Our Story

We are on a rapid growth journey to help many tech ventures to succeed smarter, faster & better!

 

The Seed Accelerator™ Story

In 2007 as part of his self development and career planning analyses, Patrick Driessen started to develop his ideal business model to shape a new venture, allowing him to give up his successful and fruitful corporate leadership career and become a fulltime entrepreneur again. In the ideal business model, he tried to combine his passion, skills and experience in: leadership, startups, technology, innovation management, business development, strategy development, investment management, coaching, mentoring, people care, operations, deal making, M&A, and incubation. He concluded his ideal new venture would be a unique mix of these and some other fruitful growth ingredients.

After 18 months of thorough research the founding Seed Accelerator™ team led by Patrick, developed a groundbreaking new business model for a seed fund technology accelerator. This unique business model is based on all the success factors, gaps, risks and lessons learned from many similar seed accelerators, VC's, startups and incubators from around the globe. It resulted in a custom seed accelerator business model with programs which are well balanced, broad, complete, low-risk and focused on generating high returns on investment.

The Seed Accelerator™ business model and programs are based on these three building principles:

  1. Rapid Product Development: from idea to new product or service;
  2. Rapid Personal & Leadership Development: turning the people behind the idea into more stable, balanced, and successful leading entrepreneurs who can take on and conquer the world;
  3. Rapid Business Growth: growing start-ups into successful and sustainable business with a global focus, a market leading position and a high market value.


After the team developed the new Seed Accelerator business model, they had the model tested and validated by various leading investment and incubation experts, leading entrepreneurs and CEO’s of technology start-ups. After interviewing over hundred startup entrepreneurs from around the globe, they concluded that their startup audience was willing to give up a substantial equity stake in return for participating in the Seed Accelerator™ programs. They also concluded that the business model has the potential to become the most compelling and successful startup accelerator in the industry! To be first to market in the Asia Pacific region, the program is being run out of Sydney, and once certain critical milestones are met out of Singapore as well.

Since June 2009 the team has been working fulltime on bringing their Seed Accelerator™ business to life. They were lucky enough to trademark their company name ‘Seed Accelerator’ (which is also the industry accepted name of their business model), early 2010 they have started the Business Seed Program, and now are preparing to start the first Startup Seed Programs with a select number of technology start-ups. 

To proof that their business model rocks, they have started the Business Seed Program; a custom program focused on accelerating technology companies which already have turned their idea into a successful proof of concept, product or service and are ready to attack the global market space. The number of tech ventures participating in this program is steadily growing; allowing the Seed Accelerator team to assist its portfolio companies to boost their growth, expand around the globe and create sustainable and unique value!

As basis for our being, our culture, our passion and our positive growth direction, we have defined a solid set of principles and values:

Our Mantra:

Growing startups and early-stage tech ventures in Asia Pacific.

Our Vision:

Seed Accelerator™ is Asia Pacific’s premier technology startup & business accelerator, facilitating the commercialisation of innovative ideas by turning them into exceptional and sustainable global businesses and turning their founders into leading entrepreneurs and company directors.

Our Mission:

To commercialise innovative technology startups through world-class infrastructure, business coaching, mentoring, education, skills development, seed funding and access to strategic networks and partnerships.

What we Love the Most:

Investing in people, inventing new things, starting new businesses, rapidly growing businesses on a global scale, enhancing & empowering the regional startup ecosystem, inspiring people and helping people succeed faster and better!

Our IBAECS Campaign:

The Seed Accelerator™ acronym that encompasses our organisation’s campaign is to:

  • Inspire

  • Build

  • Accelerate

  • Educate

  • Communicate & Support.

For more details about our IBAECS campaign, please click here.

Our Core Values:

  • Help: Help great people with great ideas, become great entrepreneurs and build great technology companies.

  • Eliminate: Eliminate all the obstacles and roadblocks that prevent innovative entrepreneurs from turning their ideas into viable and sustainable businesses.

  • Support: Provide startups with on-going and long-term support till we exit their company. Their success is our success!

  • Product Development: Rapid product development from idea to new product or service.

  • Personal Development: Turning the people behind the idea into more stable, balanced, and successful leading entrepreneurs and company directors who can take on the world.

  • Business Growth: Growing start-ups into successful and sustainable businesses with a global focus, a leading market position and a high market value.

  • Ecosystem: Create, build and host an ecosystem to inspire, educate, support and facilitate technology startups, entrepreneurs, investors, business partners and supporters in the Australasian region.

  • Transform: Transform Sydney & Singapore into the most vibrant communities of high tech startup activity!

 

Entrepreneurship in Today’s Economy - It's Now or Never!

While big businesses and corporations get all the Australian government and media attention and publicity, it is small businesses and individual entrepreneurs that add the greatest value and diversity to our Australian and global economy. These smaller entities drive growth in the economy and are the foundation for long term success.

In the midst of the present economic angst, it is without a doubt intimidating for potential entrepreneurs and business owners to seriously think about investing time and money in new enterprises. However, we are confident that the startup/business ownership dream is alive and flourishing today! In fact, we believe that the entrepreneurial spirit thrives in slow economic times. Entrepreneurs recognise problems or issues and implement solutions to improve the situations or hardships that an economic crisis imposes on people. It’s true that that the current global crisis has put noticeable strains on the loan industry, yet we are convinced that now could be potentially the best time to take on the challenges of entrepreneurship. There is no bad time to innovate and improve our world! There is also no bad time to start a new tech business!

At Seed Accelerator we believe this is one of the best times ever to start a new technology company in the Asia Pacific region!

  • The basics needs of a technology startup are affordable and accessible: people, marketing, sales, tools, web services, storage, and bandwidth;
  • There is plenty of well educated technical talent available;
  • The globalization of the web allows anyone, anywhere to start and build a new global tech or web business;
  • There are more and more role models of successful technology entrepreneurs;
  • The emergence of open source makes lots of tools and systems more affordable and easier to apply;
  • The mass-market adoption of new distribution platforms like the iPhone and Facebook offers lots of rapid growth opportunities;
  • The social media marketing power of networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter;
  • The emergence of cloud services gives access to affordable technology power and a potential mass market;
  • Startup and entrepreneurship ecosystems are becoming more regional and global, enabling startups to build more strategic partnerships around the globe.


Concluding that the cost of starting a technology company is lower than ever, which means you can build and grow a new technology business with seed funding and can go longer without venture capital. It also means, however, that when you do need venture capitalists, they expect you to show up with more done than just a PowerPoint. To successfully pitch to them you’ll need to have a rock solid business plan, an outstanding team, a compelling and working proof of concept and a very highly potential niche market in which you can achieve rapid growth.

How We Fit In

All good but.....with a fragmented ecosystem, the lack of pre-seed funds and the chronic shortage of early stage venture capital in Australia and South East Asia, many promising technology business in Asia Pacifica are not only losing access to capital, they are also losing out on opportunities to benefit from the business acceleration that a good venture investor brings to a company. That's what we want to change!

The Seed Accelerator™ team is focused on closing many of these gaps, building many new bridges and uniting many sources to build a strong and vibrant startup community which will help and support many technology businesses to flourish and succeed! We will help you start, we will help you grow, and we will help you succeed faster and better, because YOUR success is our success!


"I know from my own experience that the most useful thing for any entrepreneur is focused help and attention from experienced and committed people. We are going to make a difference to those that we work with, but also to the community as a whole. There are great things going on here in technology and we all need to support that!"

For more information and details about Seed Accelerator™, please see our program overview and our FAQ section. To apply for our programs, please click here.