Year Four. Class Seven. Four Startups.
Today marks the start of another session of The Startup Factory’s three-month accelerator program, with four North Carolina participants chosen from a pool of 100 applicants from around the globe, according to ExitEvent.com.
2015 is a critical year for TSF co-founders Chris Heivly and Dave Neal—in 2016, they’ll begin to raise a second fund and they’ll need a track record worthy of more investor dollars. The notion doesn’t seem too far off considering the accelerator’s banner 2014.
Three portfolio companies raised large rounds of funding and one exited. The top 10 of 31 companies that have graduated from the program averaged at least $650,000 in follow-on funds. And TSF hired Lizzy Hazeltine to help market the portfolio companies to investors nationally.
It’ll be several months before we see how the following companies stack up. But for a bit of detail about the businesses and their founders, in preparation for the months of mentorship and business-building to come see Laura Baverman’s story, “The Startup Factory Welcomes Four NC Startups,” at Exit Event: http://exitevent.com/article/the-startup-factory-welcomes-four-triangle-startups-030915
