How protected is your sensitive customer data? It’s not just about doing the right thing by your customers, it’s also about complying with regulatory requirements and gaining customer/investor confidence. Not a day goes by when we don’t hear about a data breach, and some are so detrimental to your business that your startup would be forced to close its doors. Not a great way to win customer confidence and gain access to investment capital.
Regardless of your industry, data protection, privacy, security, and compliance are critical to a startup’s success. No startup founder or CTO wants to put its customer data and information at risk, and no one wants their intellectual property in the hands of nefarious characters.
If your startup is in the digital assets space or collects, stores, and/or transmits medical records, financial transactions, insurance histories, or other sensitive client data, you have found the right program to help you build, scale, and thrive.
Collaboration with Village Capital
For a third year in a row, IBM has teamed up with Village Capital to empower startups with business acceleration expertise and technical mentorship. With leadership from Black Innovation Alliance and a team of Village Capital diversity, equity, and inclusion leaders, the program continues its heritage of enabling a more equitable startup ecosystem.
Our Startup Family
Our existing portfolio includes 100 startups from 23 countries, and 49% of startups include at least one female founder, 22% have at least one black founder, 24% LatinX, and 22% Asian. In addition to gender and ethnic diversity, 39% of our startups operate within the fintech vertical, 34% are healthtech, and the remainder of startups operate in a variety of other datatech verticals where data privacy is of the utmost importance.
Check out Cohorts 2 & 3 here.
Check out Cohort 4 & Friends of Hyper Protect here.
Program Benefits
Over the first year of our accelerator program, IBM provides selected startups with access to $120,000 in technology credits to go toward enabling confidential computing so that startups protect sensitive client data via IBM’s flagship offering known as IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services. Hyper Protect enables our startups to keep its most sensitive data safe, private, secure, and compliant with regulatory requirements. Startups can also leverage the technology credits to go toward IBM’s broader set of products and services, including machine learning, artificial intelligence, and/or blockchain.
As Bryan Young, CEO of Home Lending Pal says, “IBM Hyper Protect Services is the Fort Knox of cloud computing. In the mortgage industry, our financial services stakeholders know IBM’s long-standing status when it comes to data security. When our customers and other business partners hear we have created a strategic relationship with IBM and run our workloads on Hyper Protect, they have confidence in our ability to comply with their standards, as well as broader compliance requirements.”
Selected startups can expect access to one-on-one, hands-on technical leaders, cloud solution architects, and an experienced network of business leaders. Village Capital empowers each early-stage founder and their team with curated curriculum specifically designed for early-stage startups on topics such as perfecting their pitch, pitch deck, value proposition, business model, and investment readiness.
Village Capital has worked with over 1,000 entrepreneurs through its accelerator programs, and participating companies have gone on to raise over $4B in follow-on capital. The investment-readiness accelerator will aid founders in refining the fundamentals of their business, pitching their business, and receiving key feedback from a vast network of mentors from around the globe. The program will culminate with an investor summit where entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to speak with and pitch to investors.
45 Startups in 2022
A total of fifteen (15) startups will be selected into the IBM Hyper Protect Accelerator program, which includes monthly engagement with IBM technical and business leaders. Thirty (30) startups will be selected to Friends of Hyper Protect, which includes quarterly engagement with IBM technical and business leaders.
Startups should be less than $15M USD in revenue and less than 10 years old. Startups must have a website and matching email address.
Phase I – Startup Selection
Once applications close on May 31, IBM and Village Capital will work with our panel of expert judges and program collaborators to review startup applications and select 45 startups based on scoring criteria that includes evaluation of each startup’s fit for purpose, including its industry vertical, use case(s), problem statement, mission, vision, value proposition, architecture, business model, competitive set, solution, and team structure.
Phase II – Business & Technical Workshops
Starting in Q3, IBM and Village Capital will host a series of business and technical acceleration workshops. Each startup will be expected to attend all virtual workshops over the 3-month, formal programming. Details on how these workshops will be conducted will be shared when cohort selections occur.
Phase III – Ongoing Mentorship
To create a long-term, successful accelerator, IBM will provide virtual mentorship to our cohort of entrepreneurs, consisting of monthly one-on-one engagement for IBM Hyper Protect Accelerator startups and quarterly engagement for Friends of Hyper Protect startups. Programming will occur over a two-year period.
Diversity & Inclusion
IBM recognizes that diversity and inclusion are integral to a company’s strategic and profitability objectives—solidifying the connection between customer satisfaction and winning in the marketplace. IBM values opportunities for businesses owned and operated by minorities, women, LGBT+, disabled veterans, and other disabled persons.
Deadline
Submit your application by May 31, 2022. Any application submitted after this deadline will NOT be considered. If your startup is nominated, you'll be notified in mid-July and may be asked to participate in IBM’s flagship IBM z16 Day event occurring virtually in October, which typically includes more than 18,000 global attendees.
Apply before May 31.
Thank you and looking forward to you joining our family of startups!
Melissa, Aaron & Adam
Melissa Sassi
Chief Penguin, IBM
@mentorafrika
Aaron Ralls
Chief Technical Penguin, IBM
@cajunAA
Adam LG Ring
Chief Evangelist Penguin, IBM
@AdamLGRing