Techstars announced the 10 companies chosen to participate in their second annual Barclays Accelerator in New York. Techstars’ 13-week Barclays program is designed for fintech startups, and has cohorts in Tel Aviv, London and Cape Town. Notable graduates from last year’s class include the cybersecurity company Chainalysis, which raised $1.6 million in February and LiveOak Technologies, which raised $1.64 million in March.
This year's cohort features a diverse array of fintech companies, solving a diverse array of fintech pain points. There is a company using artificial intelligence to increase sales, an online platform for consumers to find a good deal on a mortgage, and there's even a Danish company making smart-piggy banks.
Without further ado, here is Barclays Techstars NYC Class of 2016:
acuteIQ uses artificial intelligence to improve customer acquisition, resulting in a four times improvement across the sales cycle. The machines are learning, and apparently they’re learning how to sell things to humans.
Headquarters: San Francisco
Alpha Exchange created the first open network for the capital markets community. That is leading to a change in the way that institutions interact, share knowledge and find new investment insight.
Headquarters: New York City
Bloomfield is a platform for commercial real estate transactions. The platform allows brokers to market and negotiate deals to lenders. The company is still operating in beta, but you can sign up here.
Headquarters: New York City
Chroma is a platform where non-accredited investors (read: normal, non-super rich people) can invest their money into local businesses, thus bypassing Wall Street. Before you get your checkbooks out, however, it's probably worth noting that so far the service is limited to residents of Oregon.
Headquarters: Oregon
Create creates (see how clever we are?) heavily enriched and, frankly, beautiful 3D maps. Their maps bring together hundreds of data sources into one map that can be used by people like investors, brokers and service providers — or you, if you have some time to kill at your desk. Check them out here.
Headquarters: Washington, D.C.
Ernit made the world’s first smart-piggy bank. The piggy is connected to an app, and teaches kids (and probably me when they become available to buy) about the concept of money and setting financial goals.
Headquarters: Copenhagen
Morty lets homebuyers find, compare and close on a mortgage online. It’s kind of crazy that even though we do just about everything else online, until now you'd probably never even think to shop for your mortgage online.
Headquarters: New York City
Painless1099 makes saving for tax season less complicated and stressful for independent contractors. Basically, they create a 'smart-bank' account that automatically withholds taxes for people like freelancers and real estate agents, and then deposits what’s safe to spend into a checking account. If you've ever been a personal contractor, you know the uncertainty of tax season.
Headquarters: Buffalo, NY
PierceMatrix is using artificial intelligence to improve company security and identify hackers from computer networks. They say it’s basically like hiring more security engineers, just without the time, recruiting and turnover costs. I guess it's kind of like hiring the Terminator as your cyber security analyst — which is ironic, since in the movie he was protecting John Connor, who was engaged in identity theft.
Headquarters: Tysons, VA
Windrush makes it so that us non-technical types can turn data into fully-responsive interactive online documents. You know those really cool, interactive charts you see on fancy media companies websites like The Economist and The New York Times? They make it so that idiots like me can make those.
Headquarters: Saratoga Springs, NY
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