DreamIt Ventures Joins Y Combinator, TechStars in Pre-Seed Funding Space
August 2, 2008
Another company jumps into pre-seed investment business, joining the likes of Y Combinator and TechStars. Actually, DreamIt Ventures was founded in 2007 (based near Philadelphia) and officially launched on January 17th, 2008, but are just now in the midst of their first funding round.
According to their launch press release:
DreamIt will offer selected start-up companies up to $30,000 in pre-seed funding, the advice and guidance from a team of hand-selected business advisors and “gurus”, counsel and services from leading law firms and accounting firms to form their companies, and a rostrum of nationally recognized speakers to provide insight into launching great companies. DreamIt Companies will also have the opportunity (if they want) to work with fulltime C-level business strategists.
DreamIt appears to differentiate itself from YC & TS in the fact that not only can people with ideas apply (what they call innovators) but also individuals with strong business/marketing or other non-technical skills (strategists).
From the DreamIt website:
1) Strategists - people with Rock Star business talent (e.g., operations, sales, marketing, business development, finance) who want to work with Innovators and build a great company; and
2) Innovators - people with technical talent and a great idea who want to start a company.
The “innovators” accepted by DreamIt then have the option of teaming up with the accepted “strategists” to help out with the business side of the fledgling company.
They’ve also assembled a pretty impressive list of program sponsors, mentors and partners including various Venture Capital firms, executives from a variety of industries and a good sized group of lawyers and accounting types. Check out the full list here.
Applications for this year’s program were close back in March, so if you’re looking to apply you will have to site tight for a while.
As far as I am able to tell from their website, they don’t appear to be publishing the companies they’ve accepted and funded. However, Yasmine Mustafa, in a blog post about the program, writes that Funding Day (the day the companies present to VCs/Angels) is tentatively scheduled for September 4th, 2008.
Check out Alex’s recent post about his idea for a similar program in Dallas. Be sure to leave comments with your thoughts and ideas!
