Accelerator
entrepreneurs and serving as active participants in identifying the highest-impact and highest potential early-stage startups,” said Mike Millard, managing director of MassChallenge Texas.
MassChallenge announced Austin as its second U.S. site in October. It then embarked on a seven-week Texas roadshow and hosted 37 events across the state to recruit founders.
Startups in any industry were eligible to apply. Applicants must be seed stage or early stage, which is defined as having raised less than $500,000 and having annual revenue of less than $1 million.
Of the 84 companies chosen for MassChallenge Texas, 33 are in the high-tech sector, 24 are health care and life sciences, 12 are general consumer, nine are social impact and six are energy and clean tech. MassChallenge Texas said 32 percent of the startups are led by female founders.
Millard said MassChallenge Texas will focus on connecting startups and large corporations for partnerships that benefit both sides.
“Corporations want to innovate and that’s what these startups are doing,” he said. “Startups need expertise, they need customers and they need mentorship, which is what corporate partners can provide.”
The program will kick off in early April and culminate in August with an awards ceremony where top startups from the cohort will pitch for the opportunity to win a portion of up to $500,000 in equity-free grants.
There will be one Austin accelerator program annually, and MassChallenge plans to expand the Texas pro- gram to San Antonio, Houston and Dallas, said Larry Peterson, executive director at the Texas Foundation for Innovative Communities and a MassChallenge board member.
The hope is that startups coming from outside of Texas will choose to keep their companies in the state when the program ends, he said.
The Austin program “drew applicants from across the country and the world,” Peterson said. “We even had someone fly all the way from Moscow. These people all specifically wanted to come to Texas. Being able to attract serial entrepreneurs is one of the most powerful things you can do economically.”
MassChallenge Texas is supported by a public-private partnership that includes five founding partners: Southwest Airlines, USAA, Upstream Thinking, WeWork and TMAC.
In addition to Austin and Boston, MassChallenge offers programs in Israel, Mexico, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. To date, 1,495 MassChallenge alumni have raised more than $3 billion in funding, generated about $2 billion in revenue and created more than 80,000 jobs.