500 Startups, a Silicon Valley-based venture firm and seed accelerator and Enterprise Singapore (ESG) have joined in a two-way collaboration for boosting the development and upgrading of start-ups in Singapore and San Francisco.
ESG announced this in a press release on Tuesday, September 24.
500 Startups is the latest addition to ESG’s Global Innovation Alliance (GIA) which is a network of Singapore and global partners of big innovation hubs. GIA was developed under the collaboration between ESG and Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EDB).
ESG and 500 Startups have joined together to administer Global Launch, a new acceleration programme under the GIA.
500 Startups will be managing this programme in San Francisco. This 16-week programme will aid Singapore based start-ups to establish themselves in the city. About 20 start-ups will be a part of this, beginning in November.
The programme will see workshops running over a week which is aimed at assisting start-ups to create the market strategy for the US.
An intensive two-week boot camp will follow which will where the start-ups will be trained on sales, marketing and pitching.
They will then engage in networking and business pitching and will present their ideas to investors at an open house.
500 Startups will mentor the start-ups business development, briefings on business and technology trends, marketing support to the start-up ecosystem partners and mentorship.
As part of the two-way partnership, 500 Startups will also run a 16-week programme to assist global start-ups who are looking at establishing themselves in Singapore.
This programme will take flight in January 2020, starting with 10 start-ups.
They will engage in workshops for handling business within the Asia region, pre-selected mentor matchmaking and business facilitation to tie up with industry professionals and multinational corporations, big players in the industry.
Peter Ong, chairman of ESG, said that this collaboration will allow Singapore start-ups to form new partnerships and connect with investors in Silicon Valley.
He added that US-based start-ups are encouraged to use Singapore’s ecosystem as a platform for expanding further into the South-east Asia region.
“The two-way flow of exchange will strengthen Singapore’s position as a global-Asia node for technology, innovation and enterprise,” he said.
OpenGov had previously reported on other initiatives as part of the GIA for boosting Singapore start-ups.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between Enterprise Singapore, the Economic Development Board (EDB), and the German Accelerator Southeast Asia (GASEA) for strengthening start-up collaboration between Singapore and Germany and more Singapore start-ups can look forward to expanding to Germany and Europe.
The three partners will collaborate on a two-year program called “Scaler8”. More than forty Singapore-based startups will be supported to enter the German market and access the local and wider European markets.
Startups in areas such as 3D printing and precision composite solutions, clean teach, deep tech, digital health, information and communications technology, insuretech, IoT and Smart Energy may express their interest in the program
This collaboration sees Germany as an addition to the GIA network.
