Announcing the Soracom IoT Technology Accelerator
Written by: Eugene Kawamoto and Jack Hamren
Published: December 4, 2018
Announcing the Soracom IoT Technology Accelerator
Soracom was founded with a simple but ambitious mission: to create a more connected world by making it as easy as possible for IoT startups and developers to get their projects from prototype to public release.
In the process, we learned a lot: how to make connectivity simple and affordable, how to optimize connections between devices and the cloud, how to deliver enterprise-class service at startup cost, and how to make sure that service scales to meet the performance and security needs of IoT innovators at every stage, from passionate startups like Anaxeos to retail giants like DyDo.
We now serve over 10,000 customers and enable millions of connections around the world, but we’re as hands-on as we’ve ever been. That’s put us in a unique position to work directly with IoT innovators as they scale up, including companies like the award-winning WHILL, whose intelligent wheelchairs continue to gain recognition for advancing the state of the art for personal transportation; Asurion, whose Luminary tablet is making it easier for families to connect across generations; and SourceNext, which has launched not one but two versions of their Pocketalk personal translator globally in less than a year.
In the process, we’ve learned a lot about how to succeed in IoT, especially when it comes to making the leap from a great idea or prototype to a full commercial release. We’ve had the opportunity to apply that knowledge to help develop the IoT ecosystem through the Soracom IoT fund, which earlier this year announced investments in key IoT players like resin.io (now balena.io) and Unabiz.
Today, we are excited to announce that we’ll be able to support promising projects at even earlier stages through the Soracom IoT Technology Accelerator Program.
The goal of this program is to provide IoT innovators across industries with the resources, technical expertise, and ecosystem relationships to accelerate their speed to market, reduce their development and production cost, and maximize scalability to ensure they can build on success.
The Soracom IoT Acceleration Program offers a number of specific practical benefits, including platform credits, direct support from our solutions architecture team and industry mentors, and consulting services delivered through best-of-breed partners like Breadware and Carbon Five. The program also provides access to technical and business mentors from inside and outside Soracom who have done it before in IoT and share our commitment to helping others to do the same.
Our approach to acceleration is firmly founder-first, with no equity commitments and a flexible curriculum designed to deliver support where and when it’s needed in crucial areas such as software development, component selection, connectivity design, cloud architecture, and manufacturing. We know that IoT is a team sport, and the objective is to help innovators to move faster, not to slow them down. It’s the same philosophy that’s led our work with companies like Farmnote, which uses big data to help keep cows happier and healthier, and Enerbrain, which makes the buildings we work in both more comfortable and more energy-efficient.
Applications are open on a rolling basis, and we have already begun to establish our first crop of accelerator participants. More on that to come!
For a detailed list of benefits or to apply for consideration, please visit our Accelerator page.
