The Velocity Accelerator is the business incubator's attempt at something like Y Combinator, the famed seed accelerator started in March 2005. A number of these accelerators have popped up nationwide where investors give a handful of tech companies seed money, an office they all share, a lot of mentoring and a short time frame before letting these companies into the world.
Many of these companies fail, but many are among the tech world's biggest success stories, like Dropbox, Airbnb and Reddit, all of which came out of Y Combinator. Techstars, a similar operation in Seattle, helped fund Birmingham's own Instagift. Now, Instagift's CEO Nate Schmidt is leading Birmingham's program.
The programs take 10 startup teams at a time and gives each $50,000 in seed funding. Then, they focus on building their company in a shared space in Innovation Depot. The 12-week program is designed for high tech startups focused on building products with low starting costs and high potential returns.
Velocity received more than 100 applications from around the world for their first 10 spots. The chosen companies include teams from Slovakia, New York City, and even one whose founder already works in Innovation Depot.
Meet the Velocity Accelerator's first class of startups:
GLOW: Founders Yazmin and Jim Cavale founded GLOW, a company that aims to provide a way for women to find hair styling, spray-tanning, and makeup services from qualified professionals in their own homes through the GLOW app. Customers will be able to schedule, pay and communicate all through the app.
Book-It Legal: Jack West and Walker Beauchamp founded Book-It Legal, an online marketplace connecting law students to law firms, especially for temporary projects. Law firms sometimes have to use overqualified attorneys on research projects, but don't want to spend the money for an intern or an associate. Book-It Legal posts projects Book-It Legal and students can pick them up, allowing students to gain experience in law.
Planet Fundraiser: Kasey Birdsong and Drew Honeycutt founded this app that allows customers and merchants to easily donate to their favorite charities. Customers sign up, take a picture of their receipt, and Planet Fundraiser coordinates the donation. The company has already partnered with Shipt and Chick-Fil-A.
Koyote: Andrew Petrovics built a hardware that can track accurate and time-specific population data based on cell phones. The hardware has potential users ranging from the government to private industry to the military.
Delect: Washington, D.C.-based founders Serge Amouzou and Jeremy Feldman founded Delect, which allows restaurant customers to pay their bills directly from their phones.
Healthfundit: Founders Larry Lawal and Felix Kishinevsky created Healthfundit as a platform for medical research. The company is based in Birmingham and has partnered with the National Institutes of Health to get their top projects that didn't get funded by the government.
Gender Reveal: Matt Landers, founder of Innovation Depot company Platypi, got the idea for Gender Reveal during his wife's pregnancy.The Gender Reveal app will simplify the reveal process, from the doctor's office, to the party to the thank yous.
Quantalytix: Founders Chris Aliotta and William Bryant were analysts at Regions Financial Corp. when they noticed an inefficiency that Quantalytix aims to solve. The goal is to build a software to assess and analyze risk in small and large banks, eventually aiming to create the Bloomberg of analytics.
Likely Al: Jozef Marko and Lukas Ruttkay come to Birmingham from Slovakia after internships at Facebook and Google, respectively. They aim to create an algorithm that would tell you which image of a given set would resonate the most with an audience.
MetalView: Founder Andrew Wingard aims to create a marketplace between metal industry buyers and suppliers. The marketplace will allow buyers to easily access suppliers' inventories and quickly get a quote.
"This class includes companies in all sectors - from finance to health to beauty to marketing, but each of them has great potential," Schmidt said in a press release. "We hope that Velocity, and the support from the Birmingham community that we've already started to receive, will help them reach their potential much faster than they would on their own."
©2016 Alabama Media Group, Birmingham Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
