Tag Archives: Startups
Google opens new innovation space in San Francisco for the developer community
Posted by Jeremy Neuner, Head of Launchpad San Francisco

Google's Developer Relations team is opening a new innovation space at 543 Howard St. in San Francisco. By working with more than a million developers and startups we've found that something unique happens when we interact with our communities face-to-face. Talks, meetups, workshops, sprints, bootcamps, and social events not only provide opportunities for Googlers to authentically connect with users but also build trust and credibility as we form connections on a more personal level.
The space will be the US home of Launchpad, Google's startup acceleration engine. Founded in 2016 the Launchpad Accelerator has seen 13 cohorts graduate across 5 continents, reaching 241 startups. In 2019, the program will bring together top Google talent with startups from around the world who are working on AI-enabled solutions to problems in financial technology, healthcare, and social good.
In addition to its focus on startups, the Google innovation space will offer programming designed specifically for developers and designers throughout the year. For example, in tandem with the rapid growth of Google Cloud Platform, we will host hands-on sessions on Kubernetes, big data and AI architectures with Google engineers and industry experts.
Finally, we want the space to serve as a hub for industry-wide Developer Relations' diversity and inclusion efforts. And we will partner with groups such as Manos Accelerator and dev/Mission to bring the latest technologies to underserved groups.
We designed the space with a single credo in mind, "We must continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down." The flexible design of the space ensures our community has a place to learn, experiment, and grow.
For more information about our new innovation space, click here.
Source: Google Developers Blog
Looking for Europe’s top entrepreneurs: The 2018 Digital Top 50 Awards
Tech entrepreneurs are changing the world through their own creativity and passion. To celebrate Europe's thriving developers and the entrepreneurial scene and honor the most promising tech companies, in 2016 we founded the Digital Top 50 Awards, in association with McKinsey and Rocket Internet.
The 2018 edition of the awards are now open for applications and companies with a digital product or service from the EU and from EFTA countries can apply on the Digital Top 50 website until April 1, 2018.
All top 50 companies will receive free tickets and showcase space at Tech Open Berlin on June 20-21 2018, where the final winners in each category will be announced. The winner in the Tech for Social Impact category will be granted a cash prize of 50,000 euros, and all five winners will be provided with support from the founding partners to scale their businesses further—through leading professional advice, structured consulting and coaching programs, as well as access to a huge network of relevant industry contacts.
Helping people embrace new digital opportunities is at the heart of our Grow with Google initiative in Europe. With the DT50 awards, we hope to recognize a new generation of startups and scale-ups, and help them grow further and realize their dreams.
Source: Google Developers Blog
Google Developers Launchpad Studio welcomes more machine learning healthcare startups
We're excited to announce the three new startups joining Launchpad Studio, our 6-month mentorship program tailored to help applied-machine learning startups build great products using the most advanced tools and technologies available. We intend to support these startups by leveraging some of our platforms like Google Cloud Platform, TensorFlow, and Android, while also providing one-on-one support from product and research experts from several Google teams including Google Cloud, Verily, X, Brain, and ML Research. Launchpad Studio has also enlisted the expertise of a number of top industry practitioners and thought leaders to ensure Studio startups are successful over the long-term. These three startups were selected based on the novel ways they've applied ML to important challenges in the Healthcare industry:
Nanowear: Managing congestive heart failure
The annual cost of treating heart failures in the US is currently estimated to be ~$40bn annually. With the continued aging of the US population, the impact of Congestive Heart Failure is expected to increase substantially.
Through light-weight, low-cost cloth-based form factors, Nanowear can capture and transmit medical-grade data directly from the skin enabling deep analytics and prescriptive recommendations. As a first product application, Nanowear's SimpleSense aims to transform Congestive Heart Failure management.
Nanowear intends to develop predictive models that provide both physicians and patients with leading indicators and data to anticipate potential hospitalizing events. Combining these datasets with deep machine learning capabilities will position Nanowear at the epicenter of the next generation of telemedicine and connected-self healthcare.
Owkin: Decentralizing healthcare data
With the big data revolution, the medical and scientific communities have more information to work with than in all of history combined. However, with such a wealth of information, it is increasingly difficult to differentiate productive leads from dead ends.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning powered by systems biology can organize, validate, predict and compare the overabundance of information. Owkin builds mathematical models and algorithms that can interpret omics, visual data, biostatistics and patient profiles.
Owkin is focused on federated learning in healthcare to overcome the data sharing problem, building collective intelligence from distributed data.
Portal Telemedicina: Bringing healthcare to rural areas
A low percentage of healthcare specialists per patient and no interoperability between medical devices causes exam results in Brazil to take an average of 60 days to be ready, cost hundreds of dollars, and leaves millions of people with no access to quality healthcare.
The standard solution for such a problem is Telemedicine, but the lack of direct automatic communication with medical devices and pre processing AI behind it hurts its scalability, resulting in very low adoption worldwide.
Portal Telemedicina is a digital healthcare platform that provides reliable, fast, low-cost online diagnostics to hundreds of cities in Brazil. Thanks to revolutionary communication protocols and AI automation, the solution enables interoperability across systems and patients. Exams are handled seamlessly from medical devices to diagnostics. The company counts on a huge proprietary dataset and uses Google's TensorFlow to train machine learning algorithms in millions of images and correlated health records to predict pathologies at human level accuracy.
Leveraging artificial intelligence to empower doctors, the startup helps millions of lives in Brazil and wants to expand and provide universal access to healthcare.
More about the Launchpad Studio program
Each startup will get tailored, equity-free support, with the goal of successfully completing a ML-focused project during the term of the program. To support this process, we provide resources, including deep engagement with engineers in Google Cloud, Google X, and other product teams, as well as Google Cloud credits. We also include both Google Cloud Platform and GSuite training in our engagement with all Studio startups.
Join Us
Based in San Francisco, Launchpad Studio is a fully tailored product development acceleration program that matches top ML startups and experts from Silicon Valley with the best of Google - its people, network, and advanced technologies - to help accelerate applied ML and AI innovation. The program's mandate is to support the growth of the ML ecosystem, and to develop product methodologies for ML.
Launchpad Studio is looking to work with the best and most game-changing ML startups from around the world. While we're currently focused on working with startups in the Healthcare and Biotech space, we'll soon be announcing other industry verticals, and any startup applying AI / ML technology to a specific industry vertical can apply on a rolling-basis.
Source: Google Developers Blog
Introducing the 5th class of Launchpad Accelerator!
To cap off another amazing year for Launchpad Accelerator, we're excited to announce the 5th class of our hands-on mentorship program. This includes a diverse group of startups from all over the world looking to tackle everything from streamlining medical records in Africato improving breast cancer screenings.
Launchpad Accelerator is Google's six month program that includes an intensive two week bootcamp in San Francisco and mentoring from 30+ teams across Google and expert mentors from top technology companies and VCs in Silicon Valley and globally. Participants receive equity-free support, credits for Google products and media training, and continue to work closely with Google back in their home country.
Class 5 kicks off January 29th, 2018 at the Google Developers Launchpad Space in San Francisco and will include 2 weeks of all-expense-paid training, as part of the the full 6-month program.
Here's the full list of participating startups (by region):
Africa
Nigeria
- Helium Health provides smart, rugged, all-in-one electronic medical records for Africa
- Paylater, by OneFi, is an online provider of digital financial services for the underbanked
South Africa
- Aerobotics helps farmers optimize their yields and reduce their costs through its aerial data analytics platform
Asia
Bangladesh
- Maya Apa is your digital well-being assistant that intelligently understands your question and makes it easy to connect to real doctors & therapists
India
- BabyChakrais the trusted care companion to Indian parents from pregnancy to parenting
- m.Paanipowers real-time, direct to consumer engagement, marketing, loyalty and insights for mass market consumers and retailers
- NIRAMAI is a HealthTech startup that has developed a novel Breast Cancer Screening solution that can save lives by detecting cancer at an early stage
- SocialCopsempowers organizations to make better decisions through data
Indonesia
- Kulina is a meal subscription service that uses technology to optimise inefficiencies in supply chain and logistics
Pakistan
- VividTech transforms customer services experience by allowing users to "dial" into a digital/visual experience of navigating through the IVR trees
Philippines
- Ayananh enables affordable and accessible digital financial services to the world's emerging middle class
Thailand
- Pricezaoffers a search engine and price comparison app for shopping
Vietnam
- Monkey Junior creates educational solutions for kids up to 10 to learn languages, maths and science
Europe
Hungary
- Synetiq helps brands & media producers create high performing video ads using machine learning and biometric emotional insights from their target audience
Poland
- Szopi offers a same-day delivery platform for groceries and pharmaceuticals
Russia
- App in the Air offers a personal travel assistant for flight tracking and exploring airports
- Voximplant offers a versatile cloud communications platform
Latin America
Argentina
- Etermax is a creator of massive social gaming apps such as Trivia Crack
- Restorandois the leading dining-out marketplace in Latin America
Brazil
- Loggicreates new-wave logistics, powered by intelligent software and humane technology
- Nubankis a financial technology company offering a fully digital and branchless experience
- Grupo ZAP Viva Real is an online real estate marketplace that connects buyers, sellers, and renters with properties in Brazil
Mexico
- Clipis the service that allows you to accept payments with any credit or debit card, at any time and anywhere, turning your smartphone or tablet into a banking terminal
- Kubo.financierois a P2P lending platform in Mexico regulated by local authorities including The Bank of México, CNBV and CONDUSEF
Source: Google Developers Blog
Announcing the six Indian Startups for the fourth class of Launchpad Accelerator
India | |
EdGE Networks: HR solutions provider powered by Artificial Intelligence | |
FastFilmz: The Super App for Super Fans of South Indian movies! | |
IndiaLends: Credit underwriting and analytics platform for unsecured consumer lending | |
RailYatri: Intelligent, big data platform that leverages crowd-sourced content to help long distance travelers | |
RecipeBook: Intelligent solutions in food and retail powered by deep learning computer vision | |
SigTuple: Smart screening solutions powered by data driven intelligence |
Source: Official Google India Blog
Announcing the fourth class of Launchpad Accelerator featuring new countries!
We're back at it again and excited to welcome an inspiring group of startups from all over the world for the 4th class of Launchpad Accelerator.
This time around, startups from Asia and Latin America will be joined by peers from Africa and Europe. In addition to expanding our reach, we’re also expanding our curriculum. We’ll help the startups dig deeper into machine learning and AI, to help them leverage Google’s latest technologies to scale their apps.
Launchpad Accelerator includes intensive mentoring from 20+ Google teams, and expert mentors from top technology companies and VCs in Silicon Valley. Participants receive equity-free support, credits for Google products, and continue to work closely with Google back in their home country during the 6-month program.
Class 4 kicks off July 17th, 2017 at the Google Developers Launchpad Space in San Francisco and will include 2 weeks of all-expense-paid training.
Here's the full list of participating startups (by region):
Africa
Kenya
- Twiga Foods Ltd: A tech-enabled sourcing and distribution platform that replaces informal wholesale markets for the millions of small and medium size food and FMCG retailers in Africa's urban markets.
Nigeria
- Delivery Science: Mobile forms to help large organizations get field data
- Gidi Mobile Limited: gidimo is a mobile learning platform that uses mastery learning & social gamification to deliver personal advancement, in a fun way, and at unprecedented scale
- Flutterwave: Flutterwave is building technology and infrastructure for digital commerce across Africa starting with Rave, an app that helps merchants accept mobile money, cards and bank account payments across 4 African countries.
- Paystack: We help businesses in Africa accept payments from their customers.
South Africa
- JUMO Marketplace: Jumo is the largest scale, lowest cost financial services marketplace for emerging markets
Asia
India
- EdGE Networks: HR solutions provider powered by Artificial Intelligence
- FastFilmz: The Super App for Super Fans of South Indian movies!
- IndiaLends: Credit underwriting and analytics platform for unsecured consumer lending
- RailYatri: Intelligent, big data platform that leverages crowd-sourced content to help long distance travelers
- RecipeBook: Intelligent solutions in food and retail powered by deep learning computer vision
- SigTuple: Smart screening solutions powered by data driven intelligence
Indonesia
- NADIPOS: Restaurant Management Platform helping simplify operations and analytics
- SIRCLO: Empowering businesses to sell online
Malaysia
- HealthMetrics: Assisting companies managing their employee health benefits efficiently and cost effectively
Philippines
- BLOOM: Transforming remittance businesses with blockchain technology
- Honesty Apps: A Do-it-yourself mobile application platform for both iOS and Android
Singapore
- Cicil: We allow Indonesian university students to purchase items online, and pay for them in monthly installments without a credit card!
Thailand
- Piggipo: An application that helps users manage and monitor credit card spending more easily and effectively
- QueQ: Helps users manage time more wisely at crowded places
Vietnam
- eDoctor: Allows users to consult doctors anytime, anywhere
Europe
Czech Republic
- Gamee: A social gaming platform
- Spendee: Helps users understand their finances
Hungary
- PublishDrive: Intelligent SaaS enabled ebook publishing platform to increase sales globally
Poland
- DrOmnibus: Multimedia tools that support special needs education and therapy for children with developmental and behavioral disorders
Latin America
Argentina
- Increase: Simplifies and modernizes how merchants and companies understand, control and manage their income.
Brazil
- Arquivei: Empowers companies with smart data from fiscal documents fetch & analysis
- Contabilizei: Tax reporting and accounting SaaS for small businesses in Brazil
- Contratado.ME: The marketplace that puts candidates at the center of their job search
- Guiche Virtual: The app for booking bus tickets in Brazil
Chile
- ComparaOnline: The best and the most transparent marketplace for financial products in Latin America
Mexico
- InstaFit Workouts: Mobile fitness subscription platform for Spanish speakers
- Switch: Low cost, mobile bill pay
Source: Google Developers Blog
Announcing the fourth class of Launchpad Accelerator featuring new countries!
We're back at it again and excited to welcome an inspiring group of startups from all over the world for the 4th class of Launchpad Accelerator.
This time around, startups from Asia and Latin America will be joined by peers from Africa and Europe. In addition to expanding our reach, we’re also expanding our curriculum. We’ll help the startups dig deeper into machine learning and AI, to help them leverage Google’s latest technologies to scale their apps.
Launchpad Accelerator includes intensive mentoring from 20+ Google teams, and expert mentors from top technology companies and VCs in Silicon Valley. Participants receive equity-free support, credits for Google products, and continue to work closely with Google back in their home country during the 6-month program.
Class 4 kicks off July 17th, 2017 at the Google Developers Launchpad Space in San Francisco and will include 2 weeks of all-expense-paid training.
Here's the full list of participating startups (by region):
Africa
Kenya
- Twiga Foods Ltd: A tech-enabled sourcing and distribution platform that replaces informal wholesale markets for the millions of small and medium size food and FMCG retailers in Africa's urban markets.
Nigeria
- Delivery Science: Mobile forms to help large organizations get field data
- Gidi Mobile Limited: gidimo is a mobile learning platform that uses mastery learning & social gamification to deliver personal advancement, in a fun way, and at unprecedented scale
- Flutterwave: Flutterwave is building technology and infrastructure for digital commerce across Africa starting with Rave, an app that helps merchants accept mobile money, cards and bank account payments across 4 African countries.
- Paystack: We help businesses in Africa accept payments from their customers.
South Africa
- JUMO Marketplace: Jumo is the largest scale, lowest cost financial services marketplace for emerging markets
Asia
India
- EdGE Networks: HR solutions provider powered by Artificial Intelligence
- FastFilmz: The Super App for Super Fans of South Indian movies!
- IndiaLends: Credit underwriting and analytics platform for unsecured consumer lending
- RailYatri: Intelligent, big data platform that leverages crowd-sourced content to help long distance travelers
- RecipeBook: Intelligent solutions in food and retail powered by deep learning computer vision
- SigTuple: Smart screening solutions powered by data driven intelligence
Indonesia
- NADIPOS: Restaurant Management Platform helping simplify operations and analytics
- SIRCLO: Empowering businesses to sell online
Malaysia
- HealthMetrics: Assisting companies managing their employee health benefits efficiently and cost effectively
Philippines
- BLOOM: Transforming remittance businesses with blockchain technology
- Honesty Apps: A Do-it-yourself mobile application platform for both iOS and Android
Singapore
- Cicil: We allow Indonesian university students to purchase items online, and pay for them in monthly installments without a credit card!
Thailand
- Piggipo: An application that helps users manage and monitor credit card spending more easily and effectively
- QueQ: Helps users manage time more wisely at crowded places
Vietnam
- eDoctor: Allows users to consult doctors anytime, anywhere
Europe
Czech Republic
- Gamee: A social gaming platform
- Spendee: Helps users understand their finances
Hungary
- PublishDrive: Intelligent SaaS enabled ebook publishing platform to increase sales globally
Poland
- DrOmnibus: Multimedia tools that support special needs education and therapy for children with developmental and behavioral disorders
Latin America
Argentina
- Increase: Simplifies and modernizes how merchants and companies understand, control and manage their income.
Brazil
- Arquivei: Empowers companies with smart data from fiscal documents fetch & analysis
- Contabilizei: Tax reporting and accounting SaaS for small businesses in Brazil
- Contratado.ME: The marketplace that puts candidates at the center of their job search
- Guiche Virtual: The app for booking bus tickets in Brazil
Chile
- ComparaOnline: The best and the most transparent marketplace for financial products in Latin America
Mexico
- InstaFit Workouts: Mobile fitness subscription platform for Spanish speakers
- Switch: Low cost, mobile bill pay
Source: Google Developers Blog
Help your favorite Startup win big @ StartUp India StandUp India
Here are the shortlisted five startups:
Source: Official Google India Blog
Happy 3rd Birthday, Campus London!
So we’re delighted that in just three short years, 41,000 people have joined our community, from old hands to first timers, investors to founders, designers to developers and doers. As the London startup scene accelerates in pace, so does the community; in 2014 alone, startups within the Campus London network created over 1,200 jobs and raised over £41 million in capital, doubling the growth from 2013 and demonstrating strong ecosystem health.
Campus London’s meeting spaces have had a clear impact too. For example, Give Me Tap, a recent Y Combinator graduate, was conceived in the Campus Cafe because founder Edwin was trying to drink enough water to hone his stomach into a rippling six-pack. Coffee Labs, a connection platform built around coffee, aims to help others have the same kind of serendipitous encounters that its founders were having inside Campus. And Code Club has now outgrown the Campus cafe and become a nationwide network that’s inspiring thousands of kids to create through code.
The Campus Community is increasingly diverse and inclusive - in London it now includes 29% women - that’s a 9% increase in just one year. There’s more to be done but, with Women @ Campus providing networking and inspirational talks, and 110 graduates of baby-friendly startup school Campus for Mums, we hope to inspire even more women to become entrepreneurs.
Our education programmes, including mentoring from Google staff, are a key part of the Campus offering. In 2014, we provided over 1,100 hours of mentoring; enabling our startups to get one-to-one advice on anything from marketing to software development, and training on Google products like Analytics.
Campus London is part of a growing global network of startup communities. Campus Tel Aviv launched in 2012, and in coming months, we’re launching four more, with Campus Seoul opening in a few weeks and Madrid, Sao Paulo and Warsaw coming later this year.
The opportunities for startups in our network are not limited to Campus buildings. As part of our wider Google for Entrepreneurs network, founders and entrepreneurs are able to tap into a broad range of programs and networks. Our Campus Exchange program brings together six startups from around the world for an intensive week of mentoring and networking.
As we launch new Campus sites, we want to connect the dots and empower founders in these locations to inspire each other and grow - locally, and globally.
Here’s to year four!