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Investment company SparkLabs launched acceleration programs on APAC, now announced its first to be based on US soil and is a computer security and blockchain program to be held in Washington, DC next year .
The program will be led by former general manager Startup Grind, Brian Park and Mike Bott, who is the former general manager of the The Brandery accelerator. The advisors signed up to collaborate with the group of companies and include names such as former chief architect Microsoft Ray Ozzie, the creator of Litecoin Charlie Lee, the co-founder of LinkedIn Eric Ly and Rich DeMillo, who was the first CTO of HP.
SparkLabs Cybersecurity + Blockchain, "the program will begin with an inaugural group of companies in March next year, with the opening of applications accepted since January SparkLabs co-founder and partner Bernard Moon Reported to TechCrunch in an interview that the plan is to run the program for four months with two entries in the year
.It will use SparkLabs' standard investment approach that sees companies select offers $ 50,000 for equity up to six percent This is variable on a case-by-case basis, for example for those who raised significant upfront funding at a high valuation, but Moon said the priority for the security and blockchain program is look for companies that have started or at least have
Moon said that the general focus is not on cryptocurrency, but on technologies driven by businesses. to say that the protocols and other levels of the infrastructure are being reproduced, although Moon has said that there is room for other consumer companies.
SparkLabs has a dedicated blockchain fund – SparkChain Capital – but not even the fund or its principal, the founder Stellar Joyce Kim, is directly involved in the accelerator. This is very deliberate, Moon said, because SparkLabs wants to grow its network in the blockchain space outside of SparkChain, although he explained that the program will be "a controlled business source" for the fund, so Graduates could potentially watch it when they want subsequent funding
Outside of SparkChain Capital, SparkLabs is active in crypto, mainly through its presence in Asia, particularly in Korea, where it runs its first acceleration program. The company is even developing two of its accelerators: an initiative focused on the six-month IOT in the Korean intelligent city Songdo and Cultiv8, an accelerator for agriculture and food technology in Australia – although Moon said the project was delayed but remains on track to happen soon. As for investments, it has supported over 10 blockchain companies and a dozen in the cybersecurity space.
The computer security and blockchain program has an interesting history. Park and Bott originally started AOL's Fishbowl Labs acceleration program but after a discussion with Moon for advice, the couple ended their registration with SparkLabs. This is a move that Moon believes will help bring a global perspective through the presence of SparkLabs in the rest of the world – it has six other programs around the world – and will marry that with what is happening in the United States
"We want to promote and to grow a robust ecosystem in both cybersecurity and distributed accounting technologies We believe that these two vertices are synergistic by nature, but we will look for innovations beyond the overlap, "said Park in a statement
" It's so early in this space that we are only seeing the Friendsters and MySpace of the blockchain world.The next Facebook and Twitters will be developed in the coming years, "he added.
