Speed@BDD launches
third accelerator batch

Investment in six new startups

Tech accelerator Speed@BDD will launch its third acceleration program on September 29 and will invest $360,000 in six startups.

Sami Abou Saab, CEO, said: “$30,000 in cash and $30,000 worth of ‘in-kind’ services will be invested in each start up.”

Speed@BDD opened the applications for its third acceleration program last July.

“The program has been perfected to better fit the startups’ needs and expectations from our three-month acceleration,” said Abou Saab.

The startups represent different sectors and include dentiflow, a cloud-based and on-premise practice management platform tailored for dentists, Tradimum, a cloud-based work management platform for small and medium businesses, Petriotics, a platform for home delivery service for pet products, Musicord, a musical social platform where underground artists can share their musical talent through audio or video, Parkr, a mobile platform designed to provide commuters a means to locate and reserve available parking spaces, and Wango ( short for ‘Wanna go’), a women-friendly dating app with a gentleman’s touch.

Nader Zaateri, co-founder of Petriotics, said: “Being part of the Speed accelerator program is not about the money. What’s important to us is the mentorship and the networking and strategy building opportunities.”

“We are at a pretty exciting moment right now given that we have good startups coming out of this market. We have already invested in 13 startups since July 2015 and now launching our third batch, fiveof which were sent to Silicon Valley last summer,” Abou Saab said.

Abou Saab also announced that Speed@BDD became a Launch Member of the Global Accelerator Network (GAN), enlarging the accelerator’s strong network of investors and enriching it with a larger pool of mentors and valuable perks for the startups joining the three-month acceleration program.

The third acceleration cycle will conclude on December 15 and will be followed by a Demo Day event on December 20 of this year.

Reported by Derek A Issacs