Transfercar selected for Silicon Valley accelerator — Exporter Magazine

Transfercar, the company that enables travellers to book free rental cars, is among a small group of startups to be selected for one of the world’s leading accelerator programmes run by 500 Startups, a venture capital seed fund & startup incubator based in the heart of the Silicon Valley in California.

Auckland-based Transfercar is one of only 30 companies chosen from thousands of applicants worldwide to take part in the prestigious 4-month programme, and the first New Zealand company to get this honour since the incubator was founded in 2011.

Transfercar CTO Espen Grimstad says selection for the programme, which begins on 20 April 2015, will give the company a fantastic opportunity to learn from some of the world’s best serial entrepreneurs and to pitch to Silicon Valley investors. “This is huge for us. We are going to learn from the impressive 500 mentor network which includes key managers from Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter and Paypal to name a few. It is also going to be a rush. With so much knowledge being passed on to us every day, we’ll be going through a startup MBA in just four months.”

Along with the invitation into the accelerator programme, Transfercar also receives a capital injection of US$100,000 from 500 Startups with the expectation to raise further funds after the programme is completed.