Arch Grants Churns Out Accelerator Winners

Arch Grant companies keep accelerating: Tallyfy graduates from 500 Startups with $100K, as does Invisible Industries, with $50k from Capital Innovators.

Amit Kothari has achieved the status of badass. The technology entrepreneur steps out of a seminar in Silicon Valley hosted by 500 Startups, a global venture capital seed fund and startup accelerator, to have a phone chatย with me about the recent windfall of funding heโ€™s received for his startup, Tallyfy, a St. Louis-based business process improvement software company and 2014 Arch Grants recipient.

Amit Kothari of Tallyfy.

The badass achievement is not something Kothari claims (at least not outwardly) โ€“ it is the moniker that 500 Startups bestows upon each of its companies. Tallyfy joined the ranks of the 500 Startups just months ago and was awarded $100,000 in exchange for five percent of the company, and Kothari is now taking part in the four-month accelerator program and learning from top founders of startups like Pinterest and Dropbox.

โ€œ500 Startups focuses on teaching you about growth from people who really, really know what how to grow a product or idea,โ€ says Kothari. โ€œThey teach analytics, inbound and outbound marketing strategies. Access to mentors like that is huge.โ€

Just a few days before our phone conversation, Kothari says he learned that Tallyfy will also receive $200,000 from Alchemist Accelerator, which funds startups that sell to large enterprise organizations. That funding will also be matched in kind by the Missouri Technology Corporation yielding a total of $400,000 in capital.

Kothari, a London-native entrepreneur standing in the heart of Silicon Valley, says little of this recent success would have happened had it not been for Arch Grants.

โ€œArch Grants helped to get us to the United States,โ€ says Kothari. โ€œThey were able to help us get our first big customers: Emerson and Purina. Truly, the Arch Grants program gave us the soft landing we needed โ€“ $50,000 with no strings attached is quite rare and exactly what we needed.โ€

So incredible is the impression left with Kothari from his experiences with Arch Grants and St. Louis that he claims Tallyfy will remain a St. Louis-based company for the foreseeable future. And this has held true even though he is receiving funding in other markets.

โ€œThe cost of living is six times less than Silicon Valley,โ€ says Kothari. โ€œAnd St. Louis is full of untapped talent. In Silicon Valley, everyone gets an offer, because the market is saturated with startupsโ€”all of whom are asking the same people for money.โ€

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Kyle Tabor, CEO and co-founder of Invisible Industries

Kyle Tabor, CEO and co-founder of Invisible Industries, a St. Louis-based company responsible for the mobile app sensation Invisible Girlfriend, echoes much of Kothariโ€™s sentiments about the role Arch Grants played in gaining next-stage funding. The company, an Arch Grants recipient in 2015, recently received $50,000 from Capital Innovators, a St. Louis-based accelerator fund.

โ€œArch Grants helped us refine our pitch and introduced us to how the investor world works,โ€ says Tabor.

Tabor also says that the Arch Grants designation alone has been a door-opener for them, an incalculable value for startups.

โ€œThe stamp of Arch Grants means that more investors have accepted our meeting request and listened to what we have to say,โ€ says Tabor. โ€œI have also had audience with pipeline entrepreneurs that I otherwise would not have access to.โ€

Just earlier this week, the fresh crop of Arch Grants companies were announced. Take a look at this list to see who the next accelerator-funded startups from St. Louis will be.

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