Project Eden, Indonesia’s First Startup Accelerator

In our discussion of the Jakarta Founder Institute yesterday, we mentioned that Project Eden is one of the startup incubators/accelerators supported by #StartupLokal and Jardintech Capital. The landing page for Project Eden is now live.

Announced at the last #StartupLokal meetup, Project Eden aims to provide pre-seed investment and enable great people to launch great ideas. According to its website, the people behind Project Eden are all experienced technologist and investment entrepreneurs with a passion to support the Indonesia local start-up ecosystem. The start-up and support process accelerates the journey from  the planning stage, to beta testing, to monetization, to sustainable success.

There are no less than eight people on the board: Bernhard Soebiakto, Aulia Halimatussadiah, Natali Ardianto, Calvin Kizana, Kevin Mintaraga, Megain Widjaja, Andi Sadha, and Nuniek Tirta Sari. All of them are successful entrepreneurs and definitely not strangers to the local digital scene.

The story started when #StartupLokal initiator were looking for a Hackerspace in Jakarta, and to that end they posted this notice. Not long after that they got offers from five entities, the first from Kevin Mintaraga and Megain Widjaja. After some discussions and talks, the Project Eden was born. They are holding an event next week called ‘Bizconnect PPKI 2011 – Road to Menteng,’ calling on start-ups to submit their business plans. 20 will be chosen to pitch in front of them.

I don’t know how often I have said this, but now is really an interesting time for Indonesia. It’s a perfect time to launch a start-up since there are so many options –whether you choose to be an independent lean start-up, or to be incubated, or to receive seed funding from venture capitalists or angel investors. There is actually quite a lot of money floating around now. But the question is, where is THE start-up?

Disclaimer : Joshua Kevin is an Apprentice at #StartupLokal