Techstars’ Startup Next pre-accelerator programme returns to Dublin

29 Sep 2015

Techstars' pre-accelerator is ideal for early stage start-ups

The TechStars Startup Next pre-accelerator backed by Bank of Ireland and Google for Entrepreneurs will return to Dublin in October.

Startup Next is a pre-accelerator designed by Techstars aimed at getting tech start-ups ready for accelerators and seed stage investment.

It takes place over a six-week period (one per week) finishing with a demo day on 10 December.

“Startup Next proved invaluable for us as an early-stage start-up,” explained Nick Hynes, CEO at Gymr.

“It made us consider key questions that we needed to answer to ensure success and acted as crash-course in start-up best practices.”

Applications are open now at https://www.f6s.com/startupnextdublinf15 and close on 7 October.

‘Startup Next is gold for early stage start-ups’
– NIAMH MCHUGH, PUCKER

Previous participants included Gymr, Flipish, SwiftComply, Jumble Security, Mover, The Five Senses for Alzheimers and Pucker.

“[It’s] weekly sessions with a group of great minds focusing on improving your business,” said Flipdish CEO Conor McCarthy.

“Startup Next is a great programme for any start-up wanting to level-up an area of their business, be it their pitch and presentation, marketing plan, product or any of a number of other areas covered’.

This is the second time for Startup Next to take place in Dublin.

Techstars is a mentorship-driven start-up accelerator founded by David Cohen, Brad Feld, David Brown and Jared Polis that holds 13-week programmes for start-ups in Boulder, New York, Boston, Seattle, San Antonio, Austin, Chicago and London.

It is considered one of the best start-up accelerators in the world and fewer than 1pc of companies that apply to Techstars are accepted.

Some 526 companies that have entered its programmes have raised US$1.3bn in venture capital between them.

“Startup Next is by far the best start-up program that we have been involved in,” said Niamh McHugh, co-founder of Pucker.

“The feedback every week was always extremely valuable and it allowed us to meet with amazing mentors, perfect our pitch and build up our confidence in the early stages of our business. Startup Next is gold for early stage start-ups.”

Start-up accelerator image via Shutterstock

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com