Oct 18, 2018 On Our Blog

Why 500 Startups is betting on Miami, and so should you

I am a Mexican who grew up in the “small” town of Guadalajara, Mexico (6M people, but feels small compared to Mexico City’s 20M+ population). I’ve had the privilege of studying and working in the LATAM, European and US markets, and calling world-class metropolises like Mexico City, Paris and New York my home. In 2016, following my heart, I reluctantly moved to Miami. Today, against all my expectations, I have fallen in love with this region and am ready to bet on its growth. And so is 500 Startups. Curious? Skeptical? Stay with me. As I wrote on the 500 Startups blog last March announcing the launch of 500 Startups Miami, this city and the larger Florida region is heating …

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Oct 10, 2018 On Our Blog

Why IoT needs blockchain to grow

What if every company had their own version of WiFi that did not communicate? Can you imagine how difficult it would be to try to connect and get anything done? But that is exactly what is going on with the Internet of Things (IoT) today: many companies are building their own version of authentication and communication protocols that don’t talk to each other, crippling IoT’s growth and innovation. A lot has been written about IoT, and for good reason. By 2020 there will be over 30 billion devices—from cameras and alarm systems to cars and trains—connected to the internet, with billions more coming online every year. Firms spend billions every year to bring IoT devices into these complex ecosystems. Deploying …

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Sep 27, 2018 On Our Blog

PreMoney Speaker David Lee: The VC that Beat Cancer Is Making Big Investments in Health & Biology

Back in 2011, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz curated a list for Forbes of the 7 most powerful people in tech you’ve never heard of. Number 5? David Lee. The investor has backed behemoths like Airbnb, Stripe, Slack, and Dropbox; just to name a few. Next week he’ll be giving the closing keynote at our PreMoney Investor Conference, and we couldn’t be more thrilled. Lee, a former Google exec who has been featured on Forbes’ Midas List and Business Insiders’ The Silicon Valley 100, was previously the managing partner at SV Angel. While there he invested in some of the biggest unicorns in Silicon Valley—as Andreessen and Horowitz put it, “Name any interesting Silicon Valley startup and you will find that David …

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Sep 25, 2018 On Our Blog

6 Things We’ve Learned from the Investors Behind Lyft, Coinbase, Instacart, and More

PreMoney, our one-day conference on the future of venture capital, takes place on October 2nd in San Francisco. We’re putting the final touches on the program as we speak and we’re thrilled about the amazing speakers and discussions we’ve lined up. With just one week until the event, we’re sharing some of the biggest lessons we’ve learned from these VCs. Hacking value before hacking growth Floodgate’s Ann Miura-Ko delivered the final keynote at last year’s PreMoney and was so inspiring we had to ask her back. During her talk on Redefining Intelligent Growth, Ann challenged the audience, asking if it’s “really necessary to consume this much capital before we learn the lesson that maybe the startup isn’t going anywhere?” The job of …

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Sep 19, 2018 On Our Blog

10 US & LatAm Startups Selected for Our 2018 Miami Growth Program!

UPDATE: These 10 startups are getting ready to pitch! Accredited investors can get a piece of the action at Miami Demo Day 2018. Contact events@500.co to attend an exclusive debut event on Nov. 1st!   500 Startups Miami has selected the 10 startups that will make up the Miami Growth Program Batch 2018. 500’s hallmark 10-week program brings mentors, experts and investors from our global network  to accelerate the startups’ growth trajectory and support fundraising to scale. The selection was a very competitive process that included reviewing over 200 applications from all over the world. The selected startups all share the following characteristics: Seasoned teams with solid track record working together Disrupting large markets in the US and Latam through highly scalable …

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Sep 17, 2018 On Our Blog

Why you should use security tokens in Crypto fundraising

As an alternative to selling to the masses, US companies can issue security tokens to attract investors. Whereas 2017 was the year of the utility token, 2018 is for building new and better ecosystems, showing the maturation of the crypto world. Defining utility and security tokens Tokens can provide value for companies offering services. A security token is a type of investment instrument that may be issued by companies and purchased by institutional investors, accredited investors, and qualified purchasers. For contrast, utility tokens can be purchased by anyone, as currency in an ecosystem. Previously, many companies issued utility tokens as a way to offer future access to something still under development, like a pre-purchase of future software, access to services, …

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Sep 17, 2018 On Our Blog

PreMoney 2018: Meet Garry Tan, the Former YC Partner Forging his own Path

If you don’t know who Garry Tan is yet, you will soon—the investor was just name dropped on Forbes’ 2018 Midas Brink List of Venture Capital’s biggest up-and-comers. He’s making big waves in the investment world and we’re thrilled to have him lined up to speak at our PreMoney Investor Conference on October 2nd. Tan was previously a partner at Y-Combinator and is now the cofounder of Initialized Capital, an early-stage seed fund he started with Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian. Initialized Capital was the earliest investor in trailblazers like Coinbase and Instacart, so Tan knows a thing or two about spotting the “it factor” in young companies. Not Your Average VC While many big investors come from a more buttoned-up business world, Tan boasts an impressive …

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Sep 17, 2018 On Our Blog

Breaking into the
Asian API market:
RapidAPI and Rakuten Team Up

We met RapidAPI founder Iddo Gino when he and his team were merely a promising seed stage company; they were a part of our 16th accelerator batch in the fall of 2016 and were just breaking into the application program interface (API) space. For those unfamiliar, an API is a set of procedures, protocols, and tools for building software applications. Similar to how a visual user interface makes it simple for end users to use programs, application programming interfaces (APIs) make it easier for developers to use certain technologies in building applications. Since their time with 500, Rapid API process hundreds of billions (yes, with a “B”) of API calls every month and have raised capital from Silicon Valley giants …

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Sep 12, 2018 On Our Blog

Ann Miura-Ko: Raising the Bar for Women VCs Headlining PreMoney 2018

The pioneer in female-forward investing is one of the keynote speakers at our upcoming PreMoney Investor Conference on October 2nd, and she’s someone we’re certain you won’t want to miss. Miura-Ko has a PhD from Stanford, a Bachelor’s from Yale, and this year she was on the cover of Forbes—but those are only a small handful of the notable credentials that make her one of the most admirable investors in the game. She’s got a keen ability to spot a unicorn in its early stages, she was an early investor in Lyft, and she has a solid spot on Forbes 2018 Midas List—a roundup of the top 100 venture capitalists in the world. The Most Powerful Woman in Startups Back in …

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Aug 28, 2018 On Our Blog

The evolution of crypto – It’s time to ship some product

Is crypto just another trading platform or can it evolve into something with real long-term value? If you’re reading Cointelegraph, Cryptonews, or other industry outlets, you’ll notice the news is dominated by coin trading information, from BTC price changes to the analysis of alt-coin price movements. To a casual observer, crypto is highly focused on coin trading, much of which is driven by speculators. There’s less of an emphasis on the long-term value of the underlying products in crypto. Functional products are few and far between, and the majority of coins have little practical use as a way to pay for products or services. Speculation does have some positive effects on the ecosystem. More speculators buying coins tends to drive …

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