’s Who” in the startup and tech world. Every startup founder wants to learn from these great mentors, and they can, sometimes even in small towns. Take Oklahoma City’s Blueprint For Business accelerator. They all got a chance to learn from a day with Brad Feld.

Perusing the websites of startup accelerators outside the valley (everywhere else) you don’t typically find a “who’s who” of the startup and tech world. What you do find is a “who’s who” in most local business communities.

Startups may apply to programs like the Fort in DC because they want to be close to the epicenter of government. They may apply to the Brandery in Cincinnati because they want to be close to the biggest branded company in the world, Proctor & Gamble. Startups that are logistically focused or enterprise focused may want to apply to Seed Hatchery in Memphis to be close to FedEx. Startups in the entertainment and music space may choose an accelerator in Los Angeles or even Jumpstart Foundry in Nashville.

While some of these accelerators “everywhere else” may have mentors from the Valley participate or founders with big exits, the bulk of their mentor list is either mentors who speak to their niche or mentors in the local community. Which can be equally, if not more important than name brand mentors elsewhere.

Are you building solid companies or is the accelerator only looking for “the next big thing”?

Linkage

Apply for SeedHatchery here

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Boston Techstars Grad: Testive Raises $500,000 Seed

A recent Boston Techstars startup graduate, Testive, has just announced a $500,000 seed round led by influential local investors.

Testive operates on the premise that SAT prep books suck and SAT prep classes are too expensive. Miro Kazzakoff, the startup’s founder says not only can Testive predict a high school students SAT score but also their method is more efficient.

“Somewhere between cheap, boring prep books and expensive classes is an opportunity to deliver online test prep that doesn’t suck,” Kazakoff told the Boston Business Journal “Testive is building the tools that help students learn more efficiently and more enjoyably.”

Immediately following the Techstars Boston session the company moved into Dog Patch Labs an incubator/co-working space founded by Polaris Venture Partners and also in the same Microsoft building that houses the Boston Techstars program. Several other high growth potential startups occupy the space and work in a collaborative environment.

Local angels; Jean Hammond (A Zipcar investor), Eileen Rudden (co-founder of LeanLaunch), Dharmesh Shah (co-founder of Hubspot) and Bill Warner (founder of Avid/ProTools), all participated in the round.

Kazakoff reports that over 10,000 students already use their SAT Habit software. Their software is based on Turbo Test, originally developed at MIT. The investment will go to continued development of the software. They plan on adding features to add in the preparation of the “writing” part of the SAT.

Linkage:

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Month One In A Startup Accelerator, Cliff McKinney CEO, Work For Pie

“This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine.”

So I’ve started a couple of companies before. Okay I say “started companies,” but I don’t really
mean either of those words. I just incorporated some ideas I had. I got business cards with my
name on them. I built a little website for interested people to sign up. One of them even earned
me a little play money. But in truth, I was just playing house.

When I walked in the door a month ago at Seed Hatchery, a startup accelerator in Memphis,
TN, I hadn’t discovered that yet. In my mind, I was kind of a badass. I had read more books
about entrepreneurship than anyone I knew. I had listened to every episode of This Week in
Startups. Hell I even suffered through a few episodes of This Week in Venture Capital. My
team had a GREAT idea that NOBODY ELSE was doing (or doing well, at least), and I had this
awesome, undiscovered savant of a co-founder and we were just going to waltz in there and
kick serious butt.

And day one was awesome! I was part of a special fraternity of entrepreneurs, and we were all
going to change the world. It was all champagne and roses. And I really felt that way. It was
wild man. Like livin’ on Haight in ’67.

Then the rest of the week felt something like this:

“Your idea sucks. No one is doing it because it sucks. You haven’t thought it through, you
haven’t done a bit of customer research, and it’s amazing that you didn’t have the good sense
to realize it before you walked in this door. You are only slightly less likely to fail because you’re
here than you were before you got here, which is to say that the likelihood of your failure just
went from 100% to something closer to 99.5%. Your pitch sucks. It’s too long. Where’s the
real pain? Are you solving a real problem? Your presentation isn’t that great either. Too many
words, not enough substance. You’re half as talented as my mother and you’re in Memphis-
freaking-Tennessee. They don’t give money to stupid people here. They don’t even give it
to smart people. You have 90, 89, 88, 87, 86 days to make a great product, and you haven’t
shown me anything that makes me believe that will happen yet…”

Thank you Drill Sergeant, may I have another?

It was an awakening, to say the least. Turns out everything I thought mattered didn’t, and
everything I thought was true wasn’t (except for the bit about the genius co-founder), and
everything I had learned wasn’t relevant anymore. By the end of that first week, I was huddled
in a corner with my rifle, crying, hoping the whole thing would just blow up and take me along
with it.

“Okay, forget everything we just said.”

But I kept coming back, because it was the most awesome thing I had ever done. Humbling,
yes, but awesome nonetheless. I was doing THIS. I was being brought to my knees HERE,

doing OUR THING. We didn’t answer to anyone but ourselves. We were keeping late nights
because we wanted to, not because some freaking busybody micro-manager in another
department needs her TPS reports by noon tomorrow. We were living the dream!

And we were getting better. Bit by bit. By week two the pitch had improved. We met mentors
who had been there and were willing to guide us through the trials and tribulations. We were
doing customer research and starting to turn our crappy little idea into something that just
might work. We had this amazing, awesome group of cohort companies, each with great
entrepreneurs and talented individuals, helping us along the way. We were making progress,
and we were doing it at a speed that my counterparts in “the real world” wouldn’t even be able
to comprehend.

So three weeks in we said “okay, forget about everything we just said,” and changed just about
everything about our original idea. Three days (and about 12 hours of sleep) later, we pitched
that new idea to investors for the first time. We had come far enough to be able to say “yeah,
this one is going to be better, and it’s okay that we have to scrap a bunch of stuff to make it
work.” It was progress, and the investors noticed. It IS a better idea, and they knew it. And we
had survived. It wasn’t pretty, but we had survived. At least the first battle.

“You think Grendel’s a bear–you should meet the mother!”

Things aren’t any easier these days. Not at all. Sleep still comes in short bursts. The pressure
is building as we get closer and closer to demo day, and the expectations are higher because,
somehow, we’re infinitely better than we were when we walked through the door a month ago.
We’ve got a month to build a product that thousands of people will one day use. 31, 30, 29, 28
days. They pass before we even know what hit us.

But the false hope that got turned into realistic doubt in that first week is creeping into the
territory of realistic hope. And what we’re hearing in week five sounds a bit more like this:

“Your idea sucks, but you’ve got time to make it better. You haven’t thought it through, but
you’ve got the tools to do that now. You haven’t talked to your customers enough, but we’re
going to help you do that. And no matter what you think, we didn’t bet on your idea. The only
thing you brought with you was you, and you are what we bet on, not your stupid idea. You’ve
got a shot at this. Keep going.”

Here’s hoping that kind of talk continues…

Author Biography:

Cliff McKinney is CEO of Work for Pie, a company that is changing the way software developers
get recruited and hired by changing the way they communicate with companies. He and his
team have conducted countless interviews with both developers and the companies that hire
them. You can find him on twitter at @cliffmckinney.

Linkage:

Learn more about Seed Hatchery, the accelerator WorkForPie went through, here

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Check out Work For Pie here

We Talk With 500 Startups, Madrid Startup, Traity: Recruitment With Trust & Personality

We’ve reported on countless startups that are striving to re-invent the interview and recruitment process. It seems that recruitment may be one of the hottest startup spaces in 2012. How can you separate the good and the bad? Well one way is by knowing that Dave McClure’s 500 startups is backing this Madrid startup, Traity.

Traity is attacking the recruitment space with analytics, data, and endorsement. When you look up a book or something that may be a bit new to you on Amazon.com, you’re a lot more comfortable knowing that the book has 100+ positive reviews right? If you’re like me and willing to take a chance on a book, having 100 reviews either positive or negative is typically an indicator that it’s at least worth a look.

Well that’s where Traity starts. Their recruitment platform reports are made up of endorsements from several people.

The other place where Traity is making a difference is in personality. Traity positions themselves as a personality based engine, personality test or as it suggests on their website, personality game. Traity is measuring the personality strengths in people like perseverance or how proactive they will be. A candidate could look perfect on paper but they could be a bump on a log in real life. These are all factors you need to know when hiring a candidate, that you may not get to see until the interview.

Speaking of interviews, here’s an interview with Juan Cartagena, co-founder of 500 startups, startup Traity

Memphis Startup Restore Medical Raises $2.5 Million Seed Round

Restore Medical Solutions, Memphis startup, Zeroto510,funded startup

Shawn Flynn (L) Ryan Ramkhelawan (R) founders of Restore Medical Solutions

Memphis’ startup community has kicked it into high gear as of late. In 2012 Launch Your City, the organization behind the Seed Hatchery starutp accelerator, the Launch Pad free coworking space and Launch Memphis, the curriculum arm behind Memphis’ startup ecosystem, had a big year. They saw two cohorts go through their Seed Hatchery program this year. One group of web/tech entrepreneurs took their startups through Seed Hatchery. The other group went through a collaborative effort between Seed Hatchery and Memphis BioWorks called Zeroto510.

The Zeroto510 program is a medical device startup accelerator that relies on Bioworks for the medical part and Seed Hatchery for the startup, and business development portion of their training. After a rigorous accelerator program, and an intense demo day in May, the six startups in the program saw 85% follow on funding. Four of the graduating startup companies received $100,000 investments from MB Ventures and Innova. The fifth startup, Restore Medical Solutions, raised a $2.5 million dollar Series A round.

It’s no wonder that Restore Medical Solutions was able to close such a large round. Co-Founder Shawn Flynn announced that the company had a $3.75 million dollar purchase order, during his investor day pitch.

Restore Medical Solutions has come up with a concept and system to more efficiently sterilize surgical instruments. When we first met with Flynn and Co-Founder Ryan Ramkhelawan explained that not only was the current system for sterilizing surgical instruments filled with flaws, to a degree it’s also dangerous.

Currently surgical instruments are grouped in sets according to the surgery that the operating room is performing. The instruments are kept in a sterile container/tray until they are brought up to the surgical suite and used. However, if one piece of equipment is either missing, or shows signs of not being completely sterilized, the entire set is deemed unusable and another set is ordered up.

The problem with that is most hospitals don’t have a bunch of reserve sets for the operating rooms. The sterilization team has put together the sets based on that days surgeries. Waiting on instruments to be re-sterilized and recompiled can take hours. At that time the patient is either kept under anesthesia or they are woken up, either option can have risks.

Not only that but some hospitals still use sterilization procedures that are likened to the way silverware is washed in a restaurant, everything dumped on one big tray and run through a dishwasher type sterilization machine. The problem with that is the instruments at the bottom may not be as sterile as the instruments on the top. This is often the cause of hospital born infections.

Restore Medical Solutions system makes the process quicker, more efficient and completely sterile.

Flynn and Ramkhelawan get anxious and excited when talking about their process and the upside potential for hospitals. With the reduction in time, the more efficient sterilization and the cut down on infections, Restore Medical Solutions is in the business of sterilizing instruments, but more importantly to the bottom line, driving costs down. Quicker turn arounds in the sterilization process also mean quicker turn arounds in the operating rooms, and more surgeries.

How much money? We’re not talking a thousands here or a thousand there, we’re talking tens of millions of dollars per hospital.

The duo behind Restore Medical Solutions has already pitched a number of hospitals in Tennessee and along the east coast. To date they are proud to announce that they’ve at least secured a follow up meeting and in other cases, purchase orders.

While a $2.5 million dollar Series A round is great for the company and will allow them to start producing to fulfill their purchase orders, it wasn’t always easy. Both Ramkhelawan and Flynn quit their good paying day jobs in Atlanta to relocate to Memphis for the ZeroTo510 program. The program gave them a $50,000 seed round but waiting for that initial funding they were sneaker-strapping it like the rest of their cohort.

Both men left families back in Atlanta and Ramkhelawan and his wife had just had a new baby daughter. With kids, families, and houses in Atlanta these two middle aged entrepreneurs set out to live the ramen noodle eating, hipster lifestyle. They immediately went on the grind to make things happen.

And happen it did.

After finding out about the ZeroTo510 program from a friend of Flynn’s who has a marketing business in Memphis the two made the trip to Memphis to scope out the city and the program. They immediately fell in love with the town. They are sharing an apartment literally within feet from the new corporate headquarters for Restore Medical which officially opens Friday.

For what they’re doing, both entrepreneurs admit that the Memphis startup ecosystem is further along than things are in Atlanta. New initiatives have begun in Atlanta which will be great for the region but Memphis is already doing it. Also, Jackson Tennessee is doing it as well. Both entrepreneurs spend time in Jackson, helping to further that cities entrepreneurs along as well.

Flynn and Ramkelawan give a lot of credit to Launch Your City’s Eric Mathews and Bio Works’ Allan Daisley who were instrumental in the Zeroto510 programs inaugural class.

Linkage:

Check out Restore Medical here

Check out Zeroto510 here

Apply for Seed Hatchery’s next session here

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Accelerate Your Startup In Hawaii, BlueStartups Now Taking Applications For Spring

Who wouldn’t want to accelerate their early stage startup surrounded by blue water, sandy beaches and the tropical paradise that is Hawaii? Well we just heard, by way of our friends at Alohastartups.com, that Blue Startups is now taking applications for it’s Spring 2013 accelerator class.

Blue Startups is a member of the Global Accelerator Network (formerly TechStars accelerator network) and with that you get the standard $20,000 seed investment and $100,000 in services including things like web hosting, $60,000 in Microsoft Azure credits, $12,000 in SoftLayer hosting, $10,000 in PayPal transaction credits, as well as some other great business services that will help your startup.

The spring cohort will run from February 8 through May 9 2013 with Demo Day happening May 10th 2013. Brad Feld will be the keynote speaker at Blue Startups demo day.

Blue Startups features a mentor network of over 50 leading mentors reaching from China, Japan and Silicon Valley.

They will host up to 10 startups in their spring session and have work space available for up to three people per startup team. They will also have one on one meetings with an assigned mentor every week who will help develop the startup and the startup team and follow their progress throughout the session. Other mentor sessions will be available throughout the course of the program.

The early application deadline is December 15th with the final deadline January 15, 2013.

Linkage:

Learn more about Blue Startups here

Apply for their spring session here

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Startups Get Your Seed Hatchery Application In Before Christmas (Dec 23 Early Application Deadline)

While Santa is making his list and checking it twice, early stage startup founders across the country and around the world are checking off startup accelerators on their list. Seed Hatchery, the startup accelerator in Memphis Tennessee should be one of those accelerators. They’re looking for the type of entrepreneurs that are committed to growing their startup long term and aren’t afraid of hard work.

Seed Hatchery is now taking applications for their third class. The cohort based accelerator will begin in February and run for three consecutive months. At the end of the session you and your company will be ready to pitch real investors for opportunities to invest in your business. In the meantime you’ll be backed by the 3M’s Money, Mentors and a marine style bootcamp, in Memphis.

Although sometimes overlooked, Memphis is one of the most entrepreneurial minded cities in the world. Going back nearly 100 years, Memphis Tennessee was the epicenter for this little thing called “cotton” you may have heard of it. It was cotton and the cotton exchange that spurred one of the largest investment banks in history, Lehman Brothers.

Beyond that, other globally known phenomena like rock music (the blues), Elvis Presley, and R&B radio have their roots firmly planted in the Bluff City.

Is that not enough? Perhaps you’ve heard of this company that delivers packages via planes and trucks, overnight, yes FedEx was born and based in Memphis. Holiday Inn was born in Memphis as was Serv Pro, and Autozone. Even Debbi Fields, Yes Mrs. Fields as in cookies, calls Memphis Tennessee home.

With an entrepreneurial pedigree like that you can be assured that the mentor pool for the 2013 Seed Hatchery CoHort will be stronger than most regional accelerators Seed Hatchery’s size.

Seed Hatchery was the partner for the recent Zeroto510 medical device accelerator in Memphis where 5 of the 6 teams received follow on funding of over $100,000. One of the teams went on to immediately raise over 2 million dollars. While some startup communities are still just getting started, Seed Hatchery is backed by Launch Your City which has been working on strengthening entrepreneurs and their startups for the last six years.

If you’re a Memphis area entrepreneur or in any area and ready to relocate to Memphis it’s a great place to work and a great place to build a business. Not only that, but even though the accelerator is in the thick of the winter, it’s never ver cold in Memphis.

If you’re startup is chosen to participate you’ll receive a seed investment of $15,000, access to a very strong mentor network and a strong investment community. Seed Hatchery is looking for startups that are in the area or willing to relocate for the entire 90 day cohort and stick around Memphis to tap into the investor, entrepreneurial and startup community in the region after that. To kick off your stay in Memphis TN every team and their members selected for Seed Hatchery will receive a free ticket to the three day startup extravaganza known as “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” where you’ll get to see the great speakers already announced and have a small group session with recent graduates from TechStars, 500Startups, The Brandery and previous graduates of Seed Hatchery.

Applying is free and the application is open now. It’s not for the faint at heart but if you’re passionate about your idea and hard working, if you’re not afraid of rolling up your sleeves this is for you.

Hit the links below.

Linkage:

Here’s the application for the 2013 Seed Hatchery cohort

Seedhatchery.com

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YCombinator Shrinks Class Size Too, Smaller Is Better

Late last week we reported that Paul Graham’s YCombinator was changing it’s seed investment structure going into the “Winter 2013” class of startups. What began as power angels Ron Conway and Yuri Milner investing $150,000 into each of the YCombinator startups has been reduced to a seed investment of $80,000 with four stake holders, further diluting the risk.

When Graham started YCombinator it was (and still is) one of the best startup accelerators in the country. Graham and the YC team made it big, big, big. Big money, big names, big startups. After two years though, it seems that Graham and his cohorts are honing in on the things that really matter. While their first class was 66 startups and their next class was 84 startups, you still needed to be the “best of the best”, for your team to get in.

Of course with 84 teams, there were even some bad apples in the “best of the best”. Graham reports in this blog post that:

“The reason we accepted fewer applications was that in summer 2012 we grew too fast. We had 66 companies in winter 2012, and that was fine, but for some reason more things than usual broke when we jumped from 66 to 84.”

While some may suggest the reduction in class size this time around is about stacking the deck, what YCombinator is really trying to do is weed out as much possible failure as they can. This way they can focus on growing the best of the best, to be, well, the best. Graham says to do that they needed to start looking at the predictors of failure rather than the predictors of success.

They’ve finished the interviews for the Winter class and right now have less than 50 startups signed up. That doesn’t mean that number will stay the same. As Graham explains there are startups that get in after the interview process and others that drop out or fall apart before they can be funded. He’s also quick to point out that this number may not stay the same. As odd it it may be to hear, YCombinator, is itself still a startup and they’re still iterating themselvers.

Linkage:

YCombinator original blog post

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Accelerate Baltimore Extends Application Deadline To December 21st

The holidays are upon us but for entrepreneurs and startup founders across the state of Maryland, across the country and around the globe who want to build their startup in Charm City, they’ll probably be on pins and needles, waiting. AccelerateBaltimore, the startup accelerator program put on by The Emerging Technology Center has extended their program application deadline to December 21st, 2012.

Baltimore is a great city to build a startup in, just ask McKeever Conwell who decided to keep his startup “Given.to” (formerly No Bad Gift), in Maryland’s tech city. Conwell, a Morgan State graduate, has been through the AccelerateBaltimore program and he’s been out west. He decided Baltimore’s best for his company.

Baltimore has a thriving tech scene (I may be biased being born and raised there). Video game studios, mobile app companies, mobile ad companies and many more call Baltimore home. In fact, mobile ad company Millennial Media, is a Baltimore startup that recently went public to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. The company has over 38,000 mobile apps on it’s network.

If you want a taste of that pie and you want to learn from some of the greatest mentors around, you still have a couple of weeks to apply. You don’t have to be based in Baltimore, but you do have to be willing to move to Baltimore to participate in the program. It’s worth it.

And speaking of Mentors, the ETC just announced 14 mentors for the next AccelerateBaltimore session including: Chris Brandenburg, Co-founder and CTO of Millennial Media, Greg Cangialosi, CEO of Nucleus Ventures, Ron Schmelzer, CEO of Bizelo and Co-founder of Baltimore Tech Breakfast and Andrew Coy, Co-Executive Director of Digital Harbor Foundation, Ann Quinn of Quinn Strategy Group, Victoria McAndrews of CMD, and Russell Clark Co-Founder of Illuminis.

“AccelerateBaltimore™ is one of the recognized programs that has proven to assist in nurturing startups from idea-stage to viable business,” stated Michael Binko, co-chair of Startup Maryland. “Formal programs like AccelerateBaltimore™, MindShare, Distilled Intelligence and others in the broader region are a great extension to high-touch entrepreneur events like our own Pitch Across Maryland. The mentorship, working capital and creative office-space provided by ETC form a great foundation for entrepreneurs who are eager to accept guidance from peer-mentors as well as program facilitators.”

The next AccelerateBaltimore session will begin in February. Six startups will be part of this next cohort and will receive $25,000 in seed funding. They’ll also participate in an intense development program, have free office space, a high level advisory team and more.

Linkage:

Apply to AccelerateBaltimore here

More startup news from “everywhere else”

Hear about McKeever Conwell’s experience in AccelerateBaltimore at the largest startup conference in the U.S.

Interview with Japanese 500startups Startup: Language Cloud

According to brothers Billy and John Martyn, language learning and educational technology in Japan needed a big dose of innovation. That’s what their Japanese startup Language Cloud is all about.

The Martyn brothers are half American and half Japanese and spent their lives growing up internationally. They were born in Saudi Arabia, and grew up in Pakistan, France and the U.S. Billy ultimately graduated college from UVA while brother John graduated from George Mason University. To call these two worldly may be a bit of an understatement.

Now back in Japan, both brothers are attacking the problem with technology in language education. We’re not talking about Rosetta Stone here. Language Cloud is a complete educational system that helps teachers teach languages to students better, and helps students learn easier.

“Language Cloud is a learning management system designed specifically for language education. In short, it provides educators and students with an easy to use and more importantly, free, digital platform for managing and enhancing the quality of language classes, while simultaneously promoting student collaboration and enthusiasm for foreign languages through school-based social networking. In addition, the Language Cloud interface has been designed to be both intuitive and simple to use. This allows instructors and students, even those with little tech experience, to confidently begin using web 2.0 technologies in the classroom for educational purposes.” Billy told us in an interview.

Language Cloud has already attracted 7000 students and teachers out of 54 academic institutions including grade schools, private language learning schools and universities.

We got a chance to talk in depth with Billy Martyn. Check out our interview below.