Citrix Systems today announced upcoming opportunities for global entrepreneurial companies to contribute to the next wave of innovation for mobile workstyles via the Citrix Startup Accelerator, its Silicon Valley-based seed investment initiative. The IT landscape is in a period of dramatic change, shifting expectations of IT and computing capabilities and providing an opportunity for entrepreneurs to contribute their ideas. Startups have always challenged the norms and assumptions in computing and in business. As the exceptions of the PC Era – mobile users, personal devices, and wireless access – become the assumptions of the Cloud Era, staying close to new thinking is important to Citrix as it continues to help shape the future.
Focused on entrepreneur-led innovation, the Startup Accelerator provides seed investments to select startups from around the world, enabling them to benefit from the global Citrix presence, its entrepreneur-friendly environment, large customer base and seasoned go-to-market strategies to help further their ideas.
In the next two months, the Citrix Startup Accelerator is providing several opportunities at premier Silicon Valley events for entrepreneurs to present their business ideas to potentially secure funding:
- Startup.Synergy Challenge: Applications are now open to participate in the Citrix Startup.Synergy Challenge. Interested companies can apply between now and April to be in the running for the next round of investments by the Citrix Startup Accelerator. Three early finalist companies will be chosen to present live to a panel of judges on May 9 at Citrix Synergy in San Francisco. One company will be immediately offered a $100,000 investment from Citrix and inclusion in the 2012 Startup Accelerator class subject to the terms of the Startup Accelerator Program.
- DEMO Spring 2012: Produced by IDG Enterprise in conjunction with VentureBeat, the DEMO Spring 2012 conference, April 17-19 in Santa Clara, Calif., will focus on emerging technologies and new product innovations. The DEMO conferences have earned a reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow’s cutting-edge technologies, and have served as launch pad events for companies such as E*Trade, Palm, Salesforce and Tivo. Citrix will be a gold sponsor of the event and provide onsite opportunities for emerging startups to apply to the 2012 Startup Accelerator class and potentially secure up to $250,000 in funding.
- Startup.Synergy: This track at Citrix Synergy will provide insight into the incredible fluidity of mobile workstyles and the new demands placed on IT for the cloud services that empower them. It will provide an inside look at tomorrow’s multibillion tech companies, a framework to appreciate how quickly these companies are proliferating and showcase how the Citrix Startup Accelerator is building new bridges to this ecosystem. Startup.Synergy tickets provide entry to Citrix CEO Mark Templeton’s Synergy Opening Keynote presentation at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, May 9, with lunch in the Solutions Expo at 12:30 p.m., followed by the Startup.Synergy afternoon track. To purchase your One Day Pass ($295), please visit the Synergy registration page.
Since launching the program in 2011, Citrix Startup Accelerator has announced investments in 11 innovative companies that are poised to change the face of cloud, mobile, virtualization, networking and collaboration technologies. The program expects to announce several more new investments in 2012 as a result of this year’s application process.