Dear MassChallenge Community,
On behalf of the MassChallenge team, I'm thrilled to congratulate our 2023 U.S. Early Stage Startups on their acceptance!
Over the past several months, our team has worked tirelessly to aggregate feedback, explore new startup trends, re-imagine our offerings, and interact with hundreds of eager founders. This effort resulted in more than 1100 applicants in our U.S. early stage pool. We were in awe of the quality of applications and thank everyone who submitted, as well as our community of experienced judges who volunteered their time in the selection process. Today, after two rigorous rounds of evaluation, we are thrilled to announce the startups joining us this summer.
Like our founders, we continue to iterate and explore ways to support entrepreneurs and subsequently evolve our acceleration framework. The two most notable shifts we’ve made include adopting the Lean Canvas as the cornerstone of our curriculum and dividing early stage founders into two distinct categories based on their traction to date.
First, we kicked off a partnership with LEANSTACK. Founded by Ash Maurya, LEANSTACK offers a combination of battle-tested, stage-based playbooks and advanced tools to help early stage entrepreneurs find repeatable and scalable business models. These workshops will be complemented by curated mentorship from our MassChallenge experts to help startups scale their ventures.
Second, is the introduction of two cohorts: Growth and Foundations. Early stage founders span a vast range of readiness and need different levels of support at various sub-stages. With this in mind, we are launching two cohorts to provide each with the most relevant support on their journey.
Our Growth cohort welcomes 127 startups who will participate in our flagship four-month accelerator. Beyond our core LEANSTACK curriculum, we offer four specialized tracks: HealthTech, Safety and Security, Climate, and Social Impact, as well as opportunities to connect with corporate partners, investors, alumni, and mentors both virtually and in-person through events, residency in one of our U.S. offices, and Market Access events.
Our Foundations cohort welcomes 59 promising, high-potential startups who will participate in a 30-day LEANSTACK training where they will deep dive into their business models and refine their problems and solutions.
We look forward to welcoming our newest founders into the MassChallenge Community
Sincerely,
Chaya Pomeranz-Sherman
Director, U.S. Early Stage Program
MassChallenge
