The Ethereum Foundation, Amazon, Fidelity, and Deloitte among 20 other notable companies have partnered up to launch a blockchain accelerator envisioned by IDEO CoLab Ventures, an arm of design studio IDEO.
Dubbed the Startup Studio, the program will help blockchain entrepreneurs launch their blockchain startups as well as mentor them. The program is scheduled to officially start this month and so far a few notable names in the crypto space have attended the workshops.
Crypto lender Dharma, decentralized protocol 0x, crypto derivatives exchange dYdX, Fairmint, UMA, Alto, Braintrust and Compound are among the few companies that have benefited from IDEO CoLab’s initiatives thus far.
“I really did love the IDEO people,” said CEO of UMA Hart Lambur. It’s seriously valuable for folks like me to get to spend time with design folks like that and to learn about their process. I knew user testing was valuable but hadn’t really experienced it before.”
According to Ian Lee, CoLab Ventures’ managing director, they have used the platform to help entrepreneurs to validate or invalidate new product concepts, design product UX/UI, and find their first launch customers. As a result,
“we’re excited by the impact these programs have made thus far and can’t wait to help more entrepreneurs and startups in the months ahead,” Lee said.
So far the program’s launch partners include Amazon, Atrium, Avanta Ventures, Blockchain at Berkeley, Brex, CoinList, CSAA Insurance Group, Deloitte, Electric Capital, Ethereum Foundation and ETH Global, Fidelity, GS Group, Hanwha, Messari, NEAR Protocol, Oasis Labs, Perkins Coie, she256, Stellar Foundation, Silicon Valley Bank, TQ Tezos with more expected to be added in the future according to a release published on Thursday. Messari, a blockchain analytics firm on the list on partners is actually a beneficiary of the IDEO CoLab Ventures.
Several of these partners are leaders in their industries that will expectedly help these blockchain entrepreneurs in complementary ways.
For instance, Amazon will be helping these entrepreneurs in building and deploying their solutions atop the Amazon Web Services infrastructure.
Deloitte, one of the top four global accounting firms will be contributing resources from the accounting, tax and structuring perspective.
While Fidelity, a leader in the financial services sector, through its center for applied technology will help these startups explore, accelerate, test, as well as partner on “compelling new opportunities” in the financial services space according to Lee.
Applications for both partnerships as well as blockchain startup spots are currently ongoing on the IDEO CoLab’s Startup Studio website.
