A little over 4 years ago we launched the first university-based student startup accelerator in Australia. The goal was to be one of the best university startup accelerator programs in the world and that remains our focus.
The first iteration, Class 1, was small but enthusiastic. As a volunteer at the time, I designed and ran the pilot with not much interest from the higher education industry. INCUBATE was a student union supported initiative, hardly the traditional breeding ground of would-be entrepreneurs (unless student politicians count!). Regardless of the forward-thinking vision of the University of Sydney Union, it’s easy to see why not a lot of industry took our initiative very seriously.
All that has changed over the last four years; we’ve built a dedicated team who have helped hundreds of student entrepreneurs from all disciplines; supported the creation of over 60 startups which were essentially ideas on a napkin when they came into the program, and built a community of 100+ enthusiastic mentors.
Fast forward to today and while our path to our goal has changed we’re well on our way — and 2016 has been fantastic year for INCUBATE.
In 2016 we:
- Partnered with the University of Sydney to grow the program with $1 million in funding over next 5 years
- Directly funded and supported 65 entrepreneurs
- Graduated 14 startups from our accelerator program, and have just accepted 10 startups in Class 9, our biggest cohort yet
- Presented to over 1,200 people at events across the year not to mention the growing interest for our highly-regarded Demo Days
- We launched SparkX, an event partnership program to foster student-run startup and innovation related events on campus, including a monthly entrepreneur meet-up
- Piloted our new direct mentoring program, run by our experienced Resident Entrepreneur, Mike Nicholls, which has already seen 16 startups in 6 weeks receive valuable mentoring time for free
Diversity is also incredibly important to us and will continue to be; this year saw our first cohort with over 50% women-entrepreneurs and we’ve helped international and local students from over 16 countries.
“2016 saw our first cohort with over 50% women-founders and we’ve helped international students from over 16 countries.”
To top this year off we won the inaugural Australasian Best Incubator / Accelerator Award at StartCon 2016.
Just like it’s easy to underestimate what a small organisation can achieve in four years, it’s just as easy to underestimate what emerging entrepreneurs can achieve. Our startups have added over 90 high-skilled jobs to the economy, and industry investors have also invested over $8 million into the active companies, not including commercialisation grants (now upwards of $2 million).
As a program, we’re most proud of the community of entrepreneurs we’ve created and the opportunities that have been ‘unlocked’ for students. Starting a company has assisted them to create jobs and make industry contacts that simply would not have been possible if they had not given it a go.
The new financial commitment from the University of Sydney will support our continued growth and attract more students to start a business while studying. It will allow us to run more programs and support more emerging entrepreneurs.
Put simply, we are investing in student creativity and believe that our students will create the innovations of the future for the benefit of all.
Here’s to an even bigger, better and more entrepreneurial 2017. ✨
INCUBATE would like to thank our Principal Sponsor, Lenovo Australia and New Zealand, and Industry Partners Data61 & AwS for their on going support in 2017.
