Tumml accelerator looks to fund, nurture 'urban startups'

Clara Brenner, left, and Julie Lein are accepting applications for Tumml, a San Francisco accelerator program aimed at helping startups that focus on consumers in cities.

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

A new accelerator has launched in the Bay Area, hoping to help startups that are developing consumer-facing products and services that tackle problems unique to cities.
Tumml is led by a pair of recent graduates from the Sloan School at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Clara Brenner and Julie Lein.
The young women hatched their idea based on a paper they did while at MIT that found that startups that focus on serving the needs of urban consumers are less than half as likely to get seed funding than other new businesses seeking early stage money.
About a third of entrepreneurs in the study that focused on traditional markets got seed funds while only about 15 percent of "urban impact entrepreneurs" got funds.
"This comes at a time when the cities themselves are having a hard time providing the kinds of activities that their residents need," Brenner told me. "The name of the company comes from a Yiddish word for shaking things up, which is what we hope to do."
The types of businesses that they hope to help spur are beginning to get traction, such as Airbnb for home sharing and Lyft for ride sharing.
But Brenner and Lein say that even more can be done through Tumml.
"There are a lot of people trying this out where they live," she said. "But the real success will be when they break out of their home town."
Tumml has set up shop in San Francisco and is accepting applications from founders anywhere in the country who are focused on solving urban problems. Deadline to apply for one of the 10 slots in the first session is April 30.
Those that get into the four-month program will get $30,000 in free goods and services, which includes desk space and customized education, along with legal services and access to mentors and support staff.

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Cromwell Schubarth is the Senior Technology Reporter at the Business Journal. His phone number is 408.299.1823.

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