Startup Onramp Update Aug 2020

By Colin Kinner, Startup Onramp Founder

2020 has been a year of challenges, but also some great opportunities. COVID-19 has thrown a curveball, and put many well-laid plans on the back burner for startup founders across Australia and the world.

Still, despite the unprecedented situation we’ve found ourselves operating in, we’ve been reflecting on all that we have achieved at Startup Onramp, the challenges and opportunities we’ve faced, and the milestones our regional partners and entrepreneurs have helped us reach.

Founders log on for virtual startup guidance

While many face-to-face startup programs have been paused, we saw the opportunity to take our lessons online, giving entrepreneurs a flexible and self-paced format with our Founders Course.

The Founders Course is Startup Onramp’s online video-based course for startup founders. It provides anyone working on a startup idea with an understanding of essential startup concepts and best practice, ensures they avoid making critical mistakes, and maximises the progress they make on their startup.

Entrepreneurs from across Australia and internationally have logged on for the course and we’re excited to be able to help even more startups reach their potential - in spite of a global pandemic.

Partnership with Advance Queensland

We’re delighted to share the news that we’ve extended our partnership with the Queensland government to add our online Founders Course into the mix for regional Queensland entrepreneurs.

While we all adjust to new social distancing rules and travel remains a wildcard, the Founders Course will be offered to all entrepreneurs in regional Queensland at no cost for the next 12 months. It’s another way we can stay true to our mission and support a far larger number of entrepreneurs across the state as we all look to recovery efforts. We expect to see a lot more people starting their entrepreneur journey in light of redundancies and industry shakeups.

200 graduates and counting

Our Pre-Accelerator program hit a milestone of our first two hundred graduates, with more than a hundred of these coming from regional Queensland. Eight regional startups hubs from the Gold Coast to as far north as Mackay are now delivering the Pre-Accelerator program.

The hundred graduates in regional Queensland represent 94 new startups, many of which reached a minimum viable product or were able to reshape their idea as a result of participating.

Throughout the year, these hundred graduates have been supported by 35 guest presenters and 240 individual mentoring sessions. It truly takes a village!

Perk up

Speaking of the village it takes to keep a startup motor running, we became a partner organisation for two recognised global startup programs, Amazon Web Services (AWS) Activate and HubSpot for Startups. These partnerships means all our graduate startups get access to in-kind benefits at no additional cost.

Likewise, we forged partnerships with LawPath and Fullstack Advisory so that our Startup Onramp graduates can take advantage of access to invaluable legal and accounting support for one year.

 The future is bright

We’re excited to see the ways in which entrepreneurs and startups adapt and accept the challenges of the ‘new normal’. For Startup Onramp, we’re welcoming new startup hubs to deliver our Pre-Accelerator program, including partners in Gympie, Cairns and Noosa. Mackay, Toowoomba and Yeppoon will be welcoming their third cohort through the program at the end of the year.

We’ll also be continuing to scale our Founders Course and will be working to reach our first thousand startup founders in the months ahead.