First Gens 2.0 takes the next step, VALIDATE.
You may have read in Usman’s blog piece earlier this year, we had a cracking start to 2020 with our Melbourne debut in partnership with ygap. Three months ago we accepted 70 startups to the IDEATE stage of our Pre-Accelerator program, 25 have been selected to progress to VALIDATE.
Over the next three months, our cohort of 38 Migrapreneurs will work to find their business’ fit in the market — an endeavor made more complex and challenging by the current global situation. To support our teams on their journey, we’ll be hosting a variety of virtual Office Hour and Founder AMA events with our amazing network of Partners and Mentors. The key element of VALIDATE is 1:1 mentoring, teams will meet with their assigned Entrepreneur in Residence (EiR) on a weekly basis to discuss progress and get feedback & assistance.
Meet The EiR’s
Over the years we’ve been privileged to have talented and accomplished EiR’s mentor our cohorts through the hectic journey that is entrepreneurship. While 2020 has turned everyone’s world upside down, we’ve managed to lock down some brilliant Entrepreneurs in Residence to help the cohort navigate through this unknown territory. Check out our 2020 EiR lineup below.
Jeanette Cheah is co-founder and CEO of The Hacker Exchange, an organisation connecting startups to innovation hubs (in person — and virtually!) helping leaders grow as global citizens and develop innovation skills.
In 2019, she received the ‘Women In Tech — Global Ally’ Award in Portugal for her work driving diversity into tech, and was a Finalist in Telstra’s Business Women’s Awards. She also co-created the Gingerbread Demolition event supporting Save the Children Australia.
Ants Cabraal is a creative producer, product developer & marketing and growth advisor who has helped many initiatives start and grow since 2012 with the Enspiral community from Wellington New Zealand. He serves as an advisor to several startups, a consulting partner at Greaterthan and loves to help get new ideas off the ground — recently leading the publishing of Better Work Together, a collaboratively written book about the future of work and community. He is based in Melbourne, Australia.
Pratibha Rai is a veteran of the Australian start-up scene, since the days when you could count the number of Australian startups using just your fingers (that actually wasn’t long ago but it dates her as an ‘oldie’).
She’s worked on more than 15 startups at various growth stages, mentored at least thrice as many, and has been involved with Catalysr for 4 years. She’s been described as “Australia’s fastest PM, from zero to 60, whether that be 60km/hr or 60 change requests.” Her strengths are product, strategy, and every thing in between that’s involved in getting an idea to a business.
Winitha Bonney is the founder of Amina of Zaria, #ColourFULL conference and Australia’s leading Thought Leader in the advancement of women of colour and the future of work. She has a passion for entrepreneurship having started several businesses since she was 16yo. She has a strong background in social impact, entrepreneurship and commercialisation.
Roberto Daniele is an educator, Founder of Changemakers Lab and world cycle-tourer . Roberto is passionate about working with purpose driven people and organisations to design and build social enterprise ecosystems for social change and environmental regeneration.
Roberto has developed national award-winning accelerator programs in the UK and in 2017, while cycling from the UK to Australia, developed and ran one of the largest social enterprise accelerator programs in Iran in collaboration with the University of Isfahan.
Thank You
I want to take this opportunity to reiterate our gratitude for the partners, mentors and sponsors that have contributed to the success of program thus far. Shout out to our IDEATE Facilitators:
Fouad Elsaadi, Tom Howard, Matt Benetti, Nathan Murphy, Mark Allen, Jennifer Lau, Megan Flamer, Ian Yun & Paul Naphtali
and Mentors:
Amit Chawathe, Adelide Mutinda, Timo Hilhorst, Sam Shlansky, Helen Williams, Christian Williams, Alman Khan, Phing Lee, Audrey Jean-Baptiste, Lauren Ng, James Wong & Janette Li.
Our First Gens 2.0 Pre-Accelerator program was possible by the support of Foundation for Young Australians, Seventh Street Ventures, Vasudhara Foundation, LaunchVic and, of course, our program partner, ygap.
Join us as a Mentor! Submit your expression of interest here.
