Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Start Engine Creates $15M Fund, Adds Governor Gray Davis As Advisor
Los Angeles-based Start Engine, the business accelerator being spearheaded by Activision co-founder Howard Marks, said today that it has created a new, $15M investment fund for its portfolio of startups, and added former Governor Gray Davis as an advisor. The accelerator--just one of the many accelerators to emerge in Southern California in recent weeks--also said it has added John Maataa, the COO of the CW; Hayward D. Fisk, former VP and General Counsel of Computer Sciences Corporation; General Merrill A. McPeak; and Greg Suess of ROAR to its advisory board. Governor Gray Davis is currently in the Los Angeles office of Loeb& Loeb; Davis was Governor from 1999-2003. Start Engine did not provide deals on the structure of its new $15M investment fund. Start Engine, modeled after the YCombinator and TechStars accelerators, is running its first class of startups in January; the group is investing $20,000 in those companies, and providing other resources, mentors, and a program to help those startups get funded and into the market.