Developer Report: Speeding Toward Startup Success?

Most fledgling companies, especially software developers and other tech startups, can benefit from outside assistance in order to forge a speedy path to success. They need money and access to expensive equipment in order to build their products and advice from successful entrepreneurs and peers alike to grow quickly.

Increasingly, tech startups and other new businesses are looking to startup accelerators for these resources, and it isn’t too hard to see why. The number of accelerator programs around the U.S. has increased more than tenfold in the last year, and data indicates that accelerators have raised more than $20 billion in funding since 2005.

PYMNTS recently caught up with Joe Munk, the program manager of the Portland State University Startup Accelerator in Oregon, to discuss small business accelerators, the benefits of collaboration and what he sees ahead for startup success.

Here’s a preview:

Munk recalled a wearables firm that had been through the Portland State accelerator program two years ago, called ATBM. The company, which produced wearable technology to help athletes on the United States Olympic Diving Team train for the 2016 Olympics in Brazil, collaborated with MotioSens, a tech firm with which it shared a lab and office space at the Portland accelerator.

The two companies worked together on gait analysis, collecting and analyzing biometric data to assess human body performance. The pair of local college professors that started MotioSens shared their experience building a gait analysis system for seniors to track whether they had fallen while living at home with ABTM and helped them build their own gait analysis products, Munk said.

“Gait analysis is a great indicator of health. If your gait shortens or there’s a big change in your gait, that’s a good indicator that something is wrong,” Munk said. “Both of these companies are monitoring gait in different ways and for different reasons, but they were both able to work together and use similar technology to help the other solve problems as well.”

Around the Developer world

As more consumers and businesses adopt mobile wallets, app developers from across the space are looking for new ways to offer payments via smartphones and tablets.

For example, Meter Feeder recently debuted a new app that allows drivers to pay parking meters via their smartphones in five communities in the U.S. Meanwhile, electronics manufacturer LG and Paymentwall recently partnered to bring payments to the company’s line of smart TV apps. The move is designed to help developers monetize their products and sell to a wider audience.

Not everyone is excited by the current state of mobile payment apps, however. John Collison, the cofounder of Stripe, called mobile banking and payment apps “the standard go-to paradigm for bad app design,” ahead of a recent Salesforce conference.

The latest Developer Tracker features the most recent news and analysis, as well as 155 providers, including 10 additions to the directory.

To download the November edition of the PYMNTS.com Developer Tracker, click the button below…

About The Tracker

The PYMNTS.com Developer Tracker, powered by Vantiv, provides the payments ecosystem with a view into how software developers are using new technologies to create innovative business opportunities and enable merchants to optimize the ways in which they engage with shoppers today. The developer community within the tracker is separated into three categories: Shopping and Payments, Operations and Marketing.