500 Global (previously 500 Startups) is an early-stage

venture fund Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which hav ...

and

seed accelerator Startup accelerators, also known as seed accelerators, are fixed-term, cohort-based programs, that include mentorship and educational components and culminate in a public pitch event or demo day. While traditional business incubators are often g ...

founded in 2010 by

Dave McClure David "Dave" McClure is an entrepreneur and angel investor based in the San Francisco Bay Area, who founded the business accelerator 500 Startups (now 500 Global), serving as CEO until his resignation in 2017. He founded Practical Venture Capita ...

and Christine Tsai. The fund admitted a first "class" of twelve startups to its incubator office in

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is the ...

in February, 2011. They expanded to a second class of 21 in June 2011 and a third class of 34 in October 2011.

History

In 2012, 500 Startups acquired Mexican.VC, an accelerator in

Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...

, expecting to ramp up its investment in Mexico substantially. Through its investment in Alta Ventures, 500 Startups planned have better access to deal-flow in this region. 500 Startups LATAM is directed by Santiago Zavala and have startups like Platzi in its portfolio. As of February 2021, 500 Startups had invested in over 2,400 companies including Eat App,

IDreamBooks iDreamBooks.com was a book "discoverability" website, structured as a book review aggregator. It was founded in San Francisco by Rahul Simha, Vish Chapalamadugu and Mohit Aggarwal in July 2012. The site is inspired by the film review aggregator ...

Little Eye Labs Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.) is a technology company that has acquired 91 other companies, including WhatsApp. The WhatsApp acquisition closed at a steep $16 billion; more than $40 per user of the platform. Meta also purchased the def ...

, myGengo, Cypheme,

Cucumbertown Cucumbertown was a food blogging platform. Based out of Palo Alto, California, it was founded by Cherian Thomas, Chris Luscher, Arun Prabhakar and Dan Hauk. It was acquired by Japanese recipe network Cookpad in June 2015. The platform shut down ...

, Visual.ly,

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Udemy Udemy, Inc. is a global destination for teaching and learning online. It was founded in May 2010 by Eren Bali, Gagan Biyani, and Oktay Caglar. As of November 2022, the platform has more than 57 million students, 213,000 courses, and 74,000 ins ...

, RidePal and Aircall. As of August 2015, more than 20% of the companies had participated in other incubators, 20–30% were international, and over 60 had been acquired. As of 2015, some of the firm's active companies were

Credit Karma Credit Karma is an American multinational personal finance company founded in 2007, which has been a brand of Intuit since December 2020. It is best known as a free credit and financial management platform, but its features also include monitor ...

Twilio Twilio () is an American company based in San Francisco, California, which provides programmable communication tools for making and receiving phone calls, sending and receiving text messages, and performing other communication functions using i ...

GrabTaxi Grab Holdings Inc., commonly known as Grab, is a Singaporean multinational technology company. It is the developer of the ''Grab'' super-app, which provides users with transportation, food delivery and digital payments services via a mobile ap ...

, and Talkdesk. The exits include $403M acquisition of

MakerBot MakerBot Industries, LLC is an American desktop 3D printer manufacturer company headquartered in New York City. It was founded in January 2009 by Bre Pettis, Adam Mayer, and Zach "Hoeken" Smith to build on the early progress of the RepRap Proje ...

Stratasys Stratasys, Ltd. is an American-Israeli manufacturer of 3D printers, software, and materials for polymer additive manufacturing as well as 3D-printed parts on-demand. The company is incorporated in Israel. Engineers use Stratasys systems to model c ...

, $350M acquisition of

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Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

, $200M acquisition of Viki by

Rakuten () is a Japanese technology conglomerate based in Tokyo, founded by Hiroshi Mikitani in 1997. Centered around Rakuten Ichiba, its businesses include financial services utilizing financial technology, as well as digital content and communicati ...

, and $117M acquisition of

Simple Simple or SIMPLE may refer to: *Simplicity, the state or quality of being simple Arts and entertainment * ''Simple'' (album), by Andy Yorke, 2008, and its title track * "Simple" (Florida Georgia Line song), 2018 * "Simple", a song by Johnn ...

BBVA Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, S.A. (), better known by its initialism BBVA, is a Spanish multinational financial services company based in Madrid and Bilbao, Spain. It is one of the largest financial institutions in the world, and is present ...

. 500 Startups has investment partners and advisors from all over the world, e.g. Jassim Alseddiqi (United Arab Emirates), Enis Hulli (Turkey), Binh Tran (Vietnam), and Tilo Bonow (Germany). A famous partner, Monique Woodard from Black Founders, left the early-stage venture fund in 2018. 500 Startups has locations in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...

Dubai Dubai (, ; ar, دبي, translit=Dubayy, , ) is the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the capital of the Emirate of Dubai, the most populated of the 7 emirates of the United Arab Emirates.The Government and Politics of ...

Bahrain Bahrain ( ; ; ar, البحرين, al-Bahrayn, locally ), officially the Kingdom of Bahrain, ' is an island country in Western Asia. It is situated on the Persian Gulf, and comprises a small archipelago made up of 50 natural islands and an ...

Istanbul Istanbul ( , ; tr, İstanbul ), formerly known as Constantinople ( grc-gre, Κωνσταντινούπολις; la, Constantinopolis), is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, serving as the country's economic, ...

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) as stated iArticle 103 ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

Bangkok Bangkok, officially known in Thai language, Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estima ...

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, and

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. In 2015, they announced they would be starting a three-month growth program in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, UK as well as a pre-accelerator in

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. In July 2017, co-founder Dave McClure resigned as general partner of all funds and entities managed by 500 Startups amid allegations of sexual harassment. In March 2018, 500 Startups announced that it chose

Downtown Miami Downtown Miami is the urban city center of Miami, Florida. The city's greater downtown region consists of the Central Business District, Brickell, the Historic District, Government Center, the Arts & Entertainment District, and Park West. It ...

as its first East Coast U.S. outpost. In July 2019, Courtney Powell was named Chief Operating Officer of the firm. In November 2020, 500 Startups formed a two-year partnership with Khmer Enterprise, a unit under the Cambodian Ministry of Economy and Finance. Through the Angkor 500 initiative, the firms will bring together founders throughout Cambodia to form teams and technology companies. In September 2021, 500 Startups announced their rebranding to 500 Global, and the closing of a $140M global flagship fund – the firm’s largest fund to date–bringing assets under management to $1.8B. The firm has stated it is expanding its investment strategy beyond the accelerator and seed stage. In October 2021, 500 Global had their first fully virtual accelerator class.

References

{{US Business Incubators 01 Business incubators of the United States Investment promotion agencies Startup accelerators Venture capital firms of the United States Financial services companies based in California Companies based in Mountain View, California Financial services companies established in 2010 2010 establishments in California