500 Startups

500 Startups is an early-stage venture fund and seed accelerator founded in 2010 by Dave McClure[1][2] and Christine Tsai.[3][4] The fund admitted a first "class" of twelve startups to its incubator office in Mountain View, California in February, 2011.[5] They expanded to a second class of 21 in June 2011 and a third class of 34 in October 2011.[6][7]

500 Startups Management Company, L.L.C.

Type	Venture capital firm
Founded	2010
Founder	Dave McClure, Christine Tsai
Headquarters	San Francisco, California
Number of locations	Global
Key people	Christine Tsai
Website	500.co

History

In 2012, 500 Startups acquired Mexican.VC, an accelerator in Mexico City, expecting to ramp up its investment in Mexico substantially. Through its investment in Alta Ventures, 500 Startups planned have better access to deal-flow in this region.[8] 500 Startups LATAM is directed by Santiago Zavala and have startups like Platzi in its portafolio.

As of August 1, 2015, 500 Startups had invested in over 1,200 companies including Eat App[9] IDreamBooks, Little Eye Labs, myGengo, Cucumbertown,[10] Visual.ly, Canva,[11][12] Udemy,[13] RidePal.[14][15] As of August 2015, more than 20% of the companies had participated in other incubators, 20-30% were international, and over 60 had been acquired.[16]

Some of firm's active companies are CreditKarma,[15] Twilio,[15] GrabTaxi,[15] and TalkDesk,[17] The exits include $403M acquisition of Makerbot by Stratasys,[18] $350M acquisition of Wildfire by Google,[19] $200M acquisition of Viki by Rakuten,[20] and $117M acquisition of Simple by BBVA.[21]

500 Startups has locations in San Francisco, Mexico City, Miami, Dubai, Bahrain, Istanbul, Seoul, Singapore, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, and Kuala Lumpur.[22] In 2015, they announced they would be starting a three-month growth program in London, UK[23] as well as a pre-accelerator in Oslo, Norway.[24]

In July 2017, co-founder Dave McClure resigned as general partner of all funds and entities managed by 500 Startups amid allegations of sexual harassment.[25][26]

In March 2018, 500 Startups announced that it chose Downtown Miami as its first East Coast U.S. outpost.[27]

References

1. Matt Rosoff (February 10, 2011). "Super Angel Dave McClure Launches Incubator Program, Dismisses "Bubble" Talk". Business Insider.
2. Jenna Wortham (June 2, 2015). "What Silicon Valley Can Learn From Seoul". New York Times.
3. "Team". 500 Startups. Retrieved 2015-11-23.
4. Rosoff, Matt (February 11, 2011). "Exclusive: The Controversial Dave McClure Tells All". Business Insider.
5. Tsotsis, Alexia (June 9, 2011). "500 Startups Unveils 2nd Batch: 21 Startups". TechCrunch.
6. Ha, Anthony (June 9, 2011). "500 Startups accelerates 21 new companies". Venture Beat.
7. Lawler, Ryan (January 25, 2012). "The best and brightest from 500 Startups' third demo day". GigaOM.
8. Source:Alta Ventures Mexico Raises $70M First Fund, Draws Support from 500 Startups
9. http://www.menabytes.com/doha-dojo-first-batch-startups/
10. B Pradeep Nair. "Recipe to bring cooks and foodies together". The Times of India.
11. "Canva Investors". Archived from the original on 2013-07-25. Retrieved 2015-08-16.
12. "Canva Raises $3 million".
13. Toto, Serkan, "MyGengo Is Mechanical Turk For Translations". The Washington Post. 2010-01-11
14. Perez, Sarah. RidePal, The “Google Bus For The Rest Of Us,” Scores $500K From 500 Startups & Others, TechCrunch. September 10th, 2012
15. "Startups". 500 Startups. Retrieved 2015-11-23.
16. Empson, Rip (April 6, 2012). "500 Startups Raising New $50M Fund, Names 4 New Partners, With 250+ Investments To Date". TechCrunch.
17. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/vonjour-com
18. Etherington, Darrell. "Stratasys Acquiring MakerBot In $403M Deal, Combined Company Will Likely Dominate 3D Printing Industry". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2015-11-23.
19. Constine, Josh. "Google Acquires Wildfire, Will Now Sell Facebook And Twitter Marketing Services [Update: $350M Price]". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2015-11-23.
20. "Exclusive: Japan's Rakuten Acquires Viki Video Site for $200 Million". AllThingsD. Retrieved 2015-11-23.
21. Etherington, Darrell. "Banking Startup Simple Acquired For $117M, Will Continue To Operate Separately". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2015-11-23.
22. "500 startups". 500 startups. Retrieved 16 Aug 2015.
23. O'Hear, Steve. "500 Startups Arrives In London With "Distro Dojo", A Three-Month Growth Program For Post-Seed Startups". Techcrunch. Retrieved 16 Aug 2015.
24. Murray, Neil. "Doubling down on Europe: after 'Distro Dojo' in London, 500 Startups launches a 'pre-accelerator' in Oslo". Tech.eu. Retrieved 16 Aug 2015.
25. Carson, Alexei Oreskovic, Biz. "The tech investor who apologized for being a 'creep' resigns from 500 Startups after being accused of sexual harassment". Business Insider. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
26. Primack, Dan. "Exclusive: Dave McClure resigns as general partner of 500 Startups funds". Axios. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
27. "Downtown Miami's newest resident: A $400 million dollar Silicon Valley fund". miamiherald. Retrieved 2018-06-02.