RP incubator Kickstart Ventures partners with Australian counterpart Pollenizer to fund and mentor local technopreneurs

Kickstart Ventures, Inc., an incubator-accelerator firm wholly-owned by Globe Telecom, has entered into a partnership with its Australian counterpart Pollenizer to bring the latter’s distinctive approach to company formation into the Philippines market.

The partnership called Pollenizer@Kickstart hopes to increase the chances of success of local technopreneurs by combining top talent, great ideas, and startup best practices. The concept is to provide highly-skilled engineers, business people, and product managers with a unique environment for entrepreneurial experimentation.

                Pollenizer@Kickstart encourages interested individuals to apply to join a team that Kickstart and Pollenizer are co-founding to address a well-researched problem, with the Pollenizer@Kickstart  program providing a built-in funding runway, and a structured incubation process.  Team members could be corporate employees looking for more autonomy and freedom to experiment, entrepreneurs looking to plug into a support system and pre-defined project, or people who have moved between both environments,” said Minette Navarrete, President of Kickstart.

                Each team member is considered a co-founder and receives an equity stake in the business that they form as well as a salary to meet month expenses.  Team members are expected to own the vision and execution for the business, with intense support, mentorship and guidance from Kickstart and Pollenizer.  One of them will also be chosen as the Chief Executive Officer of the new business.

                The businesses will be given funding to sustain operations for at least one year.  Subsequent funding rounds, however, will be driven by the team, with ample support from Kicsktart and Pollenizer including access to the two companies’ extensive investor networks.

                Companies to be built by Pollenizer@Kickstart teams will target the Philippines as a launch market while maintaining a global outlook.

                At present, Pollenizer@Kickstart is seeking team members with three main profiles:

·          Engineers who are knowledgeable on Ruby/Rails, PHP/Cake or other languages and platforms;

·         Product managers who have clear understanding of the customers and can do wireframes, pitching, and prototyping;

·         Commercial and business development managers who are experienced in product pricing, sales and distribution, channel and account management, and pitching proposals

"All team members will need to be, or to become, gutsy entrepreneurs with the audacity to believe that they can pull off a global business with available resources.  We have assessed the needs of the Philippine market and we are looking for ideas that would address the gaps and exploit the opportunities in the problem spaces such as real estate listings, e-commerce, remittance, labor cost arbitrage, OFW placement, education, and healthcare,” said Navarrete.

                Interested parties may submit their applications via www.f6s.com/pollenizerkickstartmission01 on or before June 30, 2013.