From Drones to GM, Announcing Batch 21

500 Startups
500 Stories
Published in
5 min readMay 9, 2017

They are here. Two weeks ago Batch 21 (B21) kicked off at 500 Startups in Mountain View. Thirty-one young companies will now spend the next four months hacking out of the flagship location nestled in the center of Silicon Valley where 500 Startups was launched six years ago (AARRR!).

Since the original Batch 1, the 500 Seed Program has accelerated over 600 companies between the San Francisco and Mountain View programs (shout out to our LatAm program in Mexico City currently on Batch 007).

As usual, B21 represents a wide array of technologies ranging between Conversational Commerce, Big Data, drones, VR, transportation, digital health and FinTech. There will also be a focus track in B2B Sales and an automotive track hosted with General Motors.

Forty-three percent of B21 are international companies representing 8 countries with founders from the UK, Argentina, Canada, Israel, Italy, Hong Kong, Portugal, Spain, Taiwan and Turkey. Another 23% of the batch are female founders and 12% are black or Latinx founders.

The core of the 500 program continues to be focused on growth and fundraising with the return of the notorious Marketing Hell Week followed by weekly enterprise sales talks and intensive customer acquisition coaching.

“It’s week two, and we are already feeling the speed at which 500 operates,” says Ryan Stobie, CEO and founder of Adventure Bucket List who’s from Vancouver. “I’ve seen other accelerators and the growth expertise here is unmatched.”

Welcome B21. It is time.

Check out the entire roster of B21 below or on TechCrunch.

You can also apply for Batch 22 here.

AA Audience

We are helping the finance industry to get customers on mobile devices.

Adventure Bucket List

A platform that streamlines tour and activity bookings for destinations

Avision

Air traffic control solution for commercial drone applications.

BillTrim

Analyze, Negotiate and Reduce Monthly Bills for Consumers.

Chatter Research

Real-time customer feedback solution for retail and hospitality.

Croma

Croma is a content distribution analytics platform for news organizations

ElleBox

ElleBox is an organic feminine hygiene subscription box service.

FactoryFour

Enabling automated manufacturing, at scale, and anywhere in the world.

Folia Water

Folia Water manufactures the world’s first consumer goods water filter for the 4 billion who make <$10/day. Paper for pennies, water for billions.

Georama

Georama is a live mobile video platform that provides an alternative to travel which saves time and money.

GlobeKeeper

Secure collaboration platform for law enforcement and security personnel

Improvado.io

Aggregate Advertising data in any visualization tool in minutes

Lumotune

Lumotune reinvents physical spaces with see-through, connected digital displays.

MedStack

Accelerate the development, adoption and integration of apps in healthcare.

Meya.ai

A platform to build, train and deploy bots.

Muzzley

A B2B platform-as-a-service for consumer IoT monetization and meaningful use cases.

OurHealthMate

OurHealthMate portal allows users to find, book & pay for healthcare services to hospitals in India & exchange medical records.

Pellego

Pellego is the research platform for house investors.

Pluma

A mobile professional development and executive coaching platform for millennials in the workforce

Prolaera

Prolaera modernizes Continuing Education to help professionals stay licensed and level up, faster.

Rakam

Rakam is a full-stack analytics platform that allows companies to create analytics services based on their needs.

RealAtom

A marketplace for commercial real estate loans connecting borrowers directly with relevant lenders. LendingTree for CRE.

Resonance

We aggregate data from connected devices, smartphones and apps (like social networks) in order to understand and predict human behaviors.

Swept

We help janitorial companies increase profits & cleaner retention.

Tripplus

Tripplus is a miles and points based airfare/hotel metasearch and award travel concierge platform.

Vacayo

Vacayo transforms longterm rentals into beautiful, short-term, group vacation homes available online.

VR Motion Corp

VR Motion uses disruptive VR technology to provide predictive, value-added results for the global transportation marketplace.

WeFitter

Health platform that helps companies engage with employees and reduce healthcare costs

WeTipp

We help communities engage their members through their passions & skills and manage their back-office.

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500 Startups
500 Stories

VC firm on a mission to discover and back the world’s most talented entrepreneurs, help them create successful companies at scale & build global ecosystems.