Celebrating our migrapreneurs
Happy 2019!
I am writing this post to share with you the updates and wins from our migrapreneurs and invite you to join us in celebrating them on our Demo-Fair on 15th March in collaboration with Fishburners.
C18 cohort
In 2018, we decided to scale our intake. We took 23 startups run by 35 migrapreneurs, from across Australia to get them to execute their vision.
As with any pre-accelerator, half-way through some of the teams either realised that their idea isn’t a good fit for the market, or this isn’t the best time for them to be founding a new company.
We are proud of these courageous migrapreneurs, who don’t get stuck in the sunk cost fallacy and understand the opportunity costs, be decisive and move-on.
For the 17 teams who remained in the program, they are stronger and more determined than ever.
They’ve been making great progress and I’d like to give a few of them a shout-out.
Pascal at Jobspottr — pitched at Startcon, got into MIT Bootcamp. Got investment from his co-founders in Germany, and about to close a couple of large customers (employers for the platform) to start their trial in Sydney.
Laura & Tom at YogiBirth — won pitch night at Fishburners, have developed their prototype, partnered with UTS Health for research, and are working on their MVP.
Devan at HR Partner has significantly added to his enterprise customers & revenue in last 6 months. In particular, they recently got a couple of large customers in Canada & UK.
Muheeb at Pluralist — has found a new distribution partner, and increased sales & revenue, working on expansion in NSW, launched a new product (Thai watch) and also partnering with Brisbane City Council to exhibit his products at 2019 Asia Pacific Cities Summit.
Taofiq at Spiral Blue got into CSIRO Lindfield program, and letter of interest signed with a customer (satellite company) in US — and are currently working on their prototype. Taofiq also spoke at International University of Business, Agriculture, and Technology in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on tackling challenges in climate change and achieving the UN SDGs through technology.
Davide at Qliqq, Nadine at GiftSkout and Kunal at Kwikly have developed their prototypes and are currently doing user-testing.
Robert & Sharat at Green Grid Energy, a micro-grid startup for Zimbabwe, are also working on their prototype and have also been accepted into the CSIRO Lindfield program.
Prem and Misha at Natural Panaa have got 3 suppliers from India on board, and their first shipment of palm leaf cutlery and plates is arriving in June as they focus on BD.
Lana at Metaflo presented infront of the top brass of executives and Govt officials across the country (incl. ScoMo) at the 2nd Mental Health Roundtable in Canberra.
Shaqaeq at Directa Australia has also develop a prototype, testing with users, to be launched soon. She also got covered by Startup Muster.
We know that they have a long-journey ahead of them, but we want you to meet them before you see them in the news.
Our partners and supporters
We cannot do anything without many of our partners.
Alongside CGU Insurance and Vasudhara foundation, we have also brought on board AWS Startups and HubSpot for Startups to support our migrapreneurs.
Allen Legal and The Startup Shop has joined us as legal and accounting partners respectively, and have been very generous with their time in coaching our startups.
Our venue partners have included: Element 8 Ventures, EnergyLab, UTS Startups, ACU Collaborate Plus, Grounded Space, The Studio, Foundation for Young Australians and ygap.
Our extreme gratitude to many of our returning mentors and advisors who have spent a lot of time with our migrapreneurs.
A special thanks to Singularity University alumni and global startup founders who ran AMAs this year to help instil an entrepreneurial mindset in our migrapreneurs. These have been Wes Kao (Ex-Director AltMBA, New York), Megan O’Rourke (Co-Founder and CEO of AI Collective, San Francisco), Endre Elvestad (Founder of SignLab, Norway), Jesus Cepeda (Founder of OS.City, Mexico), Avid Boustani (VP Strategic Products at Software Motor Company, San Francisco), and Anastasia Kaschenko (Co-Founder and CTO of Majik Water, Kenya).
Demo Fair 2019
Fishburners has also kindly offered to partner with us and provide their new event space for Catalysr Demo-Fair happening on next Friday, 15th March.
