Why we are bringing Acceleprise to Australia

I have jumped across a number of industries and roles over the last few years, but the common thread amongst all of my projects and roles has been trying to find how I can best support talented founders and entrepreneurs.

This is an area I obsess over and I have had many conversations from people across the ecosystem about how we can help Australian startups succeed on the global scale.

Adir is one of Australia’s most successful entrepreneurs and investors, with half a dozen exits under his belt. He’s best known for his experience and role at Catapult Sports, taking the business from roughly 10–20 staff and a few million in revenue to a publicly-listed and globally successful business.

A common theme among our conversations, were the strong entrepreneurs and products that both of us were coming across, but time and again the founders/ startups were finding it difficult to overcome the challenges of sales, growth and understanding how to effectively scale their business.

We wanted to find a way that we could use Adir’s deep connections and experiences as well as my expertise in marketing, sales and growth to help these companies and that’s where Acceleprise comes in.

Over the last few months, we have been in deep discussions with Michael Cardamone (Managing Director of Acceleprise US) and the team in the US to better understand the program and the value it provides to founders.

Last month I travelled to SF to attend Acceleprise’s latest demo day. It was incredible to see the progress that the companies were able to make over the 4 month program, with several raising capital and one company even getting acquired prior to demo day!

Acceleprise is a 4 month B2B SaaS focused accelerator program that invests in early-stage SaaS companies to help them with sales, growth and future fundraising.

During my trip to the US, I got to interview Michael for my podcast and chat with him about lessons from the last 4 years in investing in early stage SaaS startups and seeing them grow.

Given the somewhat saturated market for accelerators in Australia, we wanted to ensure that our program had a strong point of difference and compelling value proposition that would be attractive to the type of companies that we wanted to work with and that is specifically what we have built.

Acceleprise Australia, like it’s partner in the US, is a 4 month hands-on program specifically catered towards the B2B/ Enterprise SaaS space.

We invest $75,000 into each company for 7.5% equity (or match previous valuation if raised prior to program) with the first 3 months based out of our offices in Melbourne. The last month takes place in residence at Acceleprise in SF where our companies will get to work alongside the US cohort, pitch at the local demo day and get introductions to companies and investors in the US market.

The core focus of the program is in helping startups to close sales, drive revenue and build a platform for scalability. This will be done via direct introductions to potential customers and workshops to help companies develop effective sales funnels and close deals.

The program will provide weekly access to world-class mentors delivering insights and expertise to help you grow your business. These mentors have built successful large scale SaaS businesses or are key decision makers within enterprises.

Every accelerator program has different strengths that it brings to the table.

As mentioned above, Acceleprise Australia takes a hands-on approach to the companies in our cohort, specifically focusing on sales and growth.

As a result, we can be most helpful and impactful on companies that are at the stage where they can take advantage of the resources and value we can provide.

Our sweet spot is:

If you meet these criteria, please get in touch. I would love to speak with you :)

Thanks for reading and please share with any startups/ founders who may be interested in applying to the program.

Related posts:

To accommodate soccer, Jason scheduled most of his classes in the morning and tried to keep Friday free if possible. Away games often meant getting on the bus by 1 p.m. sometimes earlier. The school…

One great cup of rich, hot, decaf coffee tastes good to me this morning. It is exactly what I want and makes me happy. It soothes and warms me. It puts me in the mood to write. The cup of coffee…