Golden Gate Ventures Partners with JFDI Incubator for Mentoring, Fast-Tracked Seed Funding

The Singapore-based JFDI accelerator program just got even more useful – and potentially lucrative – in a new partnership with Golden Gate Ventures. The strategic tie-up will see Golden Gate Ventures co-founders Vinnie Lauria, Jeff Paine, and Paul Bragiel join JFDI as mentors.

This could also fast-track some JFDI incubator startups to seed funding courtesy of the new VC partner – up to US$600,000.

We’ve often talked of the importance of quality mentoring on this blog, so this is heartening news. Golden Gate Ventures launched in February of this year, complete with a $10 million fund that focuses on Southeast Asia. Of course, the VC firm will still back startups from outside of the JFDI program as well.

Explaining what Golden Gate offers, co-founder Vinnie Lauria said today:

The next billion people are coming online in our region. It’s a huge opportunity and an equally huge pool of talent in the region is set to make the most of it. Golden Gate Ventures’ links to later stage investors and Silicon Valley can add the most value once startups launch products and prove market traction. JFDI.Asia really proved itself earlier this year and working even closer together is the best way our two firms can help the ecosystem.

Hugh Mason, co-founder and CEO at JFDI, added:

Vinnie was amongst the most popular and valued mentors on the bootcamp we operated earlier this year. Jeff and Paul also both have great reputations for sharing their know-how. We hope that this will be the first of several alliances with key partners across the region who share our ambition to support the coming generation of digital success stories across Asia, for Asia.

JFDI, with backing from SingTel Innov8, graduated its first ever batch of startups in May of this year, including some very promising young teams such as ShopSpot and FamilyKo.