PRESS RELEASE: ALCHEMIST ACCELERATOR ADDS JUNIPER NETWORKS AS BACKER
Contact: Danielle D’Agostaro RELEASE: May 23, 2017
Email: danielle@alchemistaccelerator.com
ALCHEMIST ACCELERATOR ADDS JUNIPER NETWORKS AS BACKER
Juniper Networks Joins Alchemist Accelerator’s Second Round Fund as Backer
San Francisco, May 23, 2017 – Alchemist Accelerator, an accelerator dedicated to enterprise start-ups, today announced that Juniper Networks has joined Analog Devices, Cisco, Ericsson, GE, and Johnson Controls as a backer in the accelerator’s second fund. This brings the total fund to $6.5 million.
Alchemist Accelerator is a six-month program, accepting about 20 companies every four months. On average, accepted companies receive $36,000 in seed funding. Alchemist structures the program around mentorship, sales and fundraising to help early-stage companies raise their seed or series A round and secure their first few customers.
Many founders who have gone through the program would agree that a major perk of joining Alchemist comes from the large network of high-caliber experts and coaches who mentor Alchemist founders.
“We are thrilled to have Juniper Networks join as a backer of Alchemist. Few companies think as deeply about next gen trends in AI, cloud, analytics, and networking – all core areas to Alchemist – as Juniper does. We are excited to have Juniper join the Alchemist family,” said Ravi Belani, Founder and Managing Director of Alchemist.
Since the debut of Alchemist’s first class in January 2013, 14 Alchemist companies have been acquired (including Cisco’s acquisition of Assemblage and Dropbox’s acquisition of Mobilespan). More than 50 percent of its graduates have gone on to raise significant seed or institutional funding rounds. The average raise of these companies is $2.6 million. Many of these are from the top venture capital firms in the valley, including Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Foundation Capital, Founders Fund, Greylock Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Social + Capital Partnership and True Ventures. The complete list is provided here.
“At Juniper Networks, we believe that venture investment is an integral part of our innovation engine. Alchemist fills a gap in our portfolio strategy, acting as a vehicle to invest in seed-stage companies, a stage we are eager to participate in,” said Rita Waite, Investment Manager at Juniper Networks. “We are thrilled to be joining Alchemist Accelerator as a backer and look forward to working with Alchemist start-ups and its network.”
Today, Alchemist held its 15th Demo Day at Juniper Networks in Sunnyvale in conjunction with the announcement. They were joined by more than 200 customers, partners and investors. The event debuted 18 companies.
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Learn More
Anyone interested in getting involved as a mentor, investor or customer or members of the press, should fill out this form: https://vault.alchemistaccelerator.com/register-profile.
For more information on the accelerator, please visit http://www.alchemistaccelerator.com/.
About Alchemist Accelerator
The Alchemist Accelerator is a new venture-backed initiative focused on accelerating the development of seed-stage ventures that monetize from enterprises (not consumers). The accelerator’s primary screening criteria is on teams, with primacy placed on having distinctive technical co-founders. The accelerator seeds around 60 enterprise-monetizing ventures / year. Over 50% close institutional rounds within 12 months of their Alchemist Demo Day[LM1] .
[LM1]I removed our boiler plate and media contacts. This is a third party release distributed by Alchemist without our ticker or a classified joint release.