Mentorship-Driven Startup Accelerator Increases Funding to $50,000 in Second Annual Year
Startups Get Access to New 50,000-Foot Facility, an Expanded Staff of Eleven, Access to More Than 4,000 Virtual Advisors, and a World-Class Fitness Center
COLLEGE STATION, Texas (Jan. 13, 2015) -- Seed Sumo, an international startup accelerator, today announced it has opened applications to startups for its 2015 program. Seed Sumo will be accepting up to 10 startups and it has increased overall program funding to $50,000, $30,000 more from last year.
The Seed Sumo startup accelerator is a three-month program starting May 20, 2015, which includes intensive mentoring, business model design and a twist on demo day for investors. Founders will enter the program at the seed stage, where they will spend 100 days developing their ideas guided heavily by a world-class lean startup methodology and mentors assigned specifically to their startup.
“Founders need Seed Sumo because these guys have been in the trenches and came out on top. It’s incredibly valuable to have people like that in your corner,” explained Chris Stewart, cofounder of Fanout.io, an alumni from last years class.
“We had great success with our startups last year and we want to make it even better this year,” said DJ Monteilh, cofounder and Director of Operations for Seed Sumo. “We not only want to grow and develop our startups businesses, we want to grow each founder as an individual as well. That is one reason why we’ve quadrupled our staff and incorporated a food and nutrition program to keep their minds sharp, energy high, and spirits up.
New to this year’s program is additional staffing, which includes nine staff members, two “hackers” to help with all things internet/programming, dedicated mentors that have specific interest in your company, a twist on demo day, and over 4,000 expert advisors at your fingertips virtually. This will complement the perks offered to last year’s participants, which included a dedicated space to work, countless indoor/outdoor meet-up zones scattered throughout campus with multimedia and enough whiteboard to solve the world’s most challenging problems. Not to mention a state of the art R&D lab for scientific pursuits, a full length football field and a complimentary massage once a month in the “chill room” located on campus.
“Seed Sumo is a really tight knit family and I think the founders see that and are drawn to that when we meet them. All of us are young and we can relate to a lot of the things our founders are going through,” explained Bryan Bulte, cofounder and Managing Director of Seed Sumo.
Seed Sumo provides a familiar formula used by some of the world’s most successful startup accelerators including (Techstars, Y-Combinator, and the Brandery, to name a few).
“Seed Sumo takes place in Nutrabolt’s building, which is the fastest growing sports nutrition company’s in the world. Rubbing elbows with the execs and board members of this company is an immeasurable advantage for each of our startups.” explained the Program Manager of Seed Sumo, Steve Tinkle.
Seed Sumo successfully completed its first year in 2014. Its eight startups received over $4 million in funding so far and one is in discussions on a possible exit.
Applications for this year’s accelerator program can be submitted through March 22, 2015. Click here to Apply