StartX and Microsoft Announce Strategic Partnership

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The future is made of collaborators working in innovation strongholds like StartX.

This post was written by Claire Lee

Last Thursday evening StartX Stanford, the university accelerator, hosted their Summer Class Demo Day. This was the largest class so far and – with my front row seat – I witnessed each of the 18 companies deliver incredible pitches and showcase truly innovative startups. The diversity of both the individuals and the solutions, is second-to-none. Wow. They rocked.

StartX also announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft on the same day; with the powerful triumvirate that comprises AOL, Kauffman and Microsoft lending support to take StartX to new places and accelerate their growth and expansion, StartX is understandably excited:

“For many founders in StartX, access to top mentors and technical expertise is a crucial element for their long-term success,” said Cameron Teitelman, founder of StartX. “Working closely with Microsoft is a great opportunity for StartX founders to leverage the products, resources and connections they need to accelerate their business.”

We were delighted to engage with StartX for the first time in the Spring 2012 class, where we had the pleasure of meeting companies such as Appfluence , a StartX company that builds priority-management software solutions for executives and managers. Microsoft is providing extensive technical, business, and design resources for Appfluence to migrate their award-winning product, Priority Matrix, to the Windows 8 platform.

We also met MindSumo , a platform for companies to actively engage with students by posting real-world challenges for them to solve, has also been working with Microsoft.

“StartX’s vision is to combine the wisdom of the private sector with the energy and imagination of founders coming from an institution like Stanford. This vision comes to life now because of the rich bench of mentors and advisors from the venture and entrepreneurial world that offer their time and expertise to the program.

“We are honored that Microsoft BizSpark can support this effort.” – Dan’l Lewin.

Very excited about what the future holds for StartX and Microsoft.

StartX founders get all the benefits of BizSpark – and of BizSpark Plus – available to select leading accelerators around the globe.