IBM Goes Looking for Startups: New Program Seeks Out Innovative Tech for Smarter Planet

In the race toward greener technologies, blue aims to be king.

Just weeks after announcements from Autodesk that it would be taking its startup program across the Atlantic and from Veolia that its new incubator program would be looking to partner with cleantech startups around the world, IBM announced this morning its Global Entrepreneur Initiative, a program of such scale and depth that it almost seemed like Big Blue is trying to prove something.

The program takes what IBM did with its Solution Architecture for Energy and Utilities Framework (SAFE) rollout earlier this year and expands it to different industries and more startups. The SAFE program is an enterprise software made to be compatible on the one hand with any company’s smart grid application or service and on the other with any utility’s infrastructure. When it was released in September, IBM called the software the “glue” of the smart grid.

According to Drew Clark, director of strategy with IBM’s Venture Capital Group, the Global Entrepreneur Initiative takes that same idea — IBM as the infrastructure and thus the connector between new technologies and end users — and runs with it.

“The idea is not to just throw out some free software and assistance using it in the hopes that we’ll snag some startup that will accidentally hit on something we care about,” Clark says.

“This program is more of an onramp to help bridge the gap for smaller, early stage startups that have a difficult time engaging with customers. Take electric or water utilities. A small startup trying to have a meeting with the CIO of PG&E, for example, that wouldn’t happen, but we can make those connections.”

Open Door to Expertise, Connections

If that sounds like every venture capitalist’s dream come true, it’s not by accident.
Several years ago, when IBM was looking into launching its own venture fund, the venture capitalists it spoke with encouraged the company to instead create what is now the IBM Venture Capital Group, where Clark works. The division helps IBM stay on top of business and technology trends and find venture-backed companies with interesting technologies that might make good partners for the company.

While the Global Entrepreneur program does that as well, it goes further, providing startups with access to the company’s research community, as well as sales, marketing and technical skills. The program is focused primarily on early stage companies working on technologies that mesh with one of IBM’s Smarter Planet industries, which include energy and water.

Clark points out, not every startup that signs up for the program will wind up being an IBM partner:

“You have to play to win, as we say, so you have to think about how you combine your startup with IBM and the frameworks we’re supplying through this program will make that a lot easier. The second step is ensuring that your technology or service is something really special, something our customers will find appealing and useful.”

While IBM’s program, as Clark puts it, “goes way beyond just helping companies save a few bucks on software,” access to a variety of resources from various companies is proving hugely important to both cleantech startups and the companies that hope to either partner with them or, as is the case with some companies, turn them into clients. Autodesk’s Cleantech Partner Program, for example, provides software packages worth $150,000 to cleantech startups, and according to Susan Gladwin, Autodesk’s Cleantech Program manager, several of the 100 startups that have participated so far have used the company’s modeling software to streamline their products, thereby cutting costs.