Y Combinator Management, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005 which has been used to launch more than 4,000 companies. The accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, expanded to San Francisco in 2019, and was entirely online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Companies started via Y Combinator include Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Reddit, Stripe, and Twitch.
Semyon Dukach is a Ukrainian-American entrepreneur and former professional blackjack player. He is the founding partner of One Way Ventures, a venture capital fund that backs immigrant entrepreneurs.
Techstars is a pre-seed investor that provides access to capital, mentorship, and other support for early-stage entrepreneurs. It was founded in 2006 in Boulder, Colorado. As of May 2022, the company had accepted over 2,900 companies into its accelerator programs with a combined market capitalization of $71bn USD. Techstars operates accelerator programs in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
David "Dave" McClure is an entrepreneur and angel investor based in the San Francisco Bay Area, who founded the business accelerator 500 Startups ,and served as its CEO until his resignation in 2017. He founded Practical Venture Capital soon after, a new venture capital fund that would continue to work with companies he previously funded through 500 Startups.
500 Global is an early-stage venture fund and seed accelerator founded in 2010 by Dave McClure and Christine Tsai. The fund admitted a first "class" of twelve startups to its incubator office in Mountain View, California in February 2011. They expanded to a second class of 21 in June 2011 and a third class of 34 in October 2011.
Startup accelerators, also known as seed accelerators, are fixed-term, cohort-based programs, that include mentorship and educational components and culminate in a public pitch event or demo day. While traditional business incubators are often government-funded, generally take no equity, and rarely provide funding, accelerators can be either privately or publicly funded and cover a wide range of industries. Unlike business incubators, the application process for seed accelerators is open to anyone but highly competitive. There are specific accelerators, such as corporate accelerators, which are often subsidiaries or programs of larger corporations that act like seed accelerators.
CoachUp is a venture-funded startup company that connects athletes with private coaches.
CrowdTwist was a privately held company headquartered in New York City, New York, purchased by Oracle in 2019. Oracle CrowdTwist is a SaaS based omni-channel loyalty and analytics platform that is designed to allow marketers to acquire, engage and retain customers. The information gathered by CrowdTwist can be used and analyzed by companies to create customer profiles on both an individual and macro level. CrowdTwist investors include StarVest Partners, SoftBank Capital, Fairhaven Capital, KBS+P Ventures and Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments. Scott Matthews serves as CrowdTwist's chief executive officer.
David Cohen is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of Pinpoint Technologies, iContact.com, and Earfeeder. He is also an angel investor with a portfolio of more than 100 companies. Cohen is best known as the co-founder of Techstars, a mentorship-based startup accelerator.
AngelList is a U.S. website for fundraising and connecting startups, angel investors, and limited partners. Founded in 2010, it started as an online introduction board for tech startups that needed seed funding. Since 2015, the site allows startups to raise money from angel investors free of charge. Created by serial entrepreneur Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi in 2010, Avlok Kohli has been leading AngelList as its CEO since 2019.
Brad Feld is an American entrepreneur, author, blogger, and venture capitalist at Foundry Group in Boulder, Colorado, a firm he started with partners Seth Levine, Ryan McIntyre, and Jason Mendelson.
Barcelona Ventures is a seed accelerator and resource platform for European startups to get a foothold in Silicon Valley to connect with investors and expand into the US market. Barcelona Ventures provides mentoring programs, helps coordinate with US legal counsel, immigration services, access to investors, and a Silicon Valley network.
M12, formerly Microsoft Ventures, is a corporate venture capital subsidiary of Microsoft. Founded in March 2016, its mission is to be an active, strategic partner during a startup's growth, typically investing between Series A and D. The fund is managed by Michelle Gonzalez, formerly of Google.
David Tisch is a businessman and angel investor based in New York City. He is managing partner of BoxGroup, a seed-stage capital firm, and a co-founder of TechStars New York City. He is the grandson of American businessman Laurence Tisch, co-owner of Loews Corporation. His great-uncle, Preston Robert Tisch purchased the New York Giants, now co-owned by Steve Tisch, who produced the films Forrest Gump and Risky Business.
Plated was an American ingredient-and-recipe meal kit service that has been acquired by Albertsons. The company was founded in 2012 and became well known through its participation in Techstars in 2013, Shark Tank in 2014 and Beyond the Tank in 2015. Plated's founders, Nick Taranto and Josh Hix, earned a deal on Shark Tank that fell through, but negotiated a deal with another investor after the show was filmed. The company accepted several rounds of venture capital investments and remained private until it was acquired by Albertsons in September 2017.
Yadin B. Kaufmann is an Israeli-American technology investor, social entrepreneur and writer.
ANSR is a global company that helps organizations build, manage and scale global teams through Global Capability Centers (GCCs), also known as Captive Centers. ANSR was established in 2004 by Lalit Ahuja. Since its inception, ANSR has established over 100 GCCs aggregating to over 100k enterprise talent.
Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator is an American seed accelerator launched in January 2011.
Fusion LA is a venture capital firm and an accelerator for Israeli startups in the United States. It was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Santa Monica, California, United States.
StatMuse Inc. is an American artificial intelligence company founded in 2014. The company maintains its own eponymous website where it hosts a database of sports statistics.
