US-based accelerator giant Techstars has appointed the leaders of its Adelaide iteration, Terry Gold and Chris Chang.
Mr Gold joins as managing director after serving as co-founder and CEO of Gold Systems, a Boulder-based software outfit that provided speech recognition tech top 11 of the top Fortune 20 companies. He also served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Centre for Business Growth at the University of South Australia.
Chris Chang will be relocating from San Francisco as Program Manager for Techstars Adelaide, and was previously Regional Manager for Techstars programs including Startup Weekend, Startup Week and Startup Digest across the West of the USA and Canada.
Techstars co-founder and co-CEO David Cohen said he’d found the ‘dream team’ to head up Techstars Adelaie.
“Terry Gold is a legend in the Boulder start-up community — in fact he was a mentor for the very first Techstars class in 2007,” Mr Cohen said.
“For the past year, he’s worked with Professor Jana Matthews and the team at the world-leading Centre for Business Growth at the University of South Australia. His hands-on tech and entrepreneurship expertise, coupled with his on-the-ground knowledge of Australia’s start-up ecosystem, makes him the perfect point person for this program.
“Chris, who has been leading the charge for Techstars Startup programs across the west coast of the US — brings deep expertise of our latest programs as well as established connections into the American start-up landscape. Founders entering the Techstars Adelaide accelerator will have access to two great start-up minds dedicated to helping them do more, faster.”
The program, slated to kick off in July, will connect 10 start-ups from all over the world to a network of community founders, mentors, investors, and corporate partners including seven of the world’s top defence industry companies: BAE, Thales, Austal, SAAB, ASC, Rheinmetall and DCNS.
“I’m looking for companies that will be of interest to the Australian military, but also have a broader purpose,” Mr Gold told News Corp.
“I expect there’ll be some great South Australian companies, but we will almost certainly be bringing some companies here from around the world.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for founders who want to develop and commercialise technologies such as internet of things, big data, sensors, drones and robotics.”
Applications are now open with submissions closing April 2017.
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