Startups are always looking for help with advice, growth, and capital, making accelerator programs an attractive option for early-stage companies. These 3-6 month boot camps force companies to quickly find a product and market fit, while increasing the growth rate.
The most highly capitalized accelerator in the Southeast, The Startup Factory, has become very good at fulfilling this role over the last two years. On Tuesday, the accelerator, in partnership with Internet Summit, unveiled the six startups that it has funded and worked with over the last three months at the annual TSF Showcase (formerly Demo Day).
Here is a quick summary of each company’s pitch:
- Szl is a mobile app that uses neural network systems to help you get what you need out of the Internet. This personalized content discovery tool is easy to use and works very similar to Tinder. The catch is you aren’t finding the next love of your life, you are finding content you like, when you need it. The team behind this mobile app has been working together for twenty-two years and successfully exited five startups.
- Coursefork is attacking the education space by empowering professors, teachers, and trainers to collaborate on course content. With a team of successful entrepreneurs and technologists, the mission is to help “anyone teach anything on Coursefork”, according to CEO Elliot Hauser. While the company is rolling out initially with coding workshops, they see the potential to move into the higher education and corporate training verticals.
- 4Soils is building an interactive and compelling mobile experience to help people engage with biblical content. They already have 17 apps in the app store and 650K+ total installs. The stickiness of their 7.2 million app sessions is attributed to 4Soils’ content and game play. Moving forward, the goal is to disrupt the Christian publishing industry.
- RocketBolt helps businesses increase engagement with potential customers in an easy way. With a simple “set and forget” interface, businesses are able to issue a call-to-action, capture email addresses, and drive sales. Whether the business wants to reward current customers or drive bigger social audiences, this startup is set on making small business’s lives easier.
- HomeWellness empowers homeowners to better understand information about their home. With a background in building science, the team is set on helping these homeowners find the root cause of issues within the home. By providing unbiased information and recommending which contractors to call, HomeWellness hopes to grow their current 26% engagement rate and acquire additional users through corporate benefit programs.
- Brevado is building beautiful project timelines bridging the client communication gap. Clients can choose to receive automated updates on progress via email, SMS, Twitter, or in-app notifications. With 800 beta users, this automated client communication tool is freeing up 20-50 hours a month for service providers to get back to work and stop worrying about progress updates.
With such a diverse group of startups, The Startup Factory is making a bet on the process, rather than a specific idea. If these companies can iterate, grow, and avoid the landmines, they will soon blossom into growth-stage companies that have new challenges.
Risk is never eliminated in the startup game but accelerators, like The Startup Factory, are able to mitigate some of it. While the presentations are the culmination of a program, for these companies the journey is only beginning.
