After growing popular current investments like NGINX and Jelastic, Runa hopes to continue that level of success through focus on software engineering, especially projects that are hard to clone and patentable, and a huge network of mentors, potential partners, and Runa investments to help move things along for the new guys.
This year the winning teams (one for each category) walked away with $47,500 in awards along with access to mentors, potential clients, and other resources to help them commercialize their product or idea, including access to a portion of NASA's patent portfolio.
I expected an anodyne but warm response about talent pipelines, mentoring and nurturing potential.
[MC: MATCHED BY PROGRAM/MENTEE CHOOSES MENTOR/MENTOR CHOOSES MENTEE/OTHER] 1.25 (only if 4.1 is "mentee chooses mentor") Does the mentee choose his/her mentor from a preselected group of potential mentors (mentors recruited by program) or from the entire population of potential mentors (mentors recruited by mentee)?
The accelerator program started accepting applications today and will select eight companies, which will receive mentoring and potential long-term equity investments.
Prizes include a cash grant of $50,000, mentoring sessions and a potential investment offer from Amazon.
The program costs about $4,000, which includes meetings with mentors and potential investors, he said.
Accepted fellows spend six weeks living in a frat house near the University of Colorado, where mentors and potential investors stay with them for a few nights.
Interested mentors interview potential HPREP scholars and the applicant chooses among the offers for the one best suited to his/her needs.
We are giving them access to some of the best mentors and potential investors and the winners get about $25,000 for developing their project.
