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Business Incubator Series: John McIntyre, Citrix Startup Accelerator (Part 3)

Posted on Thursday, May 26th 2011

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Do you have any particular industry preference?

John: We’re very software focused. We have seen an applicant who has a hardware piece of the solution to help accelerate it, but for the most part, we’re just going to be focused on software.

Citrix is very much horizontally focused and infrastructure focused. We tend to look for solutions that span across industries and solve core issues for businesses.

However, in today’s world, as we all know, consumers are driving a lot of what is being done in information technology. That’s a big part of our efforts, too. We’re using smartphones, tablets and other devices that are designed for computers, which are really well done.

How do we bring those back into the enterprise and to the small business and use those technologies and make them more useful for business as well? We’re trying to span across business and consumer at this point.

Irina: What is the application process for your accelerator?

John: If you go to our site … last month we launched an online program to try to make entrepreneurs aware of our program globally. There’re concise instructions about how to apply for the program, what we’re looking for, what we’re not looking for.

If you hit the “Apply” button on our site, you’re sent directly to Angelsoft [an online platform] that many angels and seed investors use. That kicks off our application process.

We use our own technology to interview the applicants. We also use GoToMeeting. We can interview people anywhere in the world. I set up 10 meetings yesterday [May 16, 2011]. Over the weekend, we had a flood of applicants from around the world.

We’re setting up meetings with those folks to go through the first interview. Over the next few months, we’re going to select some finalists from the current batch.

We will bring them in to one of our innovation centers, either here or in Boston on the East Coast, Cambridge, UK, in Europe; Bangalore in India; and Sydney [Australia] in Asia Pacific.

Irina: Is it going to be a physical program?

John: It’s a hybrid. We’ve got our physical accelerator center here in Santa Clara. So, say you’re an entrepreneur from anywhere in the world outside of Silicon Valley. You don’t live here. You’ve set up your business somewhere else. We will work with those entrepreneurs individually to put a program together to try to determine what’s best for their businesses.

If it makes sense to move their businesses, we’ll work with them to do that. In many cases, it’s not critical that they move here. They may be doing development somewhere in the world where developers are just as good but less expensive. But they may need help in getting market traction here or, say, another mature market like Europe.

That’s where we can help them put a program together, reach into our contacts and people we know to help them get connected, from wherever they are in the world, to buyers, to potential partners.

Another big part of the program is follow-on investment. While some companies may be able to bootstrap and not need further funding, most technology companies do need further funding after a seed round.

We’re investing some hundreds of thousands of [dollars], and they have some other seed stage investors involved. A lot of companies will be looking for some millions after that in an A round. We’ll work closely with them to identify follow-on investors, typically venture capitalists, to help get them to that next stage after their seed stage.

Again, no matter where they are in the world, we’ll work with them to design a program. If they need to come here for awhile, maybe they’ll come here for two or three months. We’ll put a program together to support that.

Irina: When should companies apply to your accelerator?

John: Immediately. Unfortunately, as good as Citrix has been, we can do only a set number of investments. We’re actively engaging in selecting people we’re going to invest in. The sooner we get applicants in, the better. This is an ongoing program, though. It doesn’t have an end period.

But there’re only so many investments I can give at any point. I’m hoping to use my allotted funding by the time we get to this fall. We’re going to be doing an opening ceremony here in Santa Clara, probably in September. I’m hoping to have a good number of the companies I’m going to invest in for this year by September or October.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Business Incubator Series: John McIntyre, Citrix Startup Accelerator
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