Over the next three months, nine early-stage startups will hone their solutions under the mentorship of the Techstars Seattle accelerator. At the end of the program, they’ll pitch their products to prominent investors at Demo Day on May 18.
Techstars Seattle’s 2016 cohort, announced this morning, includes startups focused on data analytics, gaming, drones, and other industries with a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest.
“We always try to focus selection for the program on existing or emerging areas of excellence in our regional innovation ecosystem, with an eye for themes that we think will be of particular interest to the venture investor community in the coming few years,” said Techstars Seattle Managing Director Chris DeVore.
For the past seven years, Techstars has helped launch startups like Remitly, Outreach, and Shippable. Techstars receives a 6 percent stake in participating startups, in exchange for $20,000 in cash and mentorship hours.
“This year’s class includes two different approaches to the theme of ‘messaging as the interface layer,'” said DeVore. “…these companies tap into traditional strengths of our regional economy like aerospace, enterprise software, real estate, retail, and gaming, but with any eye to how emerging technologies are likely to transform those categories in the years to come.”
Here are the newest companies, with descriptions from Techstars:
- Beam: Connecting gamers through interactive live streaming.
- DroneSeed: Replanting forests safer and 10X cheaper. Using drones.
- Fig Loans: Affordable credit for low-income families.
- Keepe: Efficient marketplace connecting Property Managers & Contractors.
- Kepler Communications: Real-time access to space borne data.
- Reflect: Embedded analytics for your app.
- Shyft: Shift swapping made easy.
- Subcurrent: A Slack bot for collecting simple and powerful feedback at work.
- Validated: Free shipping for yourself!
