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Founder Institute Australia & New Zealand is proud to announce the launch of its 2023 accelerator for climate-related and technology startups, on a mission to challenge 1000 founders in Australia and New Zealand to build enduring companies that solve the world's biggest problems, while finding and implementing solutions to address climate change.

In partnership with Climate Salad, the region's leading network to support climate-tech companies, Founder Institute encourages founders to turn their ideas into fundable startups, and startups into global businesses. Through the generous support of Climate Salad, the program is offering a limited number of full fellowships for climate-tech in the region. Anyone pursuing a climate-related early-stage startup is encouraged to apply.

To celebrate the new program, Founder Institute Australia & New Zealand will host several free tech and climate-related tech startup events over the next few weeks:

  • Startup Weekend Australia & New Zealand (Online), 17-19 February 2023

Founder Institute Australia & New Zealand, who have long championed founders whose startups align with one or more of the UN's SDG (sustainable development goals), is run by a team of experienced co-directors who have helped launch multiple startups:

  • Chris Clark (Founder, FuseSport; Co-Founder, Spark Festival; Co-Founder, Beerlove)

  • Phoebe Zhang (Ambassador, Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center; Advocate, Entrepreneurs’ Wellbeing)

  • Paul Krajewski (Senior Product Manager; Co-Founder Shario; EIR, Incubate and Monash Generator)

  • Benjamin Chong (Partner, Right Click Capital; Co-Founder multiple startups)

Many of the region's top founders, CEOs, advisors, and investors have signed on to mentor participating entrepreneurs in the upcoming Founder Institute program, including:

It all starts with our renowned ‘FI Agentic’ accelerator, which pushes founders at the idea and pre-seed stages to reach the milestones needed for investment and sustained growth. Alumni of the FI Agentic program then receive free access to our advanced post-graduate programs for years to come, and can get matched with prospective investors in the FI Venture Network, a collection of global funds actively investing in the earliest rounds of funding.

The results speak for themselves: FI Alumni have raised over US$1.75B in funding, and are building impactful businesses across 200+ cities and 95+ countries all across the globe. (see the FI 50 Report here).


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Graduates of the Founder Institute are creating some of the world's fastest growing startups, having raised over 2BN in funding, and building products people love across over 200 cities worldwide.

See the most recent news from our Grads at FI.co/news, or learn more about their stories at FI.co/graduates.

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