Guide to Venture Incubators Back For A Third Year, Sixty-Four Programs Strong. Erin Kutz8/10/11 You could say that the institution of the startup incubator has gotten its chance to shine this year. One way we can tell? Our third annual Xconomy Guide to Venture Incubators has nearly doubled in size from the 2010 version. The big boom wasn’t a total surprise, given that this year politicians and the like have caught onto something that the innovation community has known all along: seriously fostering startup growth is a pursuit worth focusing on.
Last year’s incubator guide boasted 34 listings, up from 20 the year before, which was the first year we put the guide out. This year we added a total of 37 new startup incubator programs, and removed seven that had changed their models, stopped operating, or rolled into other organizations. For each program listing in the guide, we include information on how you can apply, what the programs look like, what companies have come out of them, and what you’ll have to give up in return. Click image to view full size. Intrigued? Crowdfunding 101: How Rising Startups Use the Web as a VC Firm. It all starts with an idea. An idea that could not only change the lives of consumers, but could make you a ton of money. But even if you manage to turn that brainstorm into a prototype—whether it’s a killer app or a game-changing gadget—you still need funding and guidance to take your company to the next level.
Previously, the only legitimate route for a startup was to seek out a venture capital firm. But today’s Apples and Googles in the making have powerful new tools at their disposal. A host of unconventional services such as Indie GoGo, Kickstarter, Peerbackers, and ProFounder promise to help ambitious startups quickly raise funding via the web, with little risk and plenty of creative freedom. Getting a Kickstart Since launching in April 2009, Kickstarter has taken off with a bang. Studio Neat, a design company founded by Dan Provost and Tom Gerhardt, used Kickstarter to successfully fund two projects. Other Crowdfunders Bottom Line Recommended by. Rock Health, A New Incubator for Healthcare IT Startups, Names Its First Class. Wade Roush6/2/11 The summer after her first year at Harvard Business School, Halle Tecco got an internship at Apple in Cupertino, CA, helping to evaluate mobile apps for the health and medical category of the iTunes App Store.
“I was on the phone all day with big hospitals and healthcare organizations who didn’t put the love into their apps,” she says. “They were building things with a check-box strategy, and in my opinion they didn’t have much creativity or innovation.” Sitting in the next cubicle over, by contrast, was a woman who worked on game apps. “She had a really colorful cube with people in and out all day long. It was like a party,” says Tecco. Tecco felt that health-related mobile apps could benefit from some of the same fun and imagination going into games—and the idea stuck with her. You can think of Rock Health as an aspiring Y Combinator for health and medicine. Wade Roush is Xconomy's chief correspondent and editor of Xconomy San Francisco.
Rock Health. Meet the First Rock Health Start-Up Class – AllThingsD. Rock Health, the new health-focused tech start-up accelerator, today announced its first class. Accelerators don’t typically release the names and products of their start-ups until the close of the program–in part to leave room for frequent “pivots” to new topics–but many of Rock Health’s start-ups are already far along on their Web and mobile apps.
Here’s the list: BrainBot (technology to improve mental performance) CellScope (at-home diagnosis of diseases) Genomera (personal health collaboration) Health In Reach (medical procedure marketplace) Omada Health (clinical treatment social networking) Pipette (patient monitoring and education) Skimble (mobile fitness) WeSprout (connecting health data and community) Three additional start-ups in stealth mode Rock Health plans to take in these eleven companies for five months and spit them out with added funding, infrastructure and strategic medical, branding, communications and legal support. Top 15 U.S. Startup Accelerators and Incubators Ranked; TechStars and Y Combinator Top The Rankings — Tech Cocktail.
UPDATE: Check out the 2012 Startup Accelerators and Incubator Rankings released on August 22, 2012. There are a number of startup accelerator and incubator programs in the United States. We are fans of these programs (not to be confused with pure co-working spaces) as they offer entrepreneurs a way to spend a few months laser focused on a single idea. Through the accelerator or incubator they receive mentoring, guidance and a small amount of funding in return for a small stake in the company. With all the startup accelerator programs popping up across the country we were curious to find out which programs would offer the biggest bang for the time, money and effort spent in the program. As a part of his field work for the Kauffman Fellows Program (not to be confused with Kauffman Foundation), Aziz Gilani from DFJ Mercury, working in partnership with Tech Cocktail and the Kellogg School of Management, set out to determine the best startup accelerator programs in America and rank them.
RockHealth Opens Incubator to Get the Web 2.0 Generation into Healthcare. We’ve written about the younger generation of consumer Web entrepreneurs taking on enterprise software, aiming to make truly usable business software that– to put it bluntly– doesn’t suck. Now, at least one group is aiming to apply all the lessons of the consumer Web and mobile apps to revolutionize another neglected, stodgy industry: Healthcare. RockHealth, a new incubator for healthcare IT startups, opened its doors for applications on Friday and has already received more than forty submissions. RockHealth’s founder Halle Tecco didn’t want to spill the beans on specific ideas, but examples include home health monitoring apps via the iPhone that can update physicians on chronic conditions or iPad games that can be used as hospital therapy for sick kids.
This isn’t your parent’s healthcare IT movement. So why bother? The main parameter is that teams can’t have raised venture capital yet, but angel funding or friends and family money is fine. Teens In Tech Launches Startup Incubator for Teen Entrepreneurs. “Being an entrepreneur doesn’t mean you have to be an “adult” with a college degree under your belt. Teens have the brains and often the maturity level.” Daniel Brusilovsky Founder of Teens In Tech Networks With this thought in mind Daniel Brusilovsky started the company in February of 2008 at the age of 15, as a support network for young people who were starting their own companies and getting involved in the tech world.
Now, the organization is taking the next logical step by providing hands-on instruction and mentorship to young teams. Daniel Brusilovsky is a 16-year-old media producer, entrepreneur and student residing in Silicon Valley, Calif. Source : Teensintech The incubator will begin this summer and run for about eight and a half weeks. Appcelerator in Mountain View will be providing the physical space for the startups to work from, and Teens in Tech will also be courting sponsor companies to fund the program.
The first season of this incubator will involve five startups. More than a coffeehouse, it's a tech incubator. With its copious power outlets, Gouda-wrapped meatballs, and a curated magazine rack featuring vintage Steve Jobs covers, the Summit cafe sits at the intersection of San Francisco's three most conspicuous tribes: techies, foodies, and yuppies. Yet what separates the Summit from being just another Wi-Fi boite is the dual-purpose nature of the 5,000-square-foot space. One floor above the Laptop Mafia, the cafe features a cluster of offices where groups of programmers and developers toil away in an effort to launch the next Twitter - or at least the next OkCupid.
Created by i/o Ventures, a Bay Area startup accelerator comprising former executives from MySpace, Yahoo, and file-sharing site BitTorrent, the Summit is equal parts Bell Labs and Central Perk - and probably the country's first official coffeehouse tech incubator. Every four months, i/o selects and funds a handful of small tech ventures to the tune of $25,000 each in return for 8 percent of common stock. 'A creative commons'