Techstars Boston announced its newest cohort of startups Wednesday—the 10th session for the prominent program—and executive director Semyon Dukach tells me the class has "even more diversity, in every sense" than past groups.
The previous Techstars Boston session ended in September and featured, maybe for the first time in the program’s history, a set of startups that had all shown significant traction by the program’s end. Dukach suggests the new class of startups might match that strong showing, with “great passionate founders with a bit more experience too” among the 14 companies. Along with having a number of startups that originate from around the U.S. and abroad, at least five of the companies have women in founding or CEO roles, while a number of them include repeat founders/executives.
Here’s the list of companies, with details from Techstars and Dukach:
- AirFox: Works to dramatically reduce the cost of mobile service for carriers and consumers around the world; ex-Googlers from San Francisco (and originally Brazil)
- Daily Pnut: A daily email on international news that informs and entertains you; Harvard team
- Danger!Awesome: Retail makerspaces bringing high tech tools and creative education to consumers; comes out of the MIT Media Lab, CEO Nadeem Mazen is a member of the Cambridge City Council
- Grapevine: Platform connects consumer brands with the relevant and influential social media stars; MassChallenge grad, has revenue and funding already
- Heddoko: The first smart compression suit that tracks full-body movement in 3D and gives you real-time feedback; Montreal team with Brazilian background
- Navut: Marketplace that connects people planning to relocate with local experts; Montreal team, has revenue
- Polis: Easy and scalable door-to-door outreach software for campaigns and organizations; based out of D.C.
- Rare Pink: Engagement ring retailer helping clients across the globe design unique and meaningful engagement rings; English, South African and Bulgarian team, generating revenue
- RocketBook: Magical pen-and-paper notebooks designed for our digital world; has run two successful crowdfunding campaigns
- Seed&Spark: Crowdfunding and distribution platform for indie films; based in L.A.
- Spoiler Alert: An online marketplace and brokerage tool for discounted food sales, food donations, and organic waste opportunities; MIT Sloan team, CTO Marty Sirkin was previously the CTO at Leaf
- Strobe: We build technology that enables event organizers to create live experiences for the 21st century; Brown team, earning revenue from nightclub customers
- TapGlue: A platform that easily turns every app into a social network; German team, customers include Localytics (a Techstars Boston alum, which introduced the startup to Techstars)
- YayPay: Fast invoice collections and accounts receivables management; English/African team, founded by serial entrepreneurs
Participants that should be familiar to BostInno readers include Spoiler Alert (covered in November), RocketBook (covered this month) and Grapevine ($1.1 million funding round).
The participating startups receive $118,000 in funding, mentorship and office space in Downtown Boston—in theory, everything they need to launch a legit company—in exchange for an equity stake of 7-10 percent.
The Spring 2016 program began this week and will end with a Demo Day on May 25.
Photo courtesy of Grapevine.
