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Beirut, March 15, 2017 – Speed@BDD officially launched its fourth acceleration program, on Tuesday March 14, 2017, at Junkyard, Mar Mikhael, in the presence of investors, key startup ecosystem players, and media representatives.
The launch event revealed the nine selected startups joining Cycle IV of Speed@BDD’s 3-month acceleration program:
- Bidappeal is a new auction platform that will change how people experience buying the latest fashion and high-tech products online. Each auction starts at a specific time and only lasts 15 minutes. Users simply buy a ticket to join the auction, reserve a seat, and place their bids. The highest bidder wins and purchases the product at their chosen price.
- Fig is a mobile and web platform designed for the digital shoppers to enhance their physical shopping experience. With Fig, shoppers browse inventory of physical shops online, search products, and create wish-lists. The platform also helps retailers become better at brick and mortar by providing them with currently inaccessible user data.
- Groovy Antoid is a game development studio dedicated to creating fun games with simple mechanics and quirky likable characters, each with their own unique stories, rich worlds, and strong IP potential.
- Harold is a digital broadcasting solution that allows users to publish their personal life announcements and classified ads on multiple channels (digital or printed press; ad space; blogs; websites and social networks). Harold optimizes content delivery to reach maximum visibility with desired audiences.
- Neotic is an artificial intelligence platform that offers crowd-sourcing analysis of the stock markets. It allows traders with no programming skills to leverage the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence in their daily tasks. The platform generates live-tested portfolios that are valuable for financial institutions, stock traders, and students of finance.
- From big room electro to seedy backroom techno, Rave is the world’s first online Electronic Dance Music (EDM) community. Rave lets users instantly rate, rank, and share anything EDM and empowers them to instantly, and effectively, discover the latest trends in the EDM world; from legendary producers all the way through to the hottest new DJs, Clubs, Festivals, Events, Tracks/Albums, and Live Performances.
- Smart Interactive Breadboard (SIB) is a hardware and software solution that manages and organizes how robotics and electronics classes are taught in universities and schools. With SIB, students will have a smart board that helps them connect electronic components together. The smart board will be connected to a software that displays a virtual view of the board, alerts students of errors in the circuit, and provides them with a chatbot that answers electronics-related questions. Instructors will also have a dashboard that allows them to monitor students’ progress.
- The Living Book is a cloud production environment and a multi-store publishing platform that enables users with ideas to create, publish, and sell personalized printed and digital interactive books for children.
- Van Ahmar is a game development studio founded by fanatic gamers! We create mobile casual games with a unique visual style, creative game mechanics, and a lot of hidden in-game features with one universal condition: every single game we produce must push its players to experience at least one extreme aspect of the emotional human construct.
Quick facts about Cycle IV:
- 6 founders from 3 teams have moved to Lebanon for the acceleration program
- The average age of founders is 28.5
- Two teams are actually gaming studios
The fourth acceleration cycle will conclude in June and will be followed by a Demo Day event around mid-July.