PORTLAND, Ore. — We’ve arrived at the beautiful Nike campus just outside of Portland for the big Nike Accelerator Demo Day. More than 900 investors, mentors, Nike leaders, friends and family are expected here.
Three months ago, ten startups arrived here for an accelerator program put on by Nike and TechStars. GeekWire has featured all of the companies — one company, Sprout at Work, never got back to us — and you can learn more about them below:
- GoRecess helps you find, book classes
- FitCause lets you donate to charity by walking to work
- Coachbase lets you draw up plays, strategies with an iPad
- FitDeck turns exercise into a card game
- Chrom.io rewards exercise with customizable fighting robots
- HighFive is the advertising middleman between brands and fitness apps
- Nextstep.io teaches you about yourself with exercise data
- GeoPalz motivates kids to exercise with reward system
- Totem helps tell stories of your outdoor adventures
Nike said the goal of the Accelerator is to ”build offerings that inspire and assist people to live more active, healthy lifestyles.” Companies have focused efforts on Nike+ FuelBand, Nike+ Running and NikeFuel, with Nike providing technical resources and mentorship.
The concept is similar to TechStars’ partnerships with Microsoft, which has run specialized incubator programs around technologies such as Kinect and Windows Azure. In the case with Microsoft and Nike, neither company takes a direct equity stake in the companies participating in the portfolio, nor do they retain rights to the intellectual property of the startups.
However, TechStars receives a six percent equity stake of the participating companies, which also receive $20,000 in startup funds.
We’ll be back later today with a recap of Demo Day and some of our favorite pitches.