Dan’l Lewin, Corporate Vice President, Strategic and Emerging Business Development, Microsoft, announces most recent additions to the scheme during London visit
Tuesday, 10th June 2008 – Microsoft UK has announced the next five companies to join the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Programme which provides leading-edge and early-stage technology companies with a range of support services and advice to help them succeed.
The companies joining the programme are Huddle, Pingar, WAYN, Artesian Solutions and Umee. They join ten other businesses identified by Microsoft for their high-growth potential and because they present opportunities where Microsoft’s support can make a real difference. Microsoft UK will enrol an additional five companies by October 2008 which will mark the end of the programme’s first year and bring the total number of companies on the scheme to 20.
Companies joining the programme are given access to tools and services to accelerate their commercial success by Microsoft. The support ranges from consulting services and early access to technologies to software, licenses, channel and marketing support, with technical guidance on the latest Microsoft technologies and platforms, such as Microsoft® Silverlight™ and Windows Live™ Services. These support activities are tailored to the needs of each business in order address the diverse range of challenges that early-stage companies face.
Visiting London on the UK leg of a European tour, Dan’l Lewin, Corporate Vice President, Strategic and Emerging Business Development at Microsoft, said; “Programmes like ours are important because they help make the connections that can be the difference between success and failure. The UK has some of the most creative entrepreneurs in the world and we believe that by nurturing their talent, both technically and by supporting their business development activities, we can help them achieve great things.”
The Startup Accelerator is one component of the Microsoft Emerging Business Team’s wider activities to help new businesses and encourage innovation in the UK. While the Startup Accelerator is only available to a small number of very high potential start-ups, Microsoft has a range of programmes available to anyone who would like to start a software business. For example, the Microsoft Empower programme provides all the desktop and server software people need for five developers, managed newsgroup support and a telephone advisory service. This is part of a long term strategy to cultivate innovation and help more entrepreneurs succeed.
The new companies joining the programme are:
- Huddle: A network of secure online workspaces designed to help people ‘work better together.’ Huddle offers a simple, secure and low-cost online service that saves time, effort and makes work a bit more fun. With Huddle you can instantly create a network of collaborative team workspaces combined with online productivity tools. The business has grown 50% a month and was voted on the UK’s top 20 web 2.0 companies (March 2008, startups.co.uk)
- Pingar: A platform that aggregates the most valuable, subscription only content on the internet, providing customised reports at no cost to users while generating and sharing advertising revenue with the content owners.
- WAYN (Where Are You Now): WAYN is the fastest growing travel and lifestyle social networking community website in the UK. WAYN is present in 193 countries and membership has grown from 45,000 users in March 2005 to over 12 million today. WAYN helps people keep track of contacts from around the world and make new friends based on where they are now, where they have been and where they are going.
- Artesian Solutions: Provides software that delivers smart insights derived from the internet about your prospects, customers, competitors and the market, presented as headline news, delivering competitive advantage driving sales productivity at critical stages in a sales or product development cycle. Uniquely combines insight with collaboration, social networking and sharing capabilities in a web 2.0 framework. Several early blue-chip customers are already trialling the software.
- Umee: Umee enables content owners to extend their online video services to multiple social networks and communities such as Facebook, Live Messenger and MySpace. The video services are based upon ‘discovery’ - where users discover new content using recommendation and sharing. Uniquely, Umee enables the sharing of video clips between these online communities as well as within them.
More information about Microsoft’s emerging business programmes, including the Startup Accelerator and Empower, can be found at: www.microsoftstartupzone.com/uk
More information about the Emerging Business Team can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/business/startups/default.aspx
