Techstars

Techstars Central LLC, founded in 2006 and based in Boulder, Colorado, operates as a startup accelerator and venture capital firm focused on supporting early-stage technology-oriented companies. It specializes in a mentorship-driven accelerator program, selecting ten startups each summer to participate in a three-month incubation period, offering funding of $120,000 in exchange for equity. Techstars invests primarily in sectors such as fintech, artificial intelligence, blockchain, augmented reality, and IoT, while avoiding investments in medical devices, healthcare technology, and local service-oriented businesses. In addition to its primary accelerator, Techstars has various specialized programs, including those focused on music, retail, mobility, and social impact, with global reach extending to regions such as Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The firm prefers taking minority stakes, typically between six and ten percent, without seeking board representation or investor rights. Techstars has built a robust network of entrepreneurs, mentors, and corporate partners to foster innovation and growth within its portfolio, which includes over 1,000 companies with a significant collective market capitalization.

Focus

Pre Seed Round Seed Round Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Series A Show more

http://techstars.com/ventures

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https://twitter.com/techstars

https://www.capitaliq.com/CIQDotNet/company.aspx?companyId=431767203

https://www.privateequityinternational.com/database/#/profile?id=14977

Ethan Austin

MD of the Techstars Western Union Accelerator

Mark Tortorella

Advisor

Nathanial Zola

MD

Past deals in Mobile Advertising

Iomob

Seed Round in 2022

Iomob Technologies OÜ is a company based in Tallinn, Estonia, that specializes in creating an open, decentralized mobility marketplace powered by blockchain technology. Founded in 2018, Iomob focuses on facilitating collaboration between various mobility providers, including established companies, startups, and public transit authorities, to enhance urban mobility systems. The company's platform integrates public transport with private mobility services, enabling a seamless and efficient experience for users. Through its innovative approach, Iomob aims to support the development of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) solutions, allowing residents and visitors to navigate cities more effectively and sustainably.

Afloat

Non Equity Assistance in 2021

Mobile app connecting communities to each other and local businesses they love

Dapio

Pre Seed Round in 2021

Paymob is an innovative software development start-up company offering smart on-land payment solutions. The all-in-one Paymob solution empowers banks, fintechs and merchants with a bespoke payment infrastructure that includes a multi-banking payment gateway, stylish contactless payment terminals and certified ‘Tap-to-Phone’ mobile application that turns almost any modern smartphone into a contactless payment terminal. The server-based infrastructure software EFTPOS (Electronic Funds Transfer at Point-of-Sale) has been designed to efficiently integrate with existing banking systems or can be used as an independent payment processing solution which streamlines several processing centres and allocates the transaction to the cheapest provider.

Dapio

Pre Seed Round in 2021

Braze Mobility

Pre Seed Round in 2020

Braze Mobility provides an affordable navigation solution for wheelchair users. Its blind spot sensors enable clients to avoid the embarrassment, damage, or injury that can occur when they are moving around. The solution automatically detects obstacles and provides intuitive audio, visual, and vibration alerts to the wheelchair driver, so that they understand the location of an object and how close it is, while staying fully in control.

Nickelytics

Pre Seed Round in 2020

Nickelytics, a Techstars backed company, seamlessly integrates advertising solutions into the rideshare, on-demand and micro-mobility industry. This allows us to deliver the power of traditional out-of-home advertising with digital retargeting to give businesses real and measurable results.

Octane Technologies

Pre Seed Round in 2019

Made by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts, the Octane mobile application provides a video game like cruising experience, in addition to a map-based database of stunning routes and car-related events.

Iomob

Seed Round in 2019

Marble

Pre Seed Round in 2019

Marble is an augmented reality platform for everyday use.

StreetMetrics, INC.

Pre Seed Round in 2018

You wouldn’t pay for digital advertising without receiving analytics and actionable performance data. We think the same principle should apply for Moving Out Of Home (MOOH) ads. That’s why we developed a suite of measurement and attribution tools specifically for the MOOH industry. StreetMetrics bridges the gap between the physical and digital worlds for MOOH marketers. We enable marketers to plan, track, and prove the impact of their MOOH ad campaigns with our digital measurement and attribution tools.

Sauce

Seed Round in 2017

Smart sound sends data over sound that cannot be heard by humans, enabling connection among devices without additional hardware. Mobidoo is leading Fintech industry with its own technology 'Smart sound'. 'Smart Sound' is applied to payment, IoT, and marketing solutions, and has been customized to Lotte L.pay and commercialized for more than 20,000 merchants of Lotte Department Store, Lotte Mart and 7 Eleven Korea, etc. as the world's first case. Currently, mobidoo is launching pre-paid P2P payment platform for merchants and users. Mobidoo is targeting fintech and global market using 'Smart Sound' technology.

Mio Robots

Pre Seed Round in 2017

Mio Technologies develops robots with self-driving technology for product vending and brand marketing.

MIO Mobile Kiosk

Seed Round in 2017

MIO Mobile Kiosk provides autonomous robots for marketing and product distribution in public spaces. Its robots are sociable devices connected to an application that combine artificial intelligence to monitor the location of the user and act as per their demands based on real-time data, enabling users to get their tasks done quickly at parks, conferences and related events using smart multi-purpose robots.

Swym

Seed Round in 2017

Swym Corporation, founded in 2012 and based in Seattle, Washington, offers mobile applications and online services designed to enhance the shopping experience for consumers and retailers. The company's platform allows retailers to manage targeted shopping emails and facilitate a seamless shopping journey across multiple devices. Recognizing that many e-commerce purchases arise from multi-session shopping experiences, Swym provides tools that integrate easily with existing e-commerce sites. By enabling cross-channel shopping, Swym allows retailers to better serve today's consumers, ensuring that customer interactions are maximized and that shoppers can navigate their purchasing journeys intuitively.

CANDL

Seed Round in 2017

CANDL, Inc., based in Atlanta, Georgia, specializes in designing and developing a portable 4G hotspot that integrates light, power, and sound features. Since its incorporation in 2014, the company has focused on providing a SIM-less global Wi-Fi solution, enabling business travelers and digital nomads to maintain connectivity in over 150 countries. The CANDL Go hotspot offers users a high-speed connection to local cellular networks without incurring roaming fees or the complications associated with SIM cards. Customers can purchase the device and pay only for the data they consume, benefiting from an uncomplicated service without data limits, speed throttling, or complex contracts.

Rally Networks

Seed Round in 2016

Rally Networks provides location-based marketing services for mobile companies. It offers its services through multiple platforms: Wi-Fi, smartphone charging, digital display, and proximity beacons. It seeks to engage customers with contextual messaging. The company’s partner locations include bars, restaurants, coffee shops, malls, stadiums, and hotels. Rally Networks was co-founded by Cory Azzalino, Duncan Swezey, and Jeff Walker in 2013 and is based in Venice Beach, California.

ResponsiveAds

Pre Seed Round in 2016

ResponsiveAds, Inc. is a New York-based company that specializes in programmatic, direct, and native advertising solutions. Founded in 2012, it offers innovative products such as STRETCH, a banner advertising platform that allows a single advertising creative to function seamlessly across various digital environments, and NarratorStudio, a self-service cloud application for creating precise HTML5 responsive ads. The company's technology enables advertisers and publishers to enhance the performance of their existing ads on mobile, tablet, and desktop platforms. ResponsiveAds also features its Fully-Fluid™ creative management platform, which allows marketers to produce dynamic HTML5 creatives that can adapt to any screen size. This capability not only simplifies the ad creation process but also optimizes revenue generation by delivering premium creatives that can fit any ad slot. With a focus on high-quality standards and performance, ResponsiveAds has successfully served billions of impressions for notable brands and agencies, positioning itself as a leader in advanced advertising solutions.

rublys

Seed Round in 2015

Classic advertising is often perceived as boring and annoying. The idea behind rublys was to create a channel in which users interact proactively and above all voluntarily with companies and their products via the smartphone - always and everywhere. Of course, digital scratch cards are perfect.

Curious

Seed Round in 2015

Curious is an "intelligent" offline search engine powered by SMS.

PlayMob

Pre Seed Round in 2014

Playmob is a games platform for brands with purpose. We connect the most meaningful brands to billions of mobile gamers, to take action and make the world a better place while positively boosting the brands bottom line. Through leveraging playable-ads with our unique impact methodology, harnessing media space within existing hit mobile titles and tracking powerful values-based data and business data, Playmob aims to be the first global distribution platform, enabling brands to reach and engage gamers with their purpose. Playmob also benefits the publisher by meaningfully engaging with the player. We see engagement rates of 30% to 50%.

MobileDay

Series A in 2014

MobileDay Inc. develops a one-touch conference call dialing application for iPhone and Android devices, aimed at business professionals globally. The application synchronizes with the device's native calendar, offering a streamlined 'My Day' schedule view that includes upcoming calls and meetings, each with a convenient one-touch join button. This simplifies the process of joining conference calls and online meetings. In addition to its individual consumer app, MobileDay introduced 'MobileDay Business' in April 2015, designed for companies and organizations to equip entire teams with the same easy dialing functionality. Founded in 2010 and based in Boulder, Colorado, MobileDay was previously known as Skedul.me Inc. before rebranding in December 2011.

MartMobi Technologies

Pre Seed Round in 2014

MartMobi is an innovative mobile technology company that enables the world’s leading eCommerce sites, Brands, Retailers to go instant mobile and tablet across all existing mobile platforms, enable seamless connectivity with their existing back-end systems, manage their own brand identity and all of this without the need to single line of code. developers use our API to build integration With offices in US, India, MartMobi provides wide reach with right local service and support across the globe.

Proximus

Seed Round in 2014

Proximus has created a piece of technology that allows retailers to accurately track every single customer in-store and in real time obtaining curated insights and patterns of their shoppers' behaviour. Their technology is smartphone-free as it does not require shoppers to download any app and is ready to track the position of +10K shoppers from day one.

MartMobi Technologies

Seed Round in 2014

PayMins

Seed Round in 2013

PayMins provides an easy way to accept mobile phone payments. Backed by Telefonica.

Proxly

Seed Round in 2013

Proxly is a mobile proximity marketing platform that enables businesses to bridge consumers’ physical and digital worlds. It is a smartphone-powered universal identity signal that brings access and personalized experiences, provides mobile access throughout commercial buildings and at the workplace. Proxly was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in London, England.

BrightMove Media

Seed Round in 2013

BrightMove Media is provides real-time and geo-targeted digital outdoor advertising solutions. The company offers TaxiCast, a digital advertising service that broadcasts targeted and relevant digital advertising from a dual-sided LED screen mounted on the roof of licensed London black taxis.

Roximity

Seed Round in 2012

ROXIMITY is a location-based mobile platform that enables merchants to send targeted messages to potential customers as they pass by their stores. The ROXIMITY Platform provides everything needed to create, manage, and optimize mobile-marketing campaigns that both respect customers’ privacy and give brands/retailers full control of the indoor, mobile experience.