On Thursday, three venture capital firms launched OpenIncubate, a new open-source technology incubator, in Boston, Austin and San Francisco, reports Xconomy.
Three firms–Battery Ventures in Boston, Austin Ventures in Texas and The Valley Fund, located in Menlo Park–are united behind their new project, which they hope will boost open-source startups in each of these new business hotspots. Each firm has committed $1 million to the accelerator, according to the Wall Street Journal, with investments ranging from $250,000 to $500,000.
OpenIncubate aims to take advantage two promising trends in the open-source space, according to its site: the growth of open networking and the software-defined data center; and the growing prominence of open source initiatives, such as accelerator and incubator programs similar to OpenIncubate, that principal of Battery Ventures Alex Benik will have a significant impact on the $50 billion server market and the $10 billion data center switching market.
“This provides a level of openness and community dialogue and an ability for entrepreneurs to innovate in a way that has not been there in the close-sourced environment or in hardware domain,” Benik told Xconomy. “We suspect that we’re going to find some interesting deals that we may not have otherwise found.”
The incubator, which will be housed at Capital Factory in Austin, Battery’s Boston office, and The Valley’s office in Menlo Park, will provide free workspace and mentoring, as well as chances for seed funding.
OpenIncubate has its eye on companies, teams, and individual entrepreneurs that are product-oriented (versus services) and are driven to build and refine software or software-as-a-service (SaaS) concepts and projects. The incubator is looking to begin distributing money to its first participating startup in the new few months, Benik shared.
