CruiseBe story. Our story. P.2.
First part of this story — CruiseBe story. Our story. P.1.
Accelerator selection
Accelerators were the “simplest” and the most painless option. We made a selection of several incubators and began to apply. We divided the accelerators into several groups: the West Coast (San Francisco, Valley, Los Angeles), the East Coast (New York and Boston) and several other large hubs. Honestly, applications were submitted everywhere, but we paid more attention to accelerators with excellent ratings, in places with reasonable prices for accommodation, because we needed to live in the USA for some time to develop our business.
Therefore, we sent applications to two-three incubators in Silicon Valley. However, we realized that life in San Francisco at this stage is too expensive for us, and we weren’t ready to live “in the trailer.” We liked the idea of Boston and New York, but these hubs can hardly be called too popular among tourist start-ups. We had Los Angeles, Florida and Texas left.
Another important criterion for us was the presence of a large cruise port in the state. In total, we filled about ten applications; a few did not fit (mainly because of the nature of our startup), they all were searching for startups connected with virtual reality, artificial intelligence, SaaS, and IoT). Almost immediately we received a positive response from the accelerator from a small city, but we had to wait several months until the start of the program. While we were thinking, we got another answer from Dallas.
It’s interesting that we got this reply on the “Intercity +” train stuck on the way from the city of Dnipro to Kiev. It was January; the air temperature was 5 degrees (-15 degrees Celsius) on the street and about 50 degrees (+10 degrees Celsius) on the train. We spent several hours in the field, surrounded by the snow, without toilets, food, water, and the Internet. Then we got one email (thanks to 3G), which invited us to join the accelerator: “We are excited to personally notify you that your company has been selected to participate in the final stage. It means we want you here in Dallas”.
Everything we knew about Dallas was that it is the place where Kennedy was killed and that it is a home for American Airlines, Travelocity, and Saber. The associative set was also rather sad — we expected to see cowboys, cacti, and cows here. The reality appeared to be much more prosaic.
Firstly, Dallas is a very young city. It was founded in 1841 and received the status of the city in 1871. That is, the city is even less than 150 years old. Secondly, Dallas turned out to be not a small city.
Dallas has an area of almost 620 sq. miles (1000 square kilometers), which is 20% more than the area of Kiev. Its population is 1.2 million people. However, it is not the most exciting thing. It turns out that Dallas and the neighboring city of Fort Worth form an agglomeration with an area of more than 15,000 sq. miles (24,000 square kilometers) (it is 28 areas of Kiev). This metropolitan area has a GDP that would be in the world’s top 25 if “Big Dallas” was a separate country. It would be somewhere between Saudi Arabia and Sweden, 40 positions higher than Ukraine.
The GDP of Big D is about $ 504 billion. Also, there are head offices of about 100 companies from Fortune 500. In recent years, it has been one of the fastest growing cities in the USA.
In 1958, the world’s first microchip was invented here. In the late 1990s, Dallas became the cradle of banks, insurance companies, and Texas Silicon Valley. Such Valley met our needs.
Without any doubts, we flew to the finals of the accelerator venture selection…
To be continued…
