Startup accelerator program Techstars Seattle on Monday unveiled 24 companies for its 15th cohort, doubling the class size from last year’s dozen graduates.
This year’s cohort is made up of industry vets from diverse fields like healthcare and robotics. Founders hail from large tech companies such as Meta, Microsoft, and Nordstrom.
“These experts have built really great businesses or products within those large industries,” Techstars Managing Director Marius Ciocirlan told GeekWire. “But now they can leverage AI to rethink those entire industries and build (products) from the ground up in a very native way.”
Techstars’ programs are typically divided into fall and spring sessions, but that offers limited time between cohorts for one-on-one founder mentorship, Ciocirlan said. By merging the sessions, he said, the accelerator has more time to offer founders individualized mentorship in areas like fundraising, customer acquisition and hiring, as well as engaging with new founders and investors.
A challenge for this year’s cohort will be navigating the declining venture capital markets, Ciocirlan said. Startups will need to have more headway under their belts before they can fundraise, as well as keep pace with the latest advancements in generative AI and other new tech trends, he said.
“We’re trying to help our teams move fast, gain a lot more traction, and do more with less,” Ciocirlan said.
On top of post-graduation support, Techstars brought in more mentors to help with the increased headcount. The accelerator last month announced four new entrepreneurs in residence: Arean Van Veelan, Bill Bryant, Chris Pitchford, and Yifan Zhang.
Techstars expanded to Seattle in 2010. Its portfolio startups have raised over $3 billion of capital, and more than 80% of them have either exited or continue to operate. The 2011 class produced three unicorns, including Remitly, Outreach, and Zipline.
Here’s a look at the companies in the 15th class:
AdsGency
The pitch: “A no code platform to automate advertising workflows from ideation and content generation to performance monitoring and optimization.”
Founder: Bolbi Liu
Astros
The pitch: “A developer-first company that provides platforms and tools for mobile game studios to efficiently monetize their customers.”
Founder: Zsika Phillip
Canopy
The pitch: “An anonymous community for social media creators to ask questions, gain industry insights, and spill the tea in a safe space.”
Founder: Ayomi Samaraweera
CareCopilot
The pitch: “An intelligent, managed marketplace of everything that you need when caring for an adult loved one with specialized care needs.”
Founder: Alyse Dunn
Chassi
The pitch: “Helping robotics and embedded companies ship software 10x faster and cheaper by automating their entire development workflow.”
Founders: Chuka Okoye, Mathew LeJeune
Chi
The pitch: “Actionable code risk intelligence for Microservices.”
Founders: Arjun Menon, Maneesh Shaji
CloudFence
The pitch: “One-click deploy full stack network security and security insights to manage security across your cloud infrastructure.”
Founders: Mounira Remini, Satish Chitupolu
Discoverist.ai
The pitch: “An AI-powered shopping assistant that optimizes discovery, decision-making, and shopping experiences.”
Founders: Alan John, Harpreet Singh
Easy Platter
The pitch: “Platform to hire a chef to cook weekly meals in your home starting at $89 per week.”
Founders: Mandhir Singh
Et Cetera Robotics
The pitch: “Etc. Robotics upgrades robots to see what others miss.”
Founders: Robert Gens, Kendall Lowrey
Inquisio
The pitch: “An AI-powered copilot eliminating repetitive workflows starting with public information requests.”
Founders: Joshua Penner, Chris Lande, Scott Larson
Moyae
The pitch: “The ultimate Electronic health record solution designed for ophthalmologists and optometrists.”
Founders: Sami Mirimiri, Douglas Phung
Paralog
The pitch: “Paralog is an AI platform to democratize and accelerate production of NPC (non-player characters) behaviors in video games.”
Founders: Elisabeth Gosselin, Carle Côté
Pezzo
The pitch: “Empowers organizations to seamlessly integrate and optimize AI in their software, without requiring prior AI/ML expertise.”
Founders: Ariel Weinberger, Matan Abramovich
Planette
The pitch: “Empowers enterprises to adapt to climate change by providing year-ahead extreme weather risk forecasts.”
Founders: Kalai Ramea, Hansi Singh
Produx
The pitch: “Enabling smarter decisions for B2B product teams with actionable intelligence from GTM
feedback.”
Founders: Tony Tom, Jerin A Mathews
Propio
The pitch: “Propio puts Latino independent workers in the driver’s seat to seamlessly manage payments, taxes, benefits and financial access.”
Founders: Rodrigo Carriedo, Fernando Aguilar Reyes, Orlando Gomez
Prospero
The pitch: “Prospero fully automates email marketing for businesses that do not have a marketing team.”
Founders: Rotimi Iziduh
Stackoon
The pitch: “Stackoon helps tech companies eliminate manual hassle of managing software tools by allowing IT & HR teams to control access and costs for 300,000 apps.”
Founders: Ole Shved, Yarik Rozum
TalkStack AI
The pitch: “TalkStack provides a no-code (generative) AI customer experience platform to enterprises without AI teams and can deliver human-like conversations including lead generation and qualification.”
Founders: Eunice Wong, Pasquale Sorrentino
tawkitAI
The pitch: “TawkitAI makes it easy to build copilots into products.”
Founders: Atai Barkai, Uli Barkai
Trellis Health
The pitch: “Modern personal health software for you to access your past, manage your present, and build a
foundation for the future of your family’s health.”
Founders: Estelle Giraud, Ryan Nabat
Visionify
The pitch: “Visionify helps improve workplace safety by providing VisionAI services.”
Founders: Harsh Murari, Priyesh Sanghvi
ZippiAI
The pitch: “AI co-pilot for maintenance engineers.”
Founders: Upinder Singh, Parminder Singh
