Shanghai, China, December 26, 2014 – Chinaccelerator went through some huge changes this past year. At the end of 2013 it made the bold decision to move the operations to Shanghai, leaving behind its beautiful seaside office in Dalian where Chinaccelerator was born. The move was made easier through the relationship with Bob Zheng and People Squared, who took Chinaccelerator in and gave it a temporary home in their new Lighthouse co-working space. Chinaccelerator immediately on boarded Sophia Liu (recruited from a Lean Startup weekend event) who has turned out to be an amazing Community Manager; score one for securing top talent! The next big step was on boarding some partners to help build a new foundation in Shanghai, and Chinaccelerator was fortunate enough to land 5 of the best: People Squared, AngelVest, Silicon Valley Bank, CBi China Bridge and Cooley LLP.
With the plan to start running two batches per year, Batch V kicked off with a bang in late February where Chinaccelerator brought in companies from all across the globe, spanning Mexico to Poland. The teams certainly had their ups and downs, and Chinaccelerator lost a couple along the way, but they gave everything they had right to the finish, with NeoNan, Giftpass and Asyncode taking flight soon after.
The summer of 2014 brought even more change. SOSventures garnered a new nickname, being affectionately referred to as “The Accelerator Fund” in startup circles due to the ever increasing number of accelerators it was creating. Adding to its accelerator portfolio of Chinaccelerator, Haxlr8r and Leap-Axlr8r, SOS then went all in with 3 more: Indie.bio (synthetic biology), FoodX (food of course) and MakersTV (new style tv programs). This then led to the creation of the Chief Accelerator Officer position, and Chinaccelerator was lucky enough to be able to attract Shawn Broderick, MD of TechStars Boston from 2009 – 2011. Also that summer the explosion of the global hardware scene demanded the full time attention of Cyril Ebersweiler, co-founder of Chinaccelerator and then MD. So Chinaccelerator had to get busy finding his replacement, and again fortune favored it in landing William Bao Bean from Singtel Innov8 who officially started in October 1st 2014.
Batch Vll was launched from the more permanent home of Chinaccelerator in yet another new space developed by People Squared, Hero Center near Kerry Center, Puxi. In what can only be considered a precedent setting batch for Chinaccelerator all teams made a clean run through the program and they are all still driving ‘up and to the right’ as of this writing, more than 3 weeks since Demo Day.
Due to the banner year in Shanghai, SOSventures has expanded its investment into Chinaccelerator. We have expanded the team working in Shanghai bringing in full-time Marketing, Accounting/Office Manager and Analyst personnel. Chinaccelerator is also happy to announce that it is significantly upping the seed funding amount to $ 30k USD per team (in exchange for 7% equity).
Press Contact:
Sophia Liu
Chinaccelerator
700 Changping Road, Jing’an, Shanghai
00862162089669
http://chinaccelerator.com/