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Aug 29, 2013, 11:20am PDT

New Plug and Play accelerator shops for hot retail startups

Candace Denton, Plug and Play Tech Center's head of corporate partnerships, says the incubator is launching a new retail startup accelerator next month.

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Cromwell Schubarth: Senior Technology Reporter- Silicon Valley Business Journal; Email | Twitter | Google+

Plug and Play Tech Center is launching a new accelerator in September aimed at helping to build the next hot retail startup.
"There's a huge need for innovation in the retail space and we plan to help make that happen," Candace Denton, Plug and Play's vice president of corporate partnerships, told me.
The idea came during a conversation between Denton and Saeed Amidi, Plug and Play's founder and CEO.
"We were talking about what the next accelerator program might be and realized that we already had about 20 portfolio companies that are in the retail space," Denton told me. "It is a natural extension of what we are already doing."
Among the 20 Plug and Play portfolio companies that will pitch at the launch event on Sept. 12 is Aisle411, a St. Louis company led by co-founder and CEO Nathan Pettyjohn with an app that helps shoppers find exactly which shelf to find what they are looking for.
Another is San Jose machine learning startup Skytree, led by CEO Martin Hack, whose predictive analytic applications can help retailers figure out what people will want to buy.
A third is Retailigence, led by CEO Jeremy Geiger, which I profiled in The Pitch a few years ago. Its technology helps retailers get their products in front of mobile device users.
"There are a lot of different types of startups that we believe are in the retail space, even if it doesn't appear like they are on the surface," Denton told me.
Plug and Play said there will be representatives from 50 global retailers, 20 e-commerce sites along with retail technology enablers at its kickoff event that will be co-hosted by: Mike Calbert, head of the retail industry team with KKR Private Equity.