“Of the 305 companies who participated in SXSW Accelerator between 2009 and 2015, over 63% received funding, with combined funding in excess of almost $2.613 billion (does not include undisclosed grants, angel and seed funding). Of these 305 companies, 13% have been acquired by the likes of Google, British Telecom, Huffington Post, Apple, Live Nation, OpenTable, Constant Contact, and Harmon.”
Source: www.sxsw.com
SXSW is one of the most high profiles events in tech and also runs the SXSW Accelerator during the conference. The name “Accelerator” is a bit misleading though, because it’s not an accelerator in the way we think of it today: it’s really a competition where startups go through their elevator pitch in front of a panel of judges.
In terms of competition and networking, it’s a great event for startups to increase visibility and to raise money from top VCs. Past judges are for example Tim Draper, Paul Graham, Mark Suster, Scott Weiss, Guy Kawasaki, etc.
Until this year, Fintech was not represented in the competition, but Payment and Fintech is now a proper category for 2016 – another sign of the huge growth of Fintech. It is therefore a great opportunity for Fintech startups looking for funding (especially because most people wouldn’t know about the Fintech stream, so less competition!). Deadline is 6 November
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