Earlier this month, MassChallenge was thrilled to be one of the accelerators invited to attend Microsoft’s Build Conference in San Francisco, CA. While there were many exciting parts of the multi-day event, the highlight of our visit was spending time with Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella and a few other startup accelerators at an intimate round-table session.
Satya took a keen interest in making sure Microsoft was doing all they could to support startups and accelerators. One comment that stood out during the session was from a colleague at TechStars, who noted how their conversations with the company have shifted from focusing on selling software to truly selling solutions to startups. MassChallenge has also seen this shift and continued to be pleased with our partnership.
MassChallenge stood out among other accelerators due to our equity-free, non-profit model as well as our focus on global expansion. We were the only accelerator thinking globally and are excited to have Microsoft as an early supportive partner in 5 countries today, and hopefully 12 countries by 2020. The mission at MassChallenge–to do all we can to help startups win if it’s humanly possible–aligns with Microsoft’s mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
We are excited to continue our partnership with Microsoft and are thankful for the opportunity to attend //build!