Catalysr 2019 — Harnessing the power of diversity
Diversity is all the current rage in our post-modern age. But diversity of cultures, genders, abilities, experiences and thinking, is meaningless if it is just tokenistic. This is one of the reasons why the word ‘diversity’ has been polarised and people are asking to move from diversity & inclusion towards belonging.
There’s a lot of merit to this thinking because diversity isn’t meant to be added as garnishing to a meal, but all ingredients when added in the right amount, make a delicious meal. Therefore, when diversity is successful (call it inclusion, belonging or whatever), the whole is much larger than the parts.
When we think about diversity at Catalysr, we think about our long-history of First Nations people in Australia and their on-going struggle for self-determination.
We are following that powerful idea and believe that by empowering migrants and refugees to self-determine their social and economic future through entrepreneurship, we are not only supporting them and their families but also creating a better Australia which they can truly call home.
When over 1/3rd of Australian small businesses (CGU Migrant Small Business report) and over 36% of Australian tech startups (Startup Muster report 2018) are run by migrapreneurs — this is not just a nice-touchy-feely thing.
Backing migrapreneurs is critical to ensuring that our economy becomes more antifragile, where different experiments by migrapreneurs with strong feedback (and learning) loops lead to strong economic growth and long-term prosperity for Australia.
Introducing the Catalysr 2019 Cohort
I am very proud to share with you our Catalysr 2019 cohort of migrapreneurs in the IDEATE stage of our 2019 program, who come from wide-ranging backgrounds but share in their aspirations to solve hard problems and create a better Australia for all of us to live in.
This year, we are supporting 80 migrapreneurs, who come from 30 different countries and over 50% of them are female migrapreneurs.
You can read about our migrapreneurs here.
However, as important as it is to have diverse representation, what we are most proud of at the mid-way point of the program is how the cohort has gelled together as a community and are supporting each other through the ups and downs of their startup journey and life.
It is still early days for their startup journey, but for most of them, this is a start of a life-long community that they can come to for help in building their skills and networks, share scars and build each other up, and recharge physically and emotionally knowing that they have a family within Australia.
I also want to share my gratitude for our major partners CGU Insurance, who have renewed their commitment to not only financially supporting us but also are providing us access to their office space and mentors.
We are very grateful to our long-list of mentors who give up their weekends to supporting our migrapreneurs, and also want to do a shout out to our partners UTS Startups (venue partner), City of Parramatta (Local Government partner), Vasudhara Foundation, Scanlon Foundation, Westpac Foundation and AMP Foundation (foundation partners), Grounded Space and Haymarket HQ (coworking space partners), Aperion Law (legal partners), The Startup Shop (accounting partners) and Hubspot for Startups (marketing partner) who are also our partners for this year’s program.
Catalysr turns 3 years old and plans for expansion.
As we celebrate our 3rd Birthday at Catalysr, we have a strong startup mindset and are only just getting started.
We are excited to share that we have partnered with ygap in Melbourne and have received funding from LaunchVic to expand our pre-accelerator program to Migrapreneurs in Victoria in 2020.
We are also currently canvassing an opportunity to launch a pilot in Christchurch, NZ in 2020, thanks to the support of the Edmund Hillary Fellowship.
Stay in touch
To keep following our journey, and that of our migrapreneurs, subscribe to our podcast on your favorite device — Migrapreneur stories and follow us on social channels (fb, twitter, linkedin).
