It\u2019s demo day season. This morning marked the kickoff of VC firm 500 Global\u2019s Fall 2022 Demo Day, which saw over a dozen startups give their best pitches to prospective investors \u2014 and customers. Participants ran the gamut from fintech and sustainability to edtech and developer tools, and several stood out from the rest of the pack.<\/p>\n
The event comes just weeks after Y Combinator had its bi-annual Demo Day, its first since moving operations back to in-person. 500 Global, formerly branded under 500 Startups, has an accelerator that competes with YC. Both outfits look to back early-stage founders with money and advice in exchange for equity. YC has backed over 3,500 founders, while 500 Global has backed more than 2,800 founders, according to each institution\u2019s websites. Unlike YC, 500 Global has geographic-specific accelerator programs, similar to Techstars, with focus on areas like Aichi, Japan, Cambodia, and Alberta, Canada.<\/p>\n
That said, today\u2019s debut from 500 Global is from its first and flagship program, hailing back from 2010 and, fittingly, including companies from all around the globe. All companies go through a four-month program but start at different times, thanks to 500 Global\u2019s somewhat new rolling admissions strategy. Let\u2019s dig into some of the moonshots of the batch and end with some notes from Clayton Bryan, partner and head of 500 Global\u2019s Accelerator Fund.<\/p>\n
The moonshots<\/h2>\n
For example, there\u2019s Taiwan-based Rosetta.ai, an ecommerce startup tapping AI to let customers search for products \u2014 particularly apparel and cosmetic \u2014 through specific attributes. Rosetta\u2019s AI algorithm \u201csees\u201d which attributes (e.g., sleeveless, ruffled, microbeads) a shopper might want as they browse an online store and builds a \u201cpreference profile\u201d for them, which merchants can use to cross-sell or set up promotions that trigger if it seems likely the shopper will abandon their cart.<\/p>\n
Image Credits:<\/strong> Rosetta.ai<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s early days for Rosetta. But the company, which was founded in 2016, has raised $2.4 million in capital to date and claims to have customers including Shu Uemura, in which L\u2019Or\u00e9al owns a majority stake. The trick will be continuing to win customers over rivals like Lily AI, which similarly attempts to match customers with products using attributes and AI models.<\/p>\n Elsewhere on Demo Day, Lydia.ai walked through its health assessment service for insurance carriers. Designed to do away with lengthy medical exams and forms, Lydia has insurance plan applicants answer a few questions about their health \u2014 e.g., whether they have a chronic illness, have recently been hospitalization and so on \u2014 via their smartphones. The platform then generates an abstracted health score supposedly devoid of sensitive medical details, which insurers can use for risk management and underwriting.<\/p>\n Image Credits:<\/strong> Lydia.ai<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Lydia isn\u2019t the first to attempt this. Health tech startup Fedo also algorithmically generates health scores, quantifying a person\u2019s risk for diseases and their propensity to claim. The opaqueness of Lydia\u2019s approach also raises questions, like whether its algorithms account for demographic differences and historic biases in health care. But if the startup remains true to its mission \u2014 insuring the next billion people \u2014 it could be one to watch, particularly given the capital (~$13 million) already behind it.<\/p>\n One of the more unique Demo Say startups that presented was BetaStore, a supplier for the \u201cinformal\u201d retail outlets common in Africa. Informal retailers are unlicensed and unregistered retailers that don\u2019t report to tax agencies, typically operating out of open markets and shops. BetaStore serves as a goods marketplace for informal retailers, providing access to staples such as dish soap, laundry detergent and all-purpose cleaner at wholesale prices and delivering them to the retailers (within 48 hours).<\/p>\n Image Credits:<\/strong> BetaStore<\/p>\n<\/div>\n BetaStore customers can order products via chat, text message or WhatsApp. On the backend, the platform provides sales analytics to manufacturers, which BetaStore notes can be leveraged to make \u201cdata-driven\u201d decisions to scale up shipments.<\/p>\n BetaStore appears to be off to a strong start. Founded in 2020, the Nigeria-based startup claims to have distributed over 140,000 goods to retail customers in Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal and fielded over 20,000 orders. Recently, BetaStore began offering financing to retailers and plans to launch a buy now, pay later product in the coming months.<\/p>\n Minutes after Demo Day ended, Bryan spoke to about 500 Global and how it\u2019s growing within an increasingly volatile (and competitive) market.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been kind of gloomy, but we\u2019ve told our companies time and time again that the silver lining is that 2021 was a phenomenal year for venture funds raising financing,\u201d he said, fitting into the news that U.S. based investors are sitting on $290 billion in dry powder right now.\u00a0The accelerator\u2019s top advice was to start fundraising earlier, ready the company more before going out to the market, and stay smart on managing expenses. His advice these days is that startups should be preparing for at least 18 months of runway.<\/p>\n It has been almost a year since 500 Global rebranded from 500 startups, a move that Bryan said was meant to reposition the institution as less of an accelerator, and more of a venture firm. Its more than semantics; former batch participants have come back to 500 for follow-on funding, during their Series A but up till their series D.<\/p>\n \u201cHistorically, we haven\u2019t had any any optionality, but now we\u2019re going multi-strategy and we\u2019re working on later stage funds,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have the demand with our founder community, we have a demand even within our partner community that they want to have access to more de-risked companies.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cWe\u2019re very proud of our accelerator. It is a key vantage\u2026but now it\u2019s helped unlock other opportunities for us as a firm that we\u2019re exploring with a lot of enthusiasm.\u201d<\/p>\n As for if 500 will change its investment cadence, check size or focus \u2013 similar to YC as it prepared for a downturn \u2013\u00a0 Bryan said there\u2019s more to come.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not immune to the the changes that are happening in our ecosystem, we\u2019re aware of what other funds are doing and other programs are doing,\u201d he said. \u201cOur program has been operating strongly for the last 10 plus years. But at the same time, we can\u2019t rest on our laurels, and we\u2019ve got to make sure that we have compelling deal terms.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s demo day season. This morning marked the kickoff of VC firm 500 Global\u2019s Fall 2022 Demo Day, which saw over a dozen startups give their best pitches to prospective investors \u2014 and customers. Participants ran the gamut from fintech and sustainability to edtech and developer tools, and several stood out from the rest of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1213649,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1213648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrity-gossip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1213648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1213648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1213648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1213648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Lydia.ai\"](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/gp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Get-your-health-asse.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"BetaStore\"](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/gp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/eb0be0_4abd71c31cf44d3ca9324cff4ad79fa9_mv2.webp\")
<\/p>\nOne year after the rebrand<\/h2>\n