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The Complete Guide To Southern California Accelerators and Incubators, Part I

In recent months, a dozen accelerators and incubators have emerged in the Southern California area, looking to help take the new generation of technology startups to funding and beyond. However, with the proliferation of incubators, the difficulty in figuring out which programs are--and aren't--worth looking at has become very difficult, if not impossible, for startup entrepreneurs. In an attempt to help people navigate the landscape of accelerators and incubators, we've put together a (hopefully) comprehensive list of Southern California's various startup accelerators and incubators. We've split this into three lists, depending on how the programs are structured.


Part I: The Accelerator Programs

What is an accelerator program? We've defined an accelerator program as a class-based, limited-time program which ties mentors, educational events, and often, seed funding, to help ideas become startups, and to help get startups to the point where they are fund-able. Most accelerators, but not all, offer up physical space, but they're more geared around mentoring and a formal program for helping companies to define their business, prototype and develop the first version of their service, and create a pitch and get funding. Most are modeled after the YCombinator and TechStars accelerator programs. We've deliberately left out in-house incubators, and programs which don't follow the class-based format (we'll cover those next). Listed in no particular order:



Amplify
Managed by: Paul Bricault and Richard Wolpert
Representative companies: Look.io, Getbonkers, Invested.in, Tidepool, Stacksocial
Funding:Yes
Amount: $50,000
Office Space:Yes



Founder Institute
Managed by: Ken Rutkowski
Representative companies:
Funding: No
Office Space: No



K5Launch
Managed by: Amir Banafatemi, Ray Chan, David Cheng, and Kai Tao
Representative companies:
Funding: Yes
Amount: TBD
Office Space: Yes



LaunchpadLA
Managed by: Mark Suster
Representative companies: AccessDNA, AwesomeBox, DataPop, Gendai Games, MovieClips, ShopNation, Pose, Sometrics, Gumgum
Funding: Yes
Amount: $50,000
Office Space: Yes



MuckerLab
Managed by: Erik Rannala
Representative companies: Pending
Funding: Yes
Amount: $21,000
Office Space: Yes



Start Engine
Managed by: Howard Marks
Representative companies: BrandStand, GonnaBe, Hypemarks, outlisten, PageWoo, PROnoise, Sandalbay Life, thrdPlace
Funding: Yes
Amount: $20,000
Office Space: Yes



UpstartLA
Managed by: Dan Dato and Bruce Brown
Representative companies: TBD
Funding: Yes
Amount: TBD
Office Space: Yes



OCTANe LaunchPad
Managed by: Luis Vasques
Representative companies:
Funding: No
Office Space: No


Up next: Part II, The in-house incubators/studios, including Idealab, Science, Brighthouse, Nantworks, Originate Labs.