January 14th was the official launch of the 1st ETCLabs cohort and things have started off with a bang. The San Francisco based office space at 111 Ellis street is now home to 11 new projects, representing a wide spectrum of blockchain applications and technologies. “We’re happy to be part of the ETCLabs incubator”, says CEO Aaron of Ethernode, a node host service for developers. “The mentorship and developer support ETC Labs provides will help us grow our company.”

ETCLabs is bringing a much needed focus on growing the ETC community. The development program brings mentorship and introductions with influential VCs, corporate partnerships for banking and infrastructure, a shared office space, and access to ETCLabs marketing and developer support. ETC Labs also provides $500k in funding to the entire cohort. In addition to the program, ETCLabs has now launched ETCLabs Core, a development group that will not only build but also maintain core projects and create tools for Decentralized Application (DApp) developers.

They’ve saved us weeks in development time with just 2 hours of brainstorming

Kicking off the 1st ETCLabs cohort were one-on-one sessions with the ETCLabs Core developer team. “We’ve been working on our idea for awhile now” says CEO Shuvro of Cryzen, an algorithmic trading platform for cryptocurrencies. “Shane and Zach were able to help us see development opportunities leveraging ETC that we couldn’t possibly have discovered on our own. They’ve saved us weeks in development time with just 2 hours of brainstorming.”

Among the first cohort are projects in gaming, IoT, and security. Monetizr brings gamers meaningful, real-life value rewards, like t-shirts, stickers and cryptocurrencies, for their time spent gaming. Play Exchange takes your hobby of collectibles to a new level, by creating high end, licensed digital collectibles for the average consumer. Slips offers viewers a platform for fans to place bets and challenges while streaming their favorite content. Projects like Scanta and VRex Lab bring VR and AR to life by giving the user the opportunity to create their own avatars and incentivize them: Scanta has a library of Pikamojis that users can use while VRex allows users to create content using VR/AR settings.

We are confident we are also going to win at ETHDenver next month

There are also companies that are further along in their lifecycle that have started at the ETCLabs program. Button Wallet has already gained 80,000 users and is looking to expand their Telegram-based secure crypto wallet by leveraging ETCLabs’ robust marketing program. The young technical team has been showing their product with great response, most recently winning the “Best Protocol” prize at ETHSanFrancisco. “We are confident we are also going to win at ETHDenver next month” says Button CEO Alexander.

OriginalMy is an example of a startup with significant traction, with a successful implementation of their identities, digital documents, and electronic signatures platform used by the Brazilian Fintech Association. AnyLog’s solution will replace cloud databases and provide IoT projects with a protocol for data management, while StaTwig is building a tamper-proof supply chain focused on health information and vaccines in partnership with Unicef.

The San Francisco start-up scene will have access to the programs mentorship team, with talks focused on “How to Pitch VC’s” and “Polishing your Pitch Deck” being hosted by resident investment analyst Sharran Deora. The ETCLabs space will be launching several workshops and events at their shared space in the next few weeks. Cryzen is set to officially launch their trading platform on January 31st, 2019, hosting a launch party at ETC Labs.

You can learn more at etclabs.org and the company twitter account @etclabs. Stay tuned for a series of interviews with the Start up teams and ETCLabs core Developments.