神戸市と500 Startupsが2021年も「500 KOBE ACCELERATOR」をオンライン開催

今回は「神戸市と500 Startupsが2021年も「500 KOBE ACCELERATOR」をオンライン開催」についてご紹介します。

関連ワード （500 Startups、神戸等） についても参考にしながら、ぜひ本記事について議論していってくださいね。

本記事は、TechCrunch様で掲載されている内容を参考にしておりますので、より詳しく内容を知りたい方は、ページ下の元記事リンクより参照ください。

神戸市は、米国の著名ベンチャーキャピタル500 Startupsと連携した起業家育成オンラインプログラム「500 Founders Academy in partnership with Kobe」の参加募集を7月9日から開始すると発表した。

1期は2021年7月9日から月末まで応募を受け付け、9月6日から10月1日までプログラムを開催。2期は2021年9月から10月まで応募を受け付け、11月から12月の開催を予定する。シード、アーリーラウンドのスタートアップを国内外から1期あたり50社募集する。選考は500Startupsと神戸市が書類で行う予定。

神戸市はこれまでも、2016年より、神戸からスタートアップ・エコシステムを生み出すことを目指し500 Startupsと連携して、短期集中型起業家支援プログラム「500 KOBE ACCELERATOR」を開催。過去5回の開催では、1000社以上の応募企業から厳選した計88社のスタートアップを育成支援し、参加者の累計資金調達額は120億円を超える。2020年度は新型コロナウイルス感染拡大に対応するため全編オンラインで実施となり、地理的制限を受けない自由度の高いプログラムとなった。

500 Startupsの投資プログラムではないが、同ファンドの専門家たちによるレクチャー動画やメンターによるQ&Aセッションが受けられ、必要に応じて翻訳サポートも付く。オフライン開催だった頃は6週間ほどの神戸滞在が必要だったが、1カ月のオンラインメンタリングに切り替えて柔軟性をもたせたとのこと。500 Startupsは仙台市などと連携した例はあるが、アクセラレータプログラムの実施は神戸市のみとのことだ。

神戸市はオープンイノベーションに実に意欲的で、全国の自治体とスタートアップのマッチングプラットフォーム「Urban Innovation JAPAN（UIJ）」の立ち上げや「ANCHOR KOBE」の開設なども手がけた。今でこそデジタル庁の出現と副業浸透により、ビズリーチやエンジャパンで各自治体がDX副業人材を募集するようになったが、神戸市が新産業課を中途で募集し、地元の縁に囚われない新チームを組成したのはすでに4年も前だという。

かくいう同市もチーフ・エヴァンジェリストを募集した自治体の1つだが、新産業課長の武田卓氏自身も民間企業で営業を勤めた経歴の持ち主。同課でイノベーション専門官を務める松山律子氏は元アパレルの新規事業担当だ。他のメンバーも神戸市出身者ばかりではなく、おもしろい仕事を探す中でたどり着いたという。神戸市は、各プログラムにおいても神戸市への誘致などを必須条件に入れているわけでないが、それでも圧倒的推進力で日本からスタートアップ・エコシステムを生むために、アクセラレータプログラム、コワーキング施設、実証実験の推進等を次々と実行に移していっている。オープン・イノベーションを掲げながらもZoomもままならない部署も多いものだが、市長の推進力とチームの組成方法に、神戸市のオープン・イノベーションへの本気度を見るかのように思う。

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1. 500 startups fintech investments. Started in with its flagship startup accelerator, Startups is the most active global venture capital firm known for its various funds and founder programs across the globe. We will select & syndicate investments in companies per year focused on financial. Note from FinTech.

Ola's $500 million shuffle

In todays ETtech Top 5 newsletter: Ola has shuffled its cap table ahead of an IPO; Pharmeasy seeks funding after Thyrocare deal; WhatsApp puts its new privacy policy on hold; and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) plans to step up campus hiring.

Deal Roundup: PharmEasy, Ola, Pine Labs lead $1.9 bn ...

Private capital investments in technology startups surged to $1.9 billion this week as unicorns Ola, PharmEasy and Pine Labs mopped up large growth funding rounds enroute to their respective initial public offerings (IPO). 

Temasek Warburg Pincus invest $500 m in OLa: India's Ola ...

The company's latest round of funding comes at a time when prominent Indian startups are hitting public market through IPOs to cash in on a flush of l.. ... Warburg Pincus to pump in $500 million ...

Sitel & Jobs | Jobs Live | Contact Us Today

SitelAs a global leader in end-to-end customer experience (CX) products and solutions, Sitel Group® partners with the world’s best-loved brands, from Fortune 500 companies to local startups, to design, build and deliver …

Kurly, the Korean grocery startup, raises $200M on a $2.2B ...

Online grocery startups around the world continue to pull in major investment, underscoring how much they have all grown especially in the last year of

Ola To Get $500M In Funding From Temasek, Warburg Pincus ...

India’s Ola To Get $500M In Pre-IPO Funding From Temasek, Warburg Pincus. A string of IPOs is lined up from big-ticket Indian startups.

India - Wikipedia

India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: Bhārat Gaṇarājya), is a country in South Asia.It is the second-most populous country, the seventh-largest country by land area, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west ...

神戸市と500 Startupsが2021年も「500 KOBE ACCELERATOR」をオンライン開催 ...

神戸市は、米国の著名ベンチャーキャピタル500 Startupsと連携した起業家育成オンラインプログラム「500 Founders Academy in partnership with Kobe」の参加募集を7月9日から開始すると発表した。

The War To Bring Down Peloton - Healthy Family News

iFIT Well being & Health, Illustration by Forbes Although new billionaire Scott Watterson’s iFIT began promoting dwelling health tools 33 years earlier than John Foley’s Peloton, it obtained shortly eclipsed—however now the OG dwelling train model is launching an all-fronts battle to regain misplaced floor that spans the mountains to the courtroom. On the morning of March 22, 2021, a workforce of three health trainers backed by a 39-person movie crew began a sunrise trek from the base camp of Mt. Everest to Kala Patthar, an 18,300-foot peak with an expansive view of the summit of the tallest mountain on Earth. As the guides hiked uphill, their trek was live-streamed to more than one million iFIT subscribers around the world, all working out on touchscreen-fitted NordicTrack and ProForm treadmills, bikes and ellipticals—with the machines automatically adjusting to the mountain’s escalating incline at every step. That trek was a preview of a new 18-part series of virtual workouts filmed in Nepal, part of a growing library of interactive workouts shot on the ground in locations ranging from Maui and the Grand Canyon to Tanzania’s Mt. Kilimanjaro and the Swiss Alps. “I was on Everest while it was being filmed live, but I couldn’t do the whole workout,” says Scott Watterson, iFIT’s 66-year-old cofounder and CEO, in a late March Zoom call from his wood-paneled office in Logan, Utah. He adds with a chuckle: “My family suggests I need to spend a little more time in the weight room.” When the pandemic shuttered gyms across the country last year, millions of Americans turned to exercise bikes, treadmills and online workouts at home—and the biggest winner of that shift was Peloton, which posted its first net profit in its history in 2020. But Peloton’s three million subscribers aren’t the only ones breaking a sweat over the nine-year-old startup: Watterson has been racing to catch up since Peloton launched its first bike in 2014. He’s been in the fitness game since 1977, when he and his college buddy Gary Stevenson started what later became iFIT, the maker of NordicTrack and ProForm exercise machines, when they were students at Utah State. When Peloton founder John Foley was still a teenager in the late 1980s, iFIT was pioneering home fitness with treadmills hooked up to VHS players that automatically adjusted the incline to match the workout on the tape. Peloton founder John Foley got the idea for an at-home exercise bike when he saw his wife struggle to reserve a place in Soulcycle class. Getty Images for TechCrunch Once the largest maker of fitness equipment in the world, iFIT has since been dethroned by the much younger Peloton. After an alleged 2013 meeting at iFIT’s Logan office, where iFIT claimed in a 2016 lawsuit that Foley asked for access to the company’s bike technology—an offer the firm refused—Peloton took off and quickly eclipsed its older competitor. When the pandemic hit, Peloton’s popular touchscreen-fitted indoor bike and online workout classes allowed it to cement its place at the top: Its nearly $3 billion revenues last year—its first full year since going public in September 2019—were double iFIT’s $1.5 billion. iFIT is now planning its own public listing, less than a year after securing a $200 million investment from French luxury tycoon Bernard Arnault’s private equity outfit L Catterton in October. That deal valued the company at $7 billion, and Forbes estimates that Watterson’s majority stake in iFIT is worth $3.2 billion (Forbes applies a 10% discount to valuations of private companies). That’s more than Foley’s $2 billion fortune, which is largely made up of his 6% stake in Peloton including options. They’re not the only ones fighting for a cut of the booming $244 billion global market for fitness classes, equipment and wearables. Five newcomers including AI-powered fitness mirror startup Tempo and strength training machine maker Tonal have collectively raised more than $800 million since January 2020, while Lululemon acquired fitness device maker Mirror for $500 million last June. Spin bike studio SoulCycle is also getting into home fitness, launching its own at-home bike in October, while Apple is now competing for eyeballs and muscles after debuting its Fitness+ service in December. And Beachbody, which saw digital subscriptions to its fitness streaming platform grow by 53% in 2020, went public in a merger with exercise bike maker Myx Fitness and a blank-check company in June in a deal that transformed it into an instant threat to both Peloton and iFIT while making its cofounder Carl Daikeler into a billionaire. Of course, Watterson isn’t going down without a fight. iFIT is continuing to roll out new products, including its own fitness mirror, the ‘Vault’, launched in January. It’s adding 100 new workouts a month and partnered with Planet Fitness, which now has a minority stake, in a deal that grew its workout library to nearly 15,000 classes, making it 50% larger than Peloton’s. It’s also getting into mindfulness, introducing a series of mindfulness exercises and yoga classes called iFIT Mind. And it’s still adding to its arsenal of more than 400 patents, recently unveiling a new workout mode that automatically adjusts incline and resistance based on a target heart rate. Those closely-held patents are at the heart of iFIT’s fight against Peloton: iFIT first sued Peloton in 2016 for patent infringement over its signature bike, claiming Foley had copied the technology from iFIT. While that case was settled in 2017, the legal battles heated up again when Peloton sued iFIT in May last year, and there are now at least three ongoing lawsuits between the two companies. “I like to keep the keys to my front door and don’t like to share those too often,” says Watterson. Scott Watterson was raised in a Mormon family in the small college town of Logan, Utah. He didn’t stray too far from home until 1977, when he was age 22. That’s when he took a break from his studies at Utah State to travel to Taipei for a two-year mission to spread the Mormon faith. It was also the same year he and his classmate Gary Stevenson started a company called Weslo—with the help of a $2,000 loan from Watterson’s father—that sold imported furniture from Asia. After returning home from Taiwan and graduating with a business degree and a minor in Chinese in 1979, Watterson pivoted to selling wood-burning stoves and later exercise bikes and treadmills, sold under the ProForm brand and largely manufactured in Taiwan. Watterson and Stevenson sold most of the company to Weider Health and Fitness for an undisclosed amount in 1989, with the two cofounders still minority partners and Watterson CEO. Five years later, private equity firm Bain Capital—then led by Mitt Romney—acquired a majority stake in Weslo from Weider in a $370 million leveraged buyout. Under Bain’s stewardship, the firm quickly snapped up fitness brands such as NordicTrack in 1999 and Freemotion in 2000. In between another three-year mission to Taiwan in 2004 and the departure of his cofounder Stevenson in 2008 to serve as a member of the Mormon Church’s First Quorum of the Seventy, Watterson and Bain built the company into the world’s largest maker of fitness equipment. In 2010, Watterson moved aggressively to protect the company’s prized trove of patents. Then known as ICON Health & Fitness, the firm filed a patent infringement lawsuit against ellipticals sold by a smaller competitor, Octane. The lawsuit made it all the way to the Supreme Court in 2014 and the justices unanimously ruled in favor of Octane—a decision that forced ICON to pay more than $1.6 million in legal fees and established a precedent making it easier for the losers in frivolous patent lawsuits to pay the winner’s litigation costs. Watterson (right) and iFIT donated one million masks to Utah’s Covid-19 response in May 2020. “Helping people stay healthy is what we do every day in our business,” he said. iFIT Health & Fitness While ICON, now called iFIT, was battling in court, its toughest challenge yet was brewing thousands of miles away from Logan in New York: In 2012, John Foley, who had spent eight years managing various websites for media conglomerate IAC, quit his job at Barnes & Noble to launch Peloton. He went on to raise more than $300,000 on Kickstarter the next year to build an interactive bike fitted with a touchscreen streaming live and on-demand classes. As Peloton grew rapidly, Watterson bought the majority stake from Bain in 2015 and fought back by introducing workout classes filmed around the world in 2017. (Peloton responded with its own treadmill). Once again, iFIT tried to win the war in court. It sued Peloton in 2016, alleging that Foley had visited the firm’s Logan headquarters in July 2013—before Peloton had sold a single bike—to meet with executives and request access to the company’s technology; iFIT refused. iFIT claimed that Foley ignored multiple warnings, that day and later on, to not infringe on the company’s patents. The suit was ultimately settled in 2017 when the two firms signed a license agreement relating to the bike’s technology. The calm didn’t last for long. Peloton went public in an IPO that raised $1.2 billion in September 2019, just a few months before Covid-induced shutdowns pushed up sales of bikes, treadmills and online fitness subscriptions. Peloton’s stock price rose more than 300% from March 2020 to March 2021, earning Foley a spot on Forbes’ 2021 World’s Billionaires List with a $1.5 billion fortune. The home fitness boom helped iFIT catch up to Peloton’s lightning-fast growth rate, if not its overall sales: iFIT’s revenues grew by 50% from $1 billion in the first nine months of 2020 to $1.5 billion for the whole year, nearly matching Peloton’s 56% growth over the same period. “During the pandemic, people raced to anything having to do with home fitness,” says Simeon Siegel, a senior analyst at BMO Capital Markets. “Anyone who sells fitness equipment over the last year has sold anything they’ve had in stock.” At the same time, Peloton brought the battle back to the courtroom: In May 2020, Peloton sued iFIT alleging it had copied a feature that makes pre-recorded workout classes seem live-streamed in competitions between different users. Five months later in October, iFIT filed its own patent infringement lawsuit against Peloton related to its bike’s swiveling touchscreen and the automatic change of resistance levels during workout classes. In February, a judge ruled in Peloton’s favor in that lawsuit. But that wasn’t the end of the legal drama: Two months later in April, iFIT filed another patent infringement suit against Peloton, claiming it copied a feature that allows a fitness trainer to remotely change resistance and incline levels on users’ machines during a workout. “We have multiple lawsuits with Peloton that are in different stages of litigation. As an innovation leader in the connected fitness space, our intellectual property is vital to our company, and we will take any and all necessary actions to protect it,” a spokesperson for iFIT said in a statement. Peloton did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Watterson is unbowed, viewing the competition with Peloton as an advantage: “To the extent they continue to enjoy our proprietary innovations, we can kind of predict where they’re headed.” The home fitness market is awash in competition, from the struggle between iFIT and Peloton to the onslaught of startups. But there’s a new trend changing the landscape: Consumers are increasingly breaking out of the one-stop-shop model, instead choosing to combine one company’s machines with classes offered on other platforms. “Certain trainers I like have workouts on their platforms but also on YouTube,” says Candace Marie, a social media consultant and NordicTrack bike owner in New York. Gideon Akande, a fitness instructor based in Chicago, offers workouts on both the iFIT platform and his personal YouTube channel. Adds Siegel of BMO: “There comes a point where the consumer is going to dictate how they want to work out, and they might like a machine but prefer different content.” Watterson still believes iFIT can edge Peloton in the range of machines and content it offers, enough to keep customers buying its equipment and subscribing to its classes as the company he founded as a college student 44 years ago prepares for a potentially lucrative IPO later this year. “As an innovative company, you create the idea and then [competitors] try their best to come about it from a different direction,” he says. “People wanting to emulate your ideas is always flattery.” Source link Related posts ‘Zombies’ to benefit from online platform (0) A fun family fitness challenge for a healthier household (0) As condo crashed down, they escaped through smoke and ruin (0) Ayo Dosunmu participates in first workout at NBA Combine (0) B.C. weather: Highs up to 38 C in the forecast; nearly all of province under heat warnings (0)

Five, la apuesta de Facebook para propulsar las startups ...

Facebook, siempre envuelto en la polémica, es noticia esta vez por una iniciativa enfocada en la floración del tejido innovativo y empresarial español, aunque siempre bajo la égida del gigante, claro está. Se trata de Five, siglas de Facebook-Investors-Venture Capital-Entrepreneurs, un programa dirigido a propiciar el crecimiento y consolidación de las startups españolas y favorecer su escalada dentro de las plataformas del coloso de Silicon Valley. El programa, cuyo lanzamiento se hizo público el pasado 30 de junio, tiene dos vertientes: una centrada en proporcionar formación a las pequeñas empresas tecnológicas que estén dando sus primeros pasos; y otra en la que se proveerá de asesoramiento más avanzado a aquellas compañías más maduras que estén listas para pasar al siguiente nivel. Nuevas semillas para el jardín de Facebook La macroempresa de Mark Zuckerberg ha preparado todo un compendio de seminarios online y lecciones estratégicas para aquellas startups que aún estén en fase inicial, de modo que su aclimatación a los diferentes ecosistemas y redes sociales con el sello Facebook sea más fácil, rápida y beneficiosa para ambas partes. Las empresas primerizas serán aleccionadas también en conceptos más generales como la planificación empresarial, la gestión del talento, herramientas tecnológicas y buenas prácticas, según ha comunicado el gigante. AFP/OLIVIER DOULIERY – FacebookLas 30 elegidas Facebook elegirá también a una treintena de startups entre aquellas que estén en una fase más avanzada -que obtendrán la denominación 'Five Scale'-, a las que dará un apoyo más específico para impulsarlas hacia la siguiente fase: la de la expansión internacional a escala masiva. En este caso, las firmas recibirán un mecenazgo y preparación orientados a la consecución de objetivos estratégicos de alto nivel, dentro del programa 'Five Growth'. Profesionales de la red social darán soporte personalizado a las startups y formación avanzada sobre la situación y perspectivas de la industria, así como las vías para optimizar el rendimiento y la eficiencia de sus servicios. La iniciativa Five se aliará con fondos de inversión de capital riesgo para contribuir a la aceleración tanto de las firmas incipientes como de estas startups ya 'maduras'. Facebook ha desvelado Five un día después de que el Alto Comisionado para España Nación Emprendedora, Francisco Polo, anunciase en el Mobile World Congress de Barcelona que el Gobierno invertirá en el plan estratégico que dirige 4.500 millones de euros durante los próximos cuatro años.

Ola raises $500 Mn in a pre-IPO funding from new ...

Home grown cab-hailing giant Ola has raised $500 Mn led by existing investors Temasek Holdings and private equity major Warburg Pincus. Fort Canning and Ola's CEO Bhavesh Agarwal also participated in the round. The round has been unofficially tipped as the ride hailing major's pre IPO round. However, the Mumbai-based company may raise more funds […]

[Weekly Asia Digest] 2021.07.09

Weekly Asia news digest of 2021.07.09. [Weekly Asia Digest] 2021.07.09 News summary of China, Japan and Korea

Stocks And Futures Rebound While Bitcoin, Dogecoin And ...

StoxNews :: Money News that you can use. Home; About us; Company Results; Fortune 500; Business; Home

How to create a course for your business in one day ...

Over the past 10 years, I've built four startups and taken each to profitability with no outside capital. At Replyify, an email company I co-founded, prospects and customers look to us for expert-level advice. And I give it to them, packaged into a concise email course that helps them execute…

Instacart names Facebook's Fidji Simo as CEO ahead of IPO ...

Grocery delivery giant Instacart Inc. has appointed Fidji Simo, who oversees Facebook Inc.'s flagship social networking app, as its new chief executive, replacing co-founder Apoorva Mehta as the company prepares for an initial public offering.Simo, 35, will start her new role by Aug. 2, the San Francisco company said in a statement. Mehta will become executive chairman of Instacart and will remain "very engaged" in the day-to-day operations of the business."The idea of someone else running the company had never even crossed my mind," Mehta said in an interview. "But this changed when I met Fidji. Both of us share an incredibly ambitious vision for Instacart's future."A former Amazon.com Inc. employee, Mehta, 34, helped found Instacart in 2012 and built the company into one of the most valuable startups to come out of Silicon Valley. The pandemic spurred a surge in delivery demand, catapulting Instacart from a luxury to a service seen by its users as virtually essential. The company's explosive growth has made it a serious contender in online groceries alongside Walmart Inc. and Amazon. Instacart generated net revenue of about $1.5 billion in 2020. Simo, who joined the Instacart board in February, will be responsible for shepherding the company through its post-pandemic chapter and ensuring it can parlay its momentum into a successful IPO later this year. Instacart doubled its valuation to $39 billion in a March funding round that raised $265 million from investors.Simo has been at Facebook for more than a decade, working her way up the company's product organization to one of its top jobs, reporting directly to Chief Product Officer Chris Cox. She'll be replaced by another longtime Facebook product veteran, Tom Alison, who was Simo's No. 2. Simo started at the social media giant working on advertising products for the News Feed, and her public profile took off after she began running Facebook's video products, which have been some of its highest-profile products in recent years. She ran Facebook Live as the company signed deals with publishers for streaming video content, helped launch Facebook's video ads, and was also in charge of video for the launch of Facebook's YouTube competitor, Facebook Watch. She took the top job running Facebook's core social network in March 2019 and has been a proponent of the company's push toward creator and video products during the pandemic, including its recent live audio push. She's also been a vocal critic of Apple Inc., calling out the company over its in-app purchase fees, which Facebook argues hurts creators.As one of Facebook's most important product executives, Simo had also reached the top of Facebook's product ladder. Above her in the organizational chart was only CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chris Cox, the company's longtime head of product who rejoined Facebook last year after a short stint away.Meanwhile, Instacart has been bolstering its corporate ranks this year by hiring a series of top executives. Nick Giovanni, who previously served as head of the technology, media and telecom group at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., was appointed chief financial officer in January, and a former Facebook vice president of product, Asha Sharma, became chief operating officer in February. Most recently, Instacart brought on Snowflake Inc. CEO Frank Slootman to its board of directors.In addition to continuing to grow within grocery delivery into such categories as convenience store items, Simo said Instacart would also look to expand globally. Her success in helping build Facebook's advertising business, which topped $84 billion in annual revenue in 2020, will come in handy at Instacart, where the number of advertisers on its platform increased by 500% last year. "Advertising is going to be an ever-growing part of Instacart's revenue going forward," Simo said in an interview. Source link

Five, le pari de Facebook pour stimuler les startups ...

Facebook, toujours impliqué dans la controverse, fait cette fois-ci l'actualité pour une initiative axée sur l'épanouissement du tissu innovant et entrepreneurial espagnol, mais toujours sous l'égide du géant, bien sûr. Il s'agit de Five, acronyme de Facebook-Investors-Venture Capital-Entrepreneurs, un programme visant à promouvoir la croissance et la consolidation des startups espagnoles et à favoriser leur escalade au sein des plateformes du colosse de la Silicon Valley.

Vietnamesische Wirtschaft kann Ende dieses Jahres die ...

(VOVWORLD) - Es gibt viele gute Zeichen für die vietnamesische Wirtschaft, dass sie bis Ende dieses Jahres die Marke von 500 Milliarden US-Dollar erreicht werde. Dies berichtete die russische Zeitung Sputnik. Sputnik nahm Berichte der singapurischen Entwicklungsbank (DBS) zum Anlass, dass das ...