New Orleans Startup Advano Accepted Into YCombinator

Three-year-old nanoparticle manufacturing and processing company Advano made news back in March for closing a seed funding round at $500,000 led by national investors including Fifty Years VC and Social Impact Capital. Now the New Orleans-based startup has even bigger news to share.

Advano was accepted into the well-known seed accelerator YCombinator, which is headquartered in Silicon Valley. Since launching in 2005, YCombinator has funded more than 1,400 startups, creating a network of over 3,000 founders of companies with a combined valuation of around $80 billion.

“Twice a year we invest a small amount of money in a large number of startups,” shared YCombinator. “The startups move to Silicon Valley for 3 months, during which we work intensively with them to get the company into the best possible shape and refine their pitch to investors.”

Each accelerator round culminates with a Demo Day where startups present to a select, invite-only audience in August.

Founder Alexander Girau said they have been making tremendous progress, including the launch and shipping of their initial product. Advano makes batteries better by making silicon nanomanufacturing affordable. The company has also hired six people and expanded to a 1,500 square foot office at the University of New Orleans.

To date, the company has raised $800,000 to continue its focus of continually pushing the limits of silicon’s performance in energy storage.