Two weeks in Silicon Valley: Startups from many nations join together at Blackbox

Entrepreneurs have transformative power to build great products and companies that change our communities and improve our lives. With Google for Entrepreneurs, we’re working in more than 100 countries, in cities from Raleigh to Ramallah, Krakow to Cairo, to fuel the global entrepreneurial movement.

One of our goals is to connect our thriving partner network of entrepreneur communities worldwide with one another, and back to Silicon Valley. Today we’re taking another step in that direction with a partnership with Blackbox, a global startup accelerator.

Blackbox Connect brings founders from top accelerators around the world to take part in a two-week, fully immersive program where they live and work at the “Blackbox Mansion” in Silicon Valley, collaborate with like-minded entrepreneurs, investors, experts and executives from the Silicon Valley community. They then return home to their native countries to scale their big ideas.

Google for Entrepreneurs is teaming up to power Blackbox Connect’s summer 2013 program. Several of our partners around the world have each nominated a top startup from their program, and eight startups have just arrived for the program kickoff today. Over the course of the next two weeks, they’ll receive pitch coaching, hear from over a dozen founders and investors, pitch their companies to the Silicon Valley community, even cook and dine together.

We’d like to congratulate the selected teams:

• Inpris (from Campus Tel Aviv in Israel)
• Melusyn (from Le Camping in France)
• Avocarrot (from Campus London in U.K.)
• EgzoTech (from the Google for Entrepreneurs Krakow Program in Poland)
• Eyedeus Labs and TunaCode (from P@SHA in Pakistan)
• Instabug (from Flat6Labs in Egypt)
• MyDoorHandle (from 88mph in South Africa)

These companies represent the thriving startup communities growing around the world. For example, EgzoTech is a Polish startup designing robots to help patients doing muscle recovery. They've developed robots integrated with video games to motivate patients to test and improve muscle control. You can check our EgzoTech's product video and learn more about all the selected startups on YouTube.

We’ve already seen the power that individual communities have in elevating successful entrepreneurs. We can’t wait to see the impact of bringing these communities together to live, learn and share insights. Stay tuned for more updates this week on our Google+ page.

Posted by Mary Grove, Director of Google for Entrepreneurs