FbStart distributes $100 million in benefits to more than 3,800 startups in the first year

We launched FbStart at F8 2014 with a small set of partners and the goal of building a global community of mobile developers. In the first year, FbStart distributed benefits worth more than $100 million to more than 3,800 startups, helping many of these companies grow their businesses worldwide.

As we head into the program's second year, we're expanding the benefits FbStart provides to members, adding a new track for pre-launch startups, and offering additional benefits for games and social good developers. We're also kicking off the 2015 FbStart World Tour, visiting 20 cities in the upcoming months to meet with our members around the globe.

New Benefits and Partnerships

Today we've added new partners to the program, including App Annie, Balsamiq, GitHub, Mobile Action, Namecheap, TransparentBusiness, Yandiki, and Zendesk. FbStart member benefits now include access to more than 20 partners that provide services ranging from app store optimization to remote workforce management.

You can see a full list of the new partners and details on new tracks and packages at FbStart.com.

New Pre-launch, Games, and Social Good Opportunities

We launched FbStart with two tracks: 1) Bootstrap, for early stage mobile startups with recently launched apps, and 2) Accelerate, for established mobile apps that have demonstrated a sustained level of growth in their target markets. Over the course of the first year, we more than doubled the value of each track's benefits to over $30,000 and $80,000, respectively.

This year, we're introducing a new track and additional packages to better serve startups:

• Pre-launch track: Designed to provide partner benefits such as domain hosting, access to legal services, or wire-framing services, for example, that mostly help developers who are still building out ideas and haven't launched their app.
• Games package: Offered in addition to standard FbStart tracks, the Games package includes mentorship from the Facebook Games team and benefits relevant to game developers.
• Social Good package: Offered in addition to standard FbStart tracks, the Social Good package includes mentorship opportunities with the Internet.org team, and exclusive partner benefits like growth and fundraising consulting from I.G. Advisors, social media consulting from Social Misfits, and access to services from Praekelt Foundation.

You can apply for these new opportunities, today, at FbStart.com, or if you are an existing member, we will reach out directly with more details.

We've already seen social good and games developers join FbStart, like Hunger Crunch, a game developed by non-profit Rice Bowls and the winner of our Social Good App of the Year. You can read more about the FbStart apps that won here.

Kicking off the FbStart World Tour

FbStart is truly a global community — more than 60 percent of FbStart members are located outside North America, and some of our top member countries are India, U.K., and Brazil. Over the past year, we hosted startup events in more than 10 countries including Brazil, Germany, Israel, and the U.K., and in 2015 we're doubling that investment with a 20-city world tour that kicks off June 1, 2015 in London.

If you're an FbStart member, you can register for events through our member portal, where we'll post full event details when we visit the following cities:

• June - London, New York City
• July - Denver, Mexico City
• August - Chicago, Hong Kong, Montréal, Seoul, Toronto
• September - Singapore, Taipei
• October - Bogota, São Paulo, Seattle, Vancouver
• November - Boston, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, Helsinki
• December - Austin

If you're interested in joining FbStart, you can apply for the program directly at FbStart.com. If you're already an FbStart member, you'll be hearing from us shortly about how to take advantage of these new opportunities.