Accelerate business growth with Startup Launch Launchpad Online

Last June, we launched Startup Launch, a program to help tech startups at all stages become successful on the Google Developers platform and open-source technologies. So far, we’ve helped more than 3,000 entrepreneurs transform their ideas into burgeoning websites, services, apps, and products in 150 countries. Hear some of their stories from the Czech Republic, Poland, Kenya, Brazil and Mexico in our Global Spotlight playlist.

Launchpad Online

Today, we’re bringing the program to a wider audience with a new web series called Launchpad Online, to share knowledge based on questions we’ve had from entrepreneurs using our products. The series kicks off with technical instruction from Developer Advocate Wesley Chun on getting started with Google developer tools and APIs and over time will expand to include topics covering design and distribution.
This show accompanies our established "Root Access" and “How I:” series, which bring perspective and best practices to developers and entrepreneurs on a weekly basis.

Launchpad Events

Launchpad Online follows the curriculum set out by our ongoing Launchpad events, week-long bootcamps for startups in select cities. In 2014, over 200 startups participated in events in Tel Aviv, London, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, and Paris, which consisted of workshops on product strategy, UX/UI, engineering, digital marketing and presentation skills. Check out our videos covering recent events in Paris and Berlin here.

You’re invited

In addition to events and online content, the program offers product credits to participants, from $500 of Cloud Platform and AdWords credits to startups who are just starting off, up to Google’s Cloud Platform startup offer of $100,000 USD in Cloud Credit offerings to startups ready to scale their business. You can apply for these benefits, and to be selected for future Launchpad events, at g.co/launch. Startup Launch runs in conjunction with our Google Business Groups and Google Developer Groups on the ground. Together, these communities have hosted more than 5,000 events in 543 cities and 104 countries this year, helping startups connect with other developers and entrepreneurs. Attend an upcoming business or developer event near you. We hope to see you there!

Posted by Amir Shevat, Global Startup Outreach Program Manager, Google Developer Relations

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Investing in our business for the future

Posted by Sundar Pichai, CEO

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Blog.)

Since the launch of our first product for businesses, the Google Search Appliance, in 2002, we’ve been building more and more products that help make businesses more productive. From Gmail to Docs to Chromebooks and Google Cloud Platform, we are now helping millions of businesses transform and support their businesses with our Cloud products. In fact, more than 60% of the Fortune 500 are actively using a paid Google for Work product. And all of Google’s own businesses run on our cloud infrastructure. Including our own services, Google has significantly larger data center capacity than any other public cloud provider – part of what makes it possible for customers to receive the best price and performance for compute and storage services.

All of this demonstrates great momentum, but it’s really just the beginning. In fact, only a tiny fraction of the world’s data is currently in the cloud – most businesses and applications aren’t cloud-based yet. This is an important and fast-growing area for Google and we’re investing for the future.

That’s why we’re so excited that Diane Greene will lead a new team combining all our cloud businesses, including Google for Work, Cloud Platform, and Google Apps. This new business will bring together product, engineering, marketing and sales and allow us to operate in a much more integrated, coordinated fashion.

As a long-time industry veteran and co-founder and CEO of VMWare, Diane needs no introduction. Cloud computing is revolutionizing the way people live and work, and there is no better person to lead this important area. We’re also lucky that Diane has agreed to remain on Google’s Board of Directors (she has already served three years here) – as she has a huge amount of operational experience that will continue to help the company.

I’m equally excited that Google has entered into an agreement to acquire a company founded by Diane: bebop is a new development platform that makes it easy to build and maintain enterprise applications. We think this will help many more businesses find great applications, and reap the benefits of cloud computing. bebop and its stellar team will help us provide integrated cloud products at every level: end-user platforms like Android and Chromebooks, infrastructure and services in Google Cloud Platform, developer frameworks for mobile and enterprise users, and end-user applications like Gmail and Docs. Both Diane and the bebop team will join Google upon close of the acquisition.

With these announcements, we’re excited to take the next step in helping businesses take advantage of the cloud to work better, operate more securely, run more efficiently and grow faster.

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