Catalysr — The Next Generation
I want to share that I am deeply grateful to Jacob Muller, my Co-Founder and our inaugural CEO, who led Catalysr through the wonderful adventure of our first two years.
As he wrote in his blog piece last week, Jacob has decided to transition from CEO to our board and move onto a new adventure, while I will step forward to drive the next stage of our growth at Catalysr.
I wanted to write this to share the game plan with you for the coming year and offer you an opportunity to join.
In all seriousness, it has been an absolute privilege and honour to get recognised for our work at the global stage, and win this prestigious award amongst 1.2 billion young people who reside in the Commonwealth.
The road so far!
For the past couple of years, we’ve been obsessively learning about startups at Catalysr and iteratively making our programs better, through the support of some of the best in the game within Australia and Silicon Valley.
Throughout this journey, we’ve developed an archetype called a #Migrapreneur who is migrant/refugee entrepreneur embodying the following traits:
- Have a high level of conviction → obsession, to solve a large-scale problem (think Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Arianna Huffington et al. )
- Interested in starting tech-enabled growth businesses (software and hardware tech-startups)
There’s a gap in the market for Migrapreneurs at the idea/early stage of the startup ecosystem in Australia.
When over a quarter (28%) of Australians are born overseas, we believe Catalysr can spot and support the future “Musks” of Australia and we mean business when we say that we are building Australia 2.0!
Here are two legends Syed Mansoor — Founder and CEO of Water Democracy and Mana Ohori — Founder and CEO of Diamonds from the Sky, sharing their learnings, at our showcase night at the end of 2017.
Catalysr — The Next Generation
Our vision is to create Australia 2.0 and we’re on a mission to help create 10,000 jobs in the next 10 years!
We are doing this through running 6 month startup pre-accelerator programs, tailored to give early-stage Migrapreneurs the mindset+tools+traction to enter the mainstream startup ecosystem.
We have two goals in 2018–19
- Serve 100 Migrapreneurs (50 startups) in 2018–19 through two 6 month pre-accelerator programs.
- Reach 1 million people in Australia and inspire Migrants/Refugees to think big and challenge the status quo through Migrapreneur archetype via our podcast Migrapreneur Stories and other digital channels.
We’ll also be developing stronger partnerships with downstream accelerators, angels and investment funds.
What’s the catch?
As Jake mentioned, our major partner CGU Insurance has renewed their commitment to supporting our next generation of Migrapreneurs.
This is a great and exciting step towards building our vision for Australia 2.0.
But, in order to support 100 Migrapreneuers by the end of next year, we will need to marshall a further $150K in the form of donations, partnership or sponsorship.
