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It seems that Y Combinator and TechStars-like incubators are popping up everywhere. BoomStartup just launched an incubator in Utah and TechStars is expanding to other cities in the U.S., as is The Founder Institute. Chicago has a new incubator that recently launched, called Excelerate Labs.
Excelerate is the brainchild of OKCupid entrepreneur Sam Yagan, Kapil Chaudhary, Kelli Rhee, and Troy Henikoff. Yagan says the Chicago-based incubator has a similar model to TechStars and Y Combinator. Six to ten startups will be chosen for a three month long program, where founders will be given resources to build their products, access to mentors and funding. Each startup will receive anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000 (depending on the number of founders) for five percent of equity.
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Troy,
The resources which your team offers are definitely great. However, the quite thoughtful thing that DreamIT Ventures does is accept applications both from start-up founders AND talented individuals (business people or tech people) who want to join start-ups during each of DreamIT’s programs. This is what I meant by “entrepreneur matching,” and it is a fantastic way to turbocharge the boots-on-the-ground management teams vs. just providing mentors (which is also very valuable)
Silk,
We do have a heavy component of mentorship and will be leveraging the strong experience we have here in Chicago to pair experienced entrepreneurs with the startups. There is a partial list of Mentors on the website http://www.ExcelerateLabs.com and I hope you will agree we have a great pool of talent to pull from!
Very nice! I applied. I wonder what the selection process is like…
is this open to anyone or available only in certain geographies ?
http://travellersmantra.com/2010/03/12/royal-reservations-part-ii/
However, these guys should incorporate the entrepreneur matching which the Dream IT Ventures incubator offers. It is very smart for the incubator to put motivated business-savvy entrepreneurs together with motivated tech-savvy entrepreneurs to form stronger management teams for these young start-ups
Great to see this in Chicago. There is an ocean of untapped talent in that area.
This is exactly the perception that we are trying to change! There actually are a lot of tech / web based companies in Chicago that people forget about. Some large ones include Orbitz, Navteq, ComScore, AllScripts, CDW. Then there are many newer companies like Viewpoints, Sittercity, 37 Signals, Savo, GrubHub, just to name a handful. We definitely want to attract more new companies AND give Chicago some of the recognition it deserves for what it already has…
Yes, anyone can apply. It does require spending the summer in Chicago, but we are drawing from all over and already have many international applications.
[...] Excelerate Labs Brings A Startup Incubator To Chicago [...]
Yes please! There are pretty much no tech places here in Chicago, besides Google Chicago and Threadless.
And another just opened in Blacksburg, Virginia, home of Virginia Tech. DayOne Ventures is receiving applications at http://www.dayoneventures.com.
Whether any one can apply? from outside US also?? for these incubator startups?