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Home » Innovation » B2B » New accelerators: GameFounders in Estonia, GTI Labs and Plug & Play in Russia

New accelerators: GameFounders in Estonia, GTI Labs and Plug & Play in Russia



startup russia, startup accelerator

Posted by: Natasha Starkell  Tags: gamefounders,gti labs,plug and play  Posted date:  June 28, 2012  |  No comment


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With the abundance of accelerator programs I thought I dedicate a post per week covering new entities… Not really.

Anyway, an interesting development in Tallinn is a creation of a gaming accelerator GameFounders. The accelerator, cofounded by Kadri Ugand, Paul Bragiel, Lauri Antalainen and a HackFwd referrer Sven Illing, is set to support gaming and gaminfication startups through mentorship, and financial investment up to 15,000 Euros for 9 percent of the equity.

Building a game is sort of an art, as it is a hit-and-miss with the audience. It is also a difficult area when it comes to marketing, and the best approach for many game developers is to go through a game publisher which takes care of marketing and user acquisition in exchange for a large chunk of revenue.

So what can an accelerator offer? It opens its doors for game developers who already have users but are not sure about monetization strategy, which mentors can help address. It also invites teams which are developing their first game, and the deadline for the applications in the 10th of July. Gaming accelerator GameDojos in San Francisco is a partner, besides GameFounders claims to have contacts with over 50 investors including Balderton Capital, Games Capital, Digital Capital, Lifeline Ventures, Vision+, London Venture Partners.

Moving on to Russia, news came in this week about two launches. First of all, a US accelerator Plug and Play launched in Moscow in collaboration with Global Venture Alliance, a fund of funds and an advisory firm which has a base San Francisco in Moscow. The deal here is to get a co-working place and access to the network of mentors and venture investors in exchange for equity share. Not a very attractive proposition if you ask me, as Skolkovo beats them ten times over on giving away the free money and offering office space, maybe not so much of an international VC connections but this is coming. Plug and Play also intends to use its Moscow base to launch international companies in Russia, so watch out Russian entrepreneurs.

Another accelerator in Russia announced this week is a joint project between Global TechInnovations and Prostor Capital called GTI Labs. Basically, this is an invitation to apply for $50,000 in accelerator funding, and additional $400K from Prostor Capital upon a successful completion of the acceleration program.

So for those of you who need either seed money, the network or space, these are the options to consider or wait till next week when new options might become available to you.

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About the author
Natasha Starkell
Twitter LinkedIn Facebook  Google+ Natasha Starkell is the founder and CEO of GoalEurope, advisory firm focusing on technology investment and software development in Russia and Eastern Europe. Prior to starting GoalEurope she has worked in the field of finance, mergers and acquisitions, corporate strategy and offshore outsourcing at Unisys Corporation in Switzerland and United Kingdom. She has an MBA degree from London Business School. She speaks Russian, English and German. She lives in Northern Germany.





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