Startup nurseries are the cradles that help many startups such as Airbnb, Grab, Uber, etc… turn into big and well-known brands globally.
1. Techstars (USA)
Do you know about the stories of Uber and Sendgrid at their very beginning and who they met? It was Techstars, a global network that allows startups to showcase their products to traders, and thereby, helps them meet and exchange with each other easily. Techstars also helps startups to join their network by opening Techstars Ventures to invest in young companies with bold ideas. Uber was supported by this fund in the early days when it first entered the market.
Has been presented in more than 150 countries, attracting 10,000 advisors and organizing more than 4,000 such meetings. Techstars cooperates with big companies like IBM, Amazon, BOSH or Ford to create good conditions for young businesses in their nurseries.
By the beginning of 2019, Techstars had accepted application forms for funding of more than 1,600 companies with a total investment of up to 18.2 billion USD. If you think that 1,600 startups are a lot already, in fact, it actually accounts for less than 1% of the total number of startups applying here.
Founded by David Cohen, Brad Feld, David Brown and Jared Polis in 2006, Techstars only supported around $ 10 thousand and human resources such as professionals to support each new project within 3 months during its beginning days. Nowadays, they are cooperating with many big partners, which turns the those numbers above bigger and provides more help to startups.
Featured articles
2. Y Combinator (USA)
Not just being a nursery, Y Combinator is also considered a “growth medicine” as this company promotes the growth of startups that are supported by them. Just take a quick glance at some of the prominent names in technology like Dropbox, Airbnb, Reddit or Webbly. All those big names, they have one thing in common which is they are all “sponsored” by Y Combinator.
Founded by Paul Graham in 2005, Y Combinator has poured $ 100 billion in capital for nearly 2,000 startups. Located in Silicon Valley, this nursery is only operated by 40 people but receives about 13,000 “saplings” each year and will select only about 200 out of these to “look after”.
Being a great and famous nursery, Y Combinator requires tough standards for startups in order to be invested in by them. The process of selecting and pouring investment is done through a council of the most fastidious entrepreneurs, called SAFE. After being chosen, Startups will be assigned their own office in the famous Silicon valley during 3 months. The startup teams will also be “freshen up” in order to help them to start the work as soon as possible and to work more efficiently and smoothly.
Y Combinator organises meetings to introduce startups with investors very often, which brings great opportunities for young businesses to be seen and maybe invested by big investors. Even when the startup cannot get any investment from these gatherings, Y Combinator would still continue nurturing them until their next opportunity.
Airbnb is the most successful startup product sponsored by Y Combinator. The idea of home-based travel reservations has helped the company to raise its value to $ 30 billion, and created jobs for over 4,000 people around the world.
Join the discussion