For the last year and a half, GSD Labs, a mentor-driven 15-week accelerator program led by Gary Fowler and Derek Distenfield, has been executing a monumental mission: to build a world without borders for startups to #GoGlobal.
Since its inception at the close of 2020, they have helped bold, resilient entrepreneurs representing 50+ global startups leave their mark on Silicon Valley. From advisor matching, strategic partnerships, digital marketing as well as sales hacks, press coverage, and more, GSD Labs helps young companies build a foundation for success, all leading up to the main event - a demo day event with invite-only investors.
“Our roots don’t come from venture capital, but from venture building. We instill the right demeanor and the right process to help build a bridge for startups to #GoGlobal.” - Derek Distenfield, COO of GSD Venture Studios.
With a 6th cohort wrapping up, the GSD Labs team couldn’t be more proud of the hard work and dedication these companies put in. Hailing from countries all over the world including Africa, Switzerland, Poland, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Singapore, India, the UK, and Hungary. Read on to learn what these fascinating companies are bringing to the global market.
Kicking things off in the metaverse with an impressive 360K global followers, Cosmiq Universe is a community founded by Annika Kessel bringing universal values of love, inclusion, and humility via digital avatar storytelling, AR, blockchain, NFTs, gaming and its own digital currency called Cosmiq Love which is launching this year. With 20+ partnerships including the United Nations, they are raising $1.3 million.
”The outdoor recreation and adventure sports industry needs a major upgrade,” says Natnael Tsegai, the founder of Frostwolf. With an experienced team in aerospace and engineering, they’ve created their own category of extreme sports with the first commercially available hoverboard called the P1 Hovercraft. Their goal is to take advantage of the $200 billion outdoor recreation market with three revenue streams covering live events, theme parks, and consumer sales. Frostwolf is seeking 300K for rapid prototyping, marketing, partnerships, and more.
Based in the UK, Novus Guard is a workforce safety SaaS platform for enterprise businesses. Designed for employees who work alone such as security guards and delivery drivers, particularly in hazardous environments, Novusguard is a smartphone app that alerts first responders to emergencies without the need for wifi or an internet connection. Growing rapidly, they’ve amassed 10K paid users and $2.5 million in 2021 and are raising $7 million.
Settling trades in real time, UStocktrade is a platform for retail investors allowing them to instantly re-invest their proceeds from sales without brokers. Their P2P platform supports equity and will soon add options for cryptocurrency and other asset classes. With an impressive accomplishment of users trading 90 million shares a day in less than six months and a projected $44 billion in revenue in the next 5 years, UStocktrade is raising $25 million.
“This sixth cohort of impressive startups are bringing cutting-edge innovation to the global marketplace.” - Gary Fowler, CEO of GSD Venture Studios
Other participants in the sixth cohort include CanPro, a unique mobile app operating as an ‘ecosystem as a service’ with digital ambassadors, a CMS, analytics, and built-in virality designed to drive the adoption of online services in rural parts of Africa raising $1 million to increase their user base and improve their technology and Zigyassa, a SaaS platform that helps dev-ops teams optimize videos with deep learning on both live and pre-recorded streams. The platform reduces storage space and streaming costs by 40% while high-quality videos can be sent across poor network connections with low latency without any additional hardware.
Investors also got to hear from startups in EdTech, MedTech, MaaS (mobility as a service), and the metaverse such as tokenized education by Fun1st, Glaze Prosthetics, Mileus, holistic infertility management by Truviva, and an experiential approach to virtual offices with Virtual Console.
As another dynamic group of companies is ready to take flight, it will be a busy few weeks as investors determine who they’d like to help with development, expansion, and growth to #GoGlobal.
You can watch Cohort 6 Demo Day in its entirety here. Please contact Derek Distenfield of GSD Labs (derek@gsdvs.com) if you are interested in investing in any of these promising companies.