IOTA Foundation announces startup fund

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The IOTA Foundation, which is a non-profit foundation focused on distributed ledger technology (DLT) and permission-less ecosystem development, today announced a partnership with Liverpool-based cofoundery, Nova. Under this collaboration, the two companies will work together to increase the number of successful start-ups utilizing the next generation of distributed ledger technology.

The programme will enable aspiring tech entrepreneurs, through funding and mentorship, to develop innovative new business models using IOTA technology. The partnership programme with Nova is now open for applications from entrepreneurs.

The partnership aims to prevent the main reasons for start-up failure and ensure that the full potential of distributed ledger technology can be realized. Focusing on the very early stage of start-up development, IOTA will initiate a seed fund to would-be entrepreneurs harnessing the Tangle, its distributed ledger technology. Alongside this investment fund, entrepreneurs will also have access to an IOTA test lab to build and test their solutions, Nova’s mentoring programme, and its expert tech start-up team consisting of 20+ start-up consultants and a full range of digital disciplines.

Nova claims that it will bring its expertise in partnering with aspiring entrepreneurs to co-found tech start-ups, which helps to eliminate many of the risks involved in starting a business. In addition to providing guidance across all areas of business, from market research to product development, Nova also provides the entrepreneur with a multi-disciplined team for the first year of the partnership. To date, Nova has co-founded over 80 tech startups. Over 50% of these are still in existence after three years, compared to the average startup three-year survival rate of just 10%.

Speaking to CoinGeek, David Sønstebø, co-founder and co-chair at IOTA, said:

“The Tangle network overcomes many of the limitations and inefficiencies of blockchain technology, and as such, has huge potential to transform machine to machine transactions that are at the core of IoT. Our partnership with Nova is about enabling that innovation, by helping initial ideas come to fruition in the form of viable, scalable and sustainable business models.”

Andrew Dean, Head of Partnerships at Nova, added:

“There are many hurdles to successfully launching a start-up, and many of the most common mistakes occur very early on in the process. The fact that 90% of start-ups fail means that there are loads of brilliant business ideas out there that simply never materialise into anything meaningful, and a lot of talent and ambition is wasted.”

Of course, entrepreneurs and small enterprises who have use cases, and prefer to work on the real Bitcoin, can also turn to Bitcoin SV (BSV). Calvin Ayre, Founder of CoinGeek, recently put out an offer to back any business plan that used the BSV blockchain, as long as it gets his approval and the support of the nChain development team.

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