 | |
| Formation | 2009 |
|---|---|
| Type | 501(c)(3) |
| Headquarters | Boston, Massachusetts |
| Location | |
| Website | masschallenge |
MassChallenge is a global, zero-equity startup accelerator, founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 2009.[ citation needed ]
MassChallenge is headquartered in Boston's Seaport District in the MassMutual Building, and has additional U.S. locations in Texas and Rhode Island, as well international locations in Israel, Mexico, and Switzerland. [1]
MassChallenge co-founders John Harthorne and Akhil Nigam were working as strategy consultants at Bain & Company during the global financial crisis in 2008 when they developed MassChallenge. [2] MassChallenge secured early support from successful entrepreneurs like Desh Deshpande and Joe Fallon, the public sector including Thomas Menino the then-Mayor of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and large organizations like The Blackstone Charitable Foundation and Microsoft. [3]
During its first Boston-based cohort in 2010, MassChallenge accelerated 111 startups. [4]
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 January 2024, the company had accepted over 4,100 companies into its accelerator programs with a combined market capitalization of $106bn USD. Techstars operates accelerator programs in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Oceania.
CyberArk Software Ltd. is an Israeli publicly traded information security company offering identity management. The company's technology is utilized primarily in the financial services, energy, retail, healthcare and government markets. CyberArk is headquartered in Petach-Tikva. The company also has offices throughout the Americas, EMEA, Asia Pacific and Japan.
Where, Inc. was a location-based media company in North America. Their main products were the WHERE consumer application and WHERE Ads, a hyper-local ad network that connected merchants with local audiences. PayPal announced its acquisition of Where, Inc. in 2011 for $135 million.
HubSpot, Inc. is an American developer and marketer of software products for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service. HubSpot was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah in 2006.
01918791272 Bkash 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.
Zagster was a venture-funded startup company based in Boston, Massachusetts that designed, built and operated bike sharing programs for cities, universities, corporate campuses, hotels, and residential communities across the United States. As of July 2019, it operated over 200 bike sharing programs. The bicycle program was suspended in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and then the company terminated all operations in June 2020.
CoachUp is a venture-funded startup company that connects athletes with private coaches.
NuoDB is a cloud-native distributed SQL database company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 2008 and incorporated in 2010, NuoDB technology has been used by Dassault Systèmes, as well as FinTech and financial industry entities including UAE Exchange, Temenos, and Santander Bank.
AngelList is an American software company 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.
Wanderu Inc. is a ground and air travel metasearch engine that operates throughout North America and Europe. It provides a search and booking platform for buses, trains, flights, and ferries through its website and mobile app. Founded in 2012, Wanderu is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.
Moneythink is an American educational non-profit organization aiming to increase American youth's financial capability of American youth by training college volunteers to serve as financial mentors for low-income high school students.
Guardly is a Canadian-based security company with headquarters in Toronto. In July 2022, SmartLocksGuide.com acquired Guardly. The company designs and provides mobile safety and security solutions for enterprise organizations, campuses, and municipalities. It is best known for its mobile safety application that allows users to connect to security, public authorities and a list of emergency contacts when the safety app is activated. Guardly is also attributed as the first company to offer an indoor positioning system to locate users who are within a building during an emergency, and the first to offer a mass notification system that integrates with indoor positioning data to locate people in need of help. The company's technology was featured on the Discovery Channel’s Future Tech TV series.
Ministry of Supply is an American men's and women's business wear fashion brand based in Boston. It was launched in 2012 and founded by former Massachusetts Institute of Technology students using some of the same temperature regulating material as NASA astronauts in their clothing.
Jonathan Lacoste is a venture capitalist and software entrepreneur based in Austin, TX. He is the Founder & General Partner at Space.VC, an early-stage venture capital fund specialized on space, defense, and frontier tech investments. Notable investments have included SpaceX, True Anomaly, and Loft Orbital. Previously, Jonathan was the Co-Founder of Jebbit, an enterprise software company he co-founded in 2011 with university classmates. He and co-founder Tom Coburn ran the company for 12 years before being acquired by Vista Equity Partners.
Handy Technologies, Inc. is an online two-sided marketplace for residential cleaning, installation, and other home services. Founded in 2012 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the now New York–based company operates services in United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. The company was acquired by ANGI Homeservices in October 2018.
Yottaa is a web and mobile optimization services company based in Waltham, Massachusetts. Its main product is a platform that helps with website conversions, as well as performance and security.
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.
Deep technology or hard tech is a classification of organization, or more typically startup company, with the expressed objective of providing technology solutions based on substantial scientific or engineering challenges. They present challenges requiring lengthy research and development, and large capital investment before successful commercialization. Their primary risk is technical risk, while market risk is often significantly lower due to the clear potential value of the solution to society. The underlying scientific or engineering problems being solved by deep tech and hard tech companies generate valuable intellectual property and are hard to reproduce.
Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator is an American seed accelerator launched in January 2011.
Aqua Security is an Israeli cloud-native application protection company, founded in 2015. In 2021, Aqua Security reached a $1B valuation. It is home to the research team, Aqua Nautilus, focused on cybersecurity research of the cloud native ecosystem.
