Building on the success of the Startup Cloud Accelerator program it launched nearly two years ago, Oracle on Tuesday announced a new, virtual-style program designed to help later-stage startups scale quickly.
The new program, called Oracle Scaleup Ecosystem, “allows us to reach more global innovators and entrepreneurs, regardless of location,” says Reggie Bradford, senior vice president of Oracle’s Startup Ecosystem and Accelerator. The virtual nature of the program gives late-stage startups, particularly those that don’t require much hands-on education and training, access to Oracle Cloud products, as well as mentoring from a range of business and technology experts, without having to physically reside in one of the nine global sites of the existing Oracle Startup Cloud Accelerator program.
Oracle Scaleup Ecosystem is led by Jason Williamson, who previously helped launch private-equity ecosystem initiatives at Amazon Web Services.
Williamson’s team, which already is working with leading private-equity and venture-capital firms, will target high-growth companies across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas. In addition to offering credits and discounts for Oracle Cloud services, the program will also provide the startups with R&D, marketing, sales, and implementation assistance, as well as access to Oracle customers and partners.
North American Expansion
Oracle is also expanding its separate Startup Cloud Accelerator program to North America, opening its ninth residential location in Austin, Texas. Started in Bangalore, India, in April 2016, the program later added seven other cities worldwide: two more in India (Delhi and Mumbai); Bristol, England; Paris; Singapore; Tel Aviv, Israel; and São Paulo, Brazil.
“In 2017, we launched eight residential programs ahead of schedule and attracted almost 4,000 global startups for only 40 program slots—a clear indication of the tremendous demand,” Bradford says.
- Related: Try Oracle Cloud for free
One of the biggest benefits of Oracle Startup Cloud Accelerator is the access it gives select technology and technology-powered startups to Oracle’s more than 400,000 global customers, he says. In evaluating applicants, judges from Oracle and elsewhere score each company on the strength of its management team, its use of technology, and its market traction.
A Matter of Trust
Among the startups included in the 2017 launch of the Oracle Startup Cloud Accelerator residential programs in Tel Aviv and São Paulo were Toonimo, In Loco, Nexus Edge, Netshow.me, Runrun.it, NMIND, Bonobo.ai, Meta Networks, and Zoomin, companies whose founders were in New York to participate in a panel session at Oracle CloudWorld.
As panelists described their companies and how they’re using technology to scale, moderator Doug Henschen, a principal analyst at Constellation Research, noted that earning a new customer’s trust is among the most difficult challenges young companies face, as they lack a large base of existing reference customers.
Oracle Startup Cloud Accelerator helped In Loco, a Brazilian geolocation advertising technology startup, engage more strategically with large, enterprise customers.
“In the beginning, most of our customers came through ad agencies,” says co-founder and CEO Andre Ferraz. “The Oracle accelerator helped give us direct access to big brands.” The program also helped In Loco expand from Brazil to the US, where it recently opened offices in New York and San Francisco.
For São Paulo-based Netshow.me, its first entry into video production in 2013 focused narrowly on streaming live video of musical performances to help music companies sell concert tickets to fans. But with Twitter and Facebook fast encroaching on that turf, “we needed to grow our own community, and it was difficult to scale because we just didn’t have the revenue to compete,” says co-founder and CEO Daniel Arcoverde.
Netshow.me didn’t have any experience running a sales team, either. The company needed systems, pipeline analysts, customer service staff, and people to help manage inbound leads. “Oracle showed us its sales process models,” says Arcoverde. And even more importantly, “it trained us how to use them.”
- Related: Sign up for Oracle's SMB newsletter
Sasha Banks-Louie is a brand journalist for Oracle.
