1337 Ventures hunts for ‘Alpha Startups’ in the Philippines

Malaysia’s 1337 Ventures announced today it’s bringing its pre-accelerator program Alpha Startups to the Philippines.

Existing startups and new business ideas are welcome to apply for Alpha Startups’ inaugural “class” to be held on November 9-13 in Cebu province. Twenty-five startups will be selected to join.

“We have always viewed the Philippines as a lucrative market to launch a startup. It has a large unbanked population, one of the biggest inbound transactions, and great talent,” says 1337 Ventures CEO Bikesh Lakhmichand. “This program will greatly help Philippine entrepreneurs as it puts them on a global footing.”

Exposing holes

Alpha Startups is five-day intensive bootcamp, where startups must validate their ideas and turn them into minimum viable products ready for launch.

“The idea is to give a leg up to first-time entrepreneurs. The top 10 teams will get to pitch at demo day to early-stage investors,” Bikesh tells Tech in Asia.

See: This pre-accelerator wants to help nascent Malaysian startups cross the 1st hurdle

Of the 10, the top three will get a “small cash injection” and US$5,000 in Amazon Web Services credit from 1337 Ventures. The teams will also receive continuous mentoring from the Malaysian VC firm for the subsequent two months.

Many startups that participate in the program end up seeing holes in their plans. They then rework them to find out if their value proposition can be strengthened. In worst case scenarios, startups pivot their ideas.

171 startups and close to 400 entrepreneurs had enrolled in Alpha Startups. Some 11 startups successfully raised pre-seed funding after the program, while another 12 startups received public grants in their respective countries. So far, the program has been running in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

One participant, Brian Foo, founder of Gigfairy, said: “The program [enabled us to structure] our thoughts into a pitch deck. It was due to this that we raised our first round of investments in such a short time.” Gigfairy is a platform where users can book musicians and bands for live performances.

“Alpha Startups was a great shortcut for us to validate what works and what doesn’t. At the end of the program, we felt the direction was clearer and we were more confident in executing it,” added another participant, Closetsyles founder Fong Kam Ling. Closetstyles is a marketplace for women to buy and sell pre-loved items like clothes.

See: ClosetStyles is the newest ‘pre-loved’ fashion marketplace in Malaysia

Growing network

1337 Ventures is bringing Alpha Startups to the Philippines in partnership with the country’s Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and Cebu-based non-profit tech organization Techtalks.ph.