AccelerateBaltimore: 6 startups chosen for Emerging Technology Center’s 2013 accelerator

Six startups will be working from the Emerging Technology Center in Canton beginning Feb. 4, when the second year of the twelve-week-long AccelerateBaltimore program commences.

The six startups in the AccelerateBaltimore 2013 class (from the ETC press release):

• Allovue: integrated technology solution helping school leaders allocate budgets, track expenses and analyze the impact of spending
• Artichoke Client Management Solutions: end-to-end client management and billing solution built for mobile from the ground up for mobile for the sole proprietor
• BusyGrad: web-based tool designed for graduate students to better manage their busy social and school life [Read Technically Baltimore’s story here.]
• PrintLess Plans: develops innovative mobile applications, drivers, and hardware for large format displays driven wirelessly by mobile devices
• Rehabtics: online rehabilitation system for patients to follow and conduct rehabilitation training in engaging virtual environments. [ETC president and executive director Deb Tillett said the “real value is the back-end” of Rehabtics, where physicians can track patients’ rehabilitation status.]
• SurveySnap: Software-as-a-Service offering with mobile app for design professionals, architects, or interior designers. The app enables designers to take photos of a building’s interior, aggregate the photos, and then digitize the building’s layout. [SurveySnap presented at August’s Baltimore TechBreakfast.]

Unlike the 2012 AccelerateBaltimore program — the accelerator’s inaugural year, when only four startups of those that applied were accepted — there was no provision this year requiring startups applying to or joining AccelerateBaltimore to be from Baltimore or to remain in the city once their time at the accelerator ends.
Although that doesn’t worry Deb Tillett, president and executive director of the ETC. “We’re very certain once companies come here, they’ll want to stay,” she said. All six startups, however, are Baltimore-based.
Of the six startups joining the program next month, two are headed by minority founders, and another two are headed by women. Each startup will receive $25,000 in seed funding, provided by the Abell Foundation, free office space at the ETC and access to a team of 14 mentors chosen specifically for this year’s program.
More than 120 startups applied for entrance into the AccelerateBaltimore program — Tillett said the ETC pushed the application deadline back just one time, from late November to Dec. 21 — and a group of 15 finalists was chosen in early January. Some of the startups were so impressive, Tillett said, that the ETC is offering several of the finalists who didn’t make the final cut free, ETC affiliate services “to keep them [in Baltimore].”