IdeaSpace Partners with National Instruments to Jumpstart Philippine Startups

Earlier this year, Philippine incubator Ideaspace selected its first batch of incubatees who get seed funding of over $121,000 each. This time, in a move to further strengthen the tech startup community, Ideaspace is partnering with international tech firm National Instruments.

National Instruments (NI) is a firm that focuses on providing software and hardware platforms to help in the development of systems. Ideaspace is tapping into this expertise for the collaboration, which is aimed to encourage and provide assistance to technology startups in the Philippines.

NI has its own entrepreneurship program called Planet NI. Through this program, the company’s role will be to provide the necessary development tools, technical training, and support to the technology startups who are under IdeaSpace incubation. Apart from that, the two organizations will team up in conducting technopreneurship boot camps held in major universities all over the Philippines to promote this program.

Gerrald Carlo A. Mateo, Planet NI country coordinator, says the Planet NI program is designed “to provide technology access to millions of engineers in emerging countries that face affordability and accessibility barriers to technology adoption.” He adds that this partnership with IdeaSpace will eventually help to tap more of these individuals in the Philippines:

We can reach out to more engineers who are developing technology-based solutions for local industries, entrepreneurs who are working to develop and commercialize new products, and social startups that are building solutions to improve the lives of the most impoverished areas.

Tackling Philippine startup barriers

When IdeaSpace announced its first national competition, Earl Valencia, co-founder of IdeaSpace, said that the organization is looking for game changing and promising tech ideas.

Today, Earl adds that the common barriers for these startups are inadequate technical training, support, and the high cost of manufacturing prototype products. He expects that “this partnership with National Instruments is another step towards bridging this gap in this field.”

IdeaSpace is not alone in this endeavor in the Philippines. We also have Kickstart Ventures which has teamed up with Australia-based online venture builder Pollenizer in its search for startups to incubate in the Philippines.

(Editing by: Steven Millward)