RALEIGH – Two startups from the Triangle have earned $120,000 in investment and coveted spots in the Techstars Kansas City Accelerator.
They include: CourtRoom5, an end-to-end legal toolbox that helps people represent themselves in court; and MuukLabs, an automated testing and reporting platform for developers.
Both companies also recently received NC IDEA grants, while Courtroom5 won the Black Founders Exchange Demo Day competition last November.
They will join eight other companies and founders from around the world for the 13-week program.
Lesa Mitchell, managing director of Techstars Kansas City, said they selected companies that “will thrive in our post-COVID-19 world.”
Added MuukLabs’ co-founder Ivan Barajas Vargas: “Techstars is one of the top accelerators in the US. The network is fantastic and will help take [us] to the next level.”
Originally from Mexico, Vargas, a software tester, received a master’s in business at UNC Kenan-Flagler. There, he said, he learned about entrepreneurship and began to realize all the problems that software quality assurance had.
“Renan Ugalde, my co-founder, and I started talking about what to do about these opportunities and we decided to launch MuukLabs,” he said, adding it is the “first and only” quality assurance acceleration platform that helps companies ship fast with full, automated test coverage.
Renan Ugalde and Ivan Barajas Vargas
Courtroom 5, meanwhile, is founded by former professors Sonja Ebron and Debra Slone, who know first-hand how tricky it can be to get caught up in the United State’s legal system.
“We’ve had to represent ourselves in court, unfortunately, too many times,” said Ebron, shortly after her demo day win. “As academics, we felt a responsibility once we understood the lay of the land to share it with others.”
So they built Courtroom5 — an educational site launched in 2017, which eventually grew into full-fledged case management platform.
On average, accelerator companies raise more than $1 million in the first round of investment post-program, and more than $3 million in subsequent rounds, Techstars said on its website.
Participating in an accelerator also provides access to funding, industry mentors, potential venture capital investors.
Promises of ‘accelerated growth’
Techstars, the Boulder-based startup accelerator founded in 2006, already has a strong presence in the Triangle.
In 2018, it teamed up with MetLife to create an incubator for early-stage insurance startups. In total, Techstars consists of both an investment management business with $500 million in assets under management as well as an operating business that is rapidly approaching $100 million in annual revenue.
Techstars’ investment activity now includes 49 accelerator programs in 35 cities across 16 countries, deploying $80 million into nearly 500 startups on an annual basis. The Techstars portfolio of 1,900 companies currently attracts an annual $2 billion in downstream investment from the venture capital industry.
Techstars also invests in global emerging startup communities by operating approximately 1,000 annual Techstars Startup Weekend events in 600 cities across 120 countries to help surface and support future high growth companies.
Courtroom5, a case management platform, wins Black Founders Exchange Demo Day
