500 Startups changed its name recently to reflect the global nature of its investments.
The San Francisco-based venture firm and accelerator now known as 500 Global gave a pretty good illustration Thursday that it's gone well beyond focusing on the local startup scene. Not a single one of the 16 companies that participated in its latest Demo Day event are based in the Bay Area.
That wasn't due to some oversight, Christine Tsai, the firm's CEO and founding partner, said at the event, which was the third in a row 500 has held virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
"When we embarked on this journey 11 years ago, we had this very contrarian belief that exceptional founders exist in all corners of the world," Tsai said. "That conviction led us to invest in companies not just outside of Silicon Valley, but outside the US."
Indeed, seven of the startups that took part in what was 500's 28th Demo Day on Thursday are based in other countries, including Kenya, Brazil, China and Taiwan.
Participants in the event represented five different industry segments — health technology, consumer goods and services, enterprise software, financial technology and blockchain technologies.
Although no local companies participated, four of the startups do hail from California.
Sacramento-based Emerging Impact is developing an international money transfer service built on top of blockchain technologies. Irvine-based JusticeText Inc. has built a service targeted at public defenders that allows users to edit and annotate uploaded videos and automatically generates transcripts from them. Momo Project of West Hollywood creates customized nutrition recommendations for pets. And Los Angeles-based Kiira offers a virtual health clinic for college-aged women.
Instead of accepting applications to participate in its programs at only discrete times of year, 500 is now taking them on a rolling basis, Amit Bhatti, a principal at the firm, said at the conference.
"Building a startup is never easy, especially in times like this," Bhatti said. "It’s been inspiring to see the focus and the drive of the founders for the last few months, despite the difficulty and the struggles of the pandemic that continues to affect us all."
500 has backed more than 6,000 founders across 78 countries. Nearly half of the companies it’s invested in are based outside the U.S.
