Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs Accelerator, powered by Techstars Class of 2021
Aug 16, 2021
By KJ Singh, Managing Director of the Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs Accelerator, powered by Techstars
Today marks the start of the 2021 Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs Accelerator, powered by Techstars. This is the fourth year that we are running the accelerator in partnership with Comcast NBCUniversal. The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to operate last year’s program completely virtually and prevented us from physically visiting founders around the world during our 2021 multi-city sourcing tour. Even with these constraints, we received applications from over 40 countries and ultimately selected a group of global founders that hail from the UK, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Israel and cities in the US including Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles.
The upcoming class is one of our most internationally diverse. More than a third (36%) of selected companies are led by at least one founder who self-identifies as a person of color or racial/ethnic minority in their home country while more than a third (36%) are led by a woman or gender diverse founder.
We had a very competitive application pool and selecting these 11 companies was extremely difficult. The companies joining us in this year’s class are helping solve many of the issues highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic - from tools enabling the future of work, to technology fostering more immersive connection between loved ones no matter where they live. These companies will help guide us through the re-opening of the world.
I want to thank all of our mentors - both Techstars and Comcast NBCUniversal- who provided insight, time, and feedback throughout the selection process. Additionally, I’d like to thank the Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs team for their continued support and commitment to collaboration, diversity and innovation. We will be sharing more about each company in the weeks leading up to our Demo Day on November 4th, but for now please join us in welcoming the Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs Accelerator, powered by Techstars Class of 2021!
Employee Cycle
Employee Cycle automates the HR reporting and analytics process by transforming disconnected employee data from multiple HR systems into one centralized, real-time, actionable and shareable HR dashboard.
Hollo
Hollo is an AI enabled talent experience platform that helps HR teams pre-qualify candidates for roles and helps resurface past applicants for future jobs that are a better match while making the communication more efficient.
Holodia
Holodia’s platform, HOLOFIT, is an immersive, hardware agnostic, connected FitTech platform that merges gaming and fitness leading to increased user engagement and physical activity.
HUSSLUP
HUSSLUP is a networked marketplace of individuals in the creative industry making discovery easier via personal profiles, verified credits and encrypted creative samples to increase diverse hiring.
LootLocker
LootLocker is a game backend as a service that unlocks cross-platform services for game development teams, saving development time and money.
Nagish
Nagish’s mobile app allows people who are deaf or hard of hearing to communicate via phone by converting speech-to-text and text-to-speech faster and more accurately than ever before.
Paco
Paco is an intelligent workflow assistant that helps teams eliminate distractions, capture to-dos and tasks from multiple communication channels allowing employees to focus on their work.
Peek
Peek is a social reading app that creates a multiplayer reading experience, allowing users to purchase books, discuss in text, engage with authors, and interact with other readers in real time.
Sidewalk
Sidewalk connects communities of business operators to give them access to modern property and liability insurance at a significantly lower cost than other insurance providers.
Think Confluent
Think Confluent is an AI assistant that analyzes free form text feedback from employees to provide individualized action plans for employees and actionable insights for managers to increase team satisfaction.
https://www.thinkconfluent.com
Zoog
Zoog is an asynchronous communication platform that allows users to take any children's book and bring it to life using modern AR, ML and advanced animation capabilities.
