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 includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to go public, startups are new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo-founder. During the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to become successful and influential.
A 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.
Nitin Pradhan was the Departmental Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the US Department of Transportation (DOT) as part of the Obama Administration from July 6, 2009 to August 31, 2012. After leaving US DOT, Pradhan established and led the nation's first Federal Technology Accelerator and Partner Consortium called Public Private Innovations and later cofounded GOVonomy, an emerging products technology marketplace for the public sector as well as ScaleUP USA, a Digital Business Growth Accelerator.
Vivek Wadhwa is an Indian-American technology entrepreneur and academic. He is Distinguished Fellow & Adjunct Professor at Carnegie Mellon's School of Engineering at Silicon Valley and Distinguished Fellow at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. He is also author of books Your Happiness Was Hacked: Why Tech Is Winning the Battle to Control Your Brain—and How to Fight Back, Driver in the Driverless Car,Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology, and Immigrant Exodus.
MassChallenge is a global, zero-equity startup accelerator, founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 2009.
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.
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 is highly competitive. There are specific accelerators, such as corporate accelerators, which are often subsidiaries or programs of larger corporations that act like seed accelerators.
9gag is an online platform and social media website based in Hong Kong, which allows its users to upload and share user-generated content or other content from external social media websites. Since the platform for collections of Internet memes was launched on April 11, 2008, it has grown in popularity across social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
A startup ecosystem is formed by people in startups in their various stages, and various types of organizations in a location that are 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 a startup ecosystem. Different organizations typically focus on specific parts of the ecosystem function and startups at their specific development stage(s).
Adam Jay Harrison is an American defense industry entrepreneur, inventor, and advocate for military acquisition reform. He works as a startup founder and investor and is the John R. Boyd National Security Innovation Fellow at New York University, where he researches the efficacy of national innovation policies that capitalize on collaboration between the public and private sectors. In 2006 Harrison founded Mav6, a defense technology company recognized by Inc. magazine in 2011, 2012, and 2013 as one of the fastest growing privately held companies in America. From 2016 to 2017 he served as the inaugural director of the MD5 National Security Technology Accelerator, a human capital innovation program within the Office of the Secretary of Defense and part of the Defense Innovation Unit. And from 2018 to 2019 he was the Command Innovation Officer of the US Army Futures Command, where he designed and implemented the organization's efforts to collaborate with the civilian high-tech sector in the development of advanced, military-relevant capabilities.
The Alchemist Accelerator is a venture-backed accelerator focused on the development of seed-stage ventures that monetize from enterprises. Alchemist's backers include Khosla Ventures, DFJ, Cisco, Siemens, GE, and Salesforce, among others. The accelerator seeds around 75 enterprise-monetizing ventures per year.
Alice Yvonne Bentinck is a British entrepreneur. Along with Matt Clifford, she is the co-founder of Entrepreneur First, a London-based company builder and startup accelerator. Based in London and Singapore, EF funds ambitious individuals based across Europe and Asia to create startups. In 2017, it was announced that Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and Partner at Greylock, was leading a $12.4million investment into Entrepreneur First.
Oswald Labs is a Dutch-Indian based accessibility technology company that builds products for individuals with disabilities. It specializes in enterprise web accessibility, offers smartphone apps, and also runs a startup accelerator. It was established in 2016 by Anand Chowdhary, Nishant Gadihoke and Mahendra Raghuwanshi after their product, Oswald Extension, won an event at the AngelHack hackathon in New Delhi.
Tenity is a startup incubator, accelerator and early-stage VC founded in 2016 in Zürich focused primarily on Fintech, Insurtech, Regtech and Deeptech. It provides incubation and acceleration programs helping startups to connect with corporates, experts, mentors, and investors for early stage venture and late stage venture investing, and collaboration opportunities. The company currently has operating hubs in Zürich, Singapore, Madrid, and Tallinn.
The/Nudge Institute, formerly The/Nudge Foundation, is an Indian non-profit action institute established in 2015 with the aim to contribute to "a poverty-free India."
Chukwuemeka Fred Agbata Jnr. also known as CFA is a Nigerian journalist and a former television presenter at Channels TV. He is into digital marketing and known as a technology entrepreneur with focus on business coaching and public speaking. He hosted the first virtual telehealth conference of Nigeria’s telemedicine company, CareClick with the theme ‘The Future Of Healthcare Today’ on 24 September 2020. He was involved in various ICT-related companies that contributed to the development of the Founder Institute. He is known as the founder of Pacer Venture and has links with Climate Action Africa. He is the MD/CEO of Anambra State ICT Agency.
Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator is an American seed accelerator launched in January 2011.
CIIE.CO is an Indian startup accelerator and incubator that supports early-stage startups located at IIM Ahmedabad in Ahmedabad, India. It was founded in 2002 to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in India. It is a Center of excellence set up at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad with support from the Government of India's Department of Science and Technology and the Government of Gujarat.
AlphaLab is an American technology startup accelerator based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 2008 by Jim Jen. AlphaLab has two subsidiaries, AlphaLab Gear and AlphaLab Health, catering to companies in the hardware and medical fields, respectively.
Spoken is a mobile application and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) tool launched in 2019. The app was designed to aid individuals with speech and language impairments like aphasia or nonverbal autism, using a combination of symbols, text, and voice output.
