Google for Startups, how can you benefit?
Google, through her products, connections and best practices wants to help startups start, grow and scale.
In a company blog post written by the Vice President, Google for startups – Lisa Gevelber, Google showed exactly how they believe they can help startups.
Google for Startups comes as a rename of Google for Entrepreneurs, with the aim of cutting down on the ambiguity that comes with the word "Entrepreneur" as opposed to "Startup".
"While our mission has always been to help people launch and grow tech startups, as you know, the word "entrepreneurs" refers to all kinds of business owners, not just tech founders.
That's why we’re changing our name from Google for Entrepreneurs to Google for Startups, better reflecting the community that we serve." – Email from Google Campus (London) to Benjamin Dada
Google for Entrepreneur which will now be called Google for Startups was launched in 2011. It took Google's resources to 50+ startup coworking spaces, and accelerators in 125 countries. Setting up six Campus locations — London, Madrid, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Tel Aviv and Warsaw, along the line.
Google for Startups would take over as the umbrella initiative for other Google initiatives targeted towards startups. Some of these initiatives include LaunchPad Accelerator, Cloud for Startups, Campus and Residency.
How can startups benefit?
This section outlines how startups can benefit from Google for Startups offering by breaking them into the different startup phases; New, Early-stage, and Growth-stage startups.
- New startup
Newly-launched app-based startups can make use of Start on Android to quickly test, iterate, optimize and launch their app on Google Play store. - Early-stage startups
Startups with an minimum-viable-product (with beta users, currently fine-tuning their go-to-market strategy) fall into this category. They can take advantage of Google Cloud for startups to get cloud credits and build out their infrastructure. - Growth-stage startups
Startups with some level of traction upon official launch like PiggyBankNG – an online savings platform in use in Nigeria. They can take advantage of Google's Launchpad Accelerator to get mentorship and equity-free support to grow and scale their business.
When startups are on the verge of scale and are looking towards expansion in terms of markets and partnerships, Google's Sand Hill program is set to provide high-touch product support and advise on partnership opportunities with Google.
The others are residence-based Google Startup programs which are skewed more towards the cities where they have physical Campuses. The programes are Google for Startups Campus AKA Campus (formerly called Google Campus) and Google for Startups residency.
Applications are currently open today for the first class of 2019, who will get personalized access to the best of Google’s resources along with their own dedicated workspace at Campus. Unfortunately, as at the time of writing this post there are no Google Campuses in sub-Saharan African. So startups from the region need not apply to that residency program.
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