A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend to become registered, startups refer to new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo founder. At the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to be successful and influential.
Business incubator is an organization that helps startup companies and individual entrepreneurs to develop their businesses by providing a fullscale range of services starting with management training and office space and ending with venture capital financing. The National Business Incubation Association (NBIA) defines business incubators as a catalyst tool for either regional or national economic development. NBIA categorizes its members' incubators by the following five incubator types: academic institutions; non-profit development corporations; for-profit property development ventures; venture capital firms, and a combination of the above.
Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, Stripe and Twitch. The combined valuation of the top YC companies was more than $300 billion by January 2021. The company's accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, expanded to San Francisco in 2019, and has been entirely online since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Forbes characterized the company in 2012 as one of the most successful startup accelerators in Silicon Valley.
Coworking is an arrangement in which workers for different companies share an office space. It allows cost savings and convenience through the use of common infrastructures, such as equipment, utilities and receptionist and custodial services, and in some cases refreshments and parcel acceptance services. It is attractive to independent contractors, independent scientists, remote workers, digital nomads, and people who travel frequently. Additionally, coworking helps workers avoid the feeling of social isolation they may experience while remote working or traveling and eliminate distractions in home office. Most coworking spaces charge membership dues. Major companies that provide coworking space and serviced offices include WeWork and IWG plc.
Andrew E. Rubin is an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. Rubin founded Android Inc. in 2003, which was acquired by Google in 2005; Rubin served as a Google vice president for 9 years and led Google's efforts in creating and promoting the Android operating system for mobile phones and other devices during most of his tenure. Rubin left Google in 2014 after allegations of sexual misconduct, although it was presented as a voluntary departure rather than a dismissal at first. Rubin then served as co-founder and CEO of venture capital firm Playground Global from 2015–2019. Rubin also helped found Essential Products in 2015, a mobile phone start-up that closed in 2020 without finding a buyer.
An angel investor is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. Angel investors usually give support to start-ups at the initial moments, once or in a consecutive manner, and when most investors are not prepared to back them. In a survey of 150 founders conducted by Wilbur Labs, about 70% of entrepreneurs will face potential business failure, and nearly 66% will face this potential failure within 25 months of launching their company. A small but increasing number of angel investors invest online through equity crowdfunding or organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share investment capital, as well as to provide advice to their portfolio companies. The number of angel investors has greatly increased since the mid-20th century.
Klaus Hommels is a German venture capitalist based in Zurich, Switzerland. He focuses on early and growth-stage investments and has founded his own venture capital fund by the name of Lakestar, through which he has been investing mainly in Internet businesses. He has been involved in successful Internet investments such as Skype, Facebook and Xing.
The High Tech Campus Eindhoven is a high tech center and R&D ecosystem on the Southern edge of the Dutch city of Eindhoven. In 2016, the High Tech Campus is home to more than 140 companies and institutions, comprising over 10,000 product developers, researchers and entrepreneurs and an estimated 85 nationalities. The Financial Times, Fortune, Forbes and others have praised the High Tech Campus Eindhoven (HTCE) as one of the best locations in the world for high-tech venture development and startup activity. As such, the HTCE is an innovation district, a targeted area with a huge potential for innovation and entrepreneurship.
Neil Cocker is a Cardiff, UK-based entrepreneur and former music industry A&R. He is based in Cardiff, Wales and Sofia, Bulgaria. He founded the organisation Cardiff Start, which is aimed at promoting and growing new tech start-ups in the city, co-founded the TEDx Cardiff series, and is on the boards of Ffilm Cymru Wales and the Welsh Music Foundation.
East London Tech City is a technology cluster of high-tech companies located in East London, United Kingdom. Its main area lies broadly between St Luke's and Hackney Road, with an accelerator space for spinout companies at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
AngelPad is an American seed-stage startup incubator, launched in September 2010 by Thomas Korte and Carine Magescas with six other former Google employees as mentors. AngelPad provides mentorship, seed money, and networking at two 10-week courses per year.
A startup ecosystem is formed by people, startups in their various stages and various types of organizations in a location, interacting as a system to create and scale new startup companies. These organizations can be further divided into categories such as universities, funding organizations, support organizations, research organizations, service provider organizations and large corporations. Local Governments and Government organizations such as Commerce / Industry / Economic Development departments also play an important role in startup ecosystem. Different organizations typically focus on specific parts of the ecosystem function and startups at their specific development stage(s).
Fintech, a portmanteau of "financial technology", refers to firms using new technology to compete with traditional financial methods in the delivery of financial services. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, and big data are regarded as the "ABCD" of fintech. The use of smartphones for mobile banking, investing, borrowing services, and cryptocurrency are examples of technologies designed to make financial services more accessible to the general public. Fintech companies consist of both startups and established financial institutions and technology companies trying to replace or enhance the usage of financial services provided by existing financial companies. A subset of fintech companies that focus on the insurance industry are collectively known as insurtech or insuretech companies.
Property technology is used to refer to the application of information technology and platform economics to the real estate industry. Property technology overlaps with financial technology, including uses like online payment and booking systems.
The Ministry of SMEs and Startups is a ministry of the Republic of Korea, established in July 2017 by the Moon Jae-in government. It succeeds the former Small and Medium Business Administration. The headquarters are located in Sejong City, Sejong. As of February 2021, Lee Young, a member of the National Assembly and People Power Party, has been appointed as the South Korean Minister of SMEs and Startups.
Innovate Trust is an independent charity registered in the UK. based in Cardiff operating across South East Wales. Innovate Trust provides supported living services to adults with learning disabilities, mental health conditions, physical disabilities or sensory impairments in Cardiff, the Vale of Glamorgan and Rhondda Cynon Taff.
Tania Habimana is a Rwandan Belgian entrepreneur and television presenter.
SGInnovate is a government-owned innovation platform in Singapore to support entrepreneurship centred on the development of deep technology. It was established in 2016 to consolidate innovation activities in Singapore, and was founded on the belief that deep technology, borne out of scientific research, can tackle some of the "greatest global challenges".
Chukwuemeka Fred Agbata Jnr. also known as CFA is a Nigerian journalist, technology entrepreneur, business coach, public speaker and television presenter at Channels TV where he hosts the show Tech Trends. He is also a columnist for The Punch called ICT clinic. He is the co-founder of godo.ng, director of Innovation Support Network Hubs and Director of Founder Institute Lagos, and the founder of CFAtech.ng.
Tzahi "Zack" Weisfeld is an Israeli serial entrepreneur. He is a Vice President at Intel and the General Manager of Ignite, Intel’s global start-up program. Weisfeld held several positions at Microsoft, including General Manager of Global Startups and a management member of Microsoft’s R&D Center in Israel.
