Silicon Valley Bank and MasterCard have established Commerce.Innovated, an accelerator programme for startups. The four-month programme will be custom-designed for each of its four to six startups, in order to address key operational and technology challenges, working with ‘subject matter experts’ across the commerce space.
Selected, early stage companies need to meet the following criteria: innovative, commerce-focused solutions; pre-series A, seed round secured; live with beta product; path to revenue defined, and core team established. The first class begins in April and runs through July. Applications for the second class begin in June.
“This programme is consistent with our core mission, to increase the probability of our clients’ success,” said Bruce Wallace, chief operations officer of Silicon Valley Bank. “We want to provide focused operational knowledge and connections to help commerce start-ups overcome operational and infrastructure challenges, so we mobilised our team to create a program that will help them get their commerce platforms to market quickly.”
“Having run a start-up that partnered with MasterCard in the past, I know first-hand the very tangible value that can come from an opportunity like this. Start-ups can leverage the deep domain expertise that a company like MasterCard can share. In return, larger companies benefit from the experience of working and thinking like a start-up to help challenge the ‘usual’ way of doing things within an established organization,” said Garry Lyons, chief innovation officer for MasterCard.