Nike and TechStars have announced the winners of its first Nike+ Accelerator program. Select startups are awarded the opportunity to enter a three-month program at a Nike space in Portland, Oregon to build products aimed at helping people to lead more active lives using the Nike+ and NikeFuel platforms.
Out of hundreds of applicants, Nike selected 10 new companies, including startups focused on everything from health and wellness to digital sports coaching. The companies each will receive $20,000 in funding and mentorship from Nike leaders such as Stefan Olander, Nike’s Vice President of Digital, and other industry leaders including TechStars founder and CEO David Cohen, Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai, Birchbox co-founder Katia Beauchamp, Mayfield Fund Managing Director Tim Chang, and Tim Ferriss, author of the best-selling book, The 4-Hour Workweek.
“We recently celebrated the first year of NikeFuel, and the Accelerator program is a natural next step to broaden and enhance the Nike+ ecosystem — allowing Nike to offer richer experiences to athletes of all levels,” said Olander.
One of the winners, FitDeck, provides digital decks of exercise playing cards that deliver ever-changing workouts for fitness and sports. Another victor, Chroma Games, is an indie game studio that creates virtual workouts tied to real-world activity. The other winners include GoRecess, CoachBase, GoFitCause.com, HighFive, Sprout At Work, GeoPalz, Incomparable Things and RecBob.
The program will culminate in a demo day, where the companies will be able to pitch angel investors, VCs and Nike executives. The first Nike+ Accelerator demo day will take place in mid-June, with one day spent in Silicon Valley and another at Nike’s Beaverton, Oregon headquarters.
Earlier this week, Nike announced a partnership with Swiss company bluesign technologies to broaden the supply of sustainable materials and chemistries for use in Nike products. The partnership allows access to bluesign’s industry-leading assessment tools to Nike’s materials suppliers at an unprecedented scale and pace.
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Founder, Hower Impact
Mike Hower is the founder of Hower Impact — a boutique consultancy delivering strategic communication advisory and support for corporate sustainability, ESG and climate tech.
Published Mar 20, 2013 4pm EDT / 1pm PDT / 8pm GMT / 9pm CET