A group of experienced entrepreneurs and angel investors are rolling out a seed fund and incubator aimed at early stage startups in the Melbourne area.
The venture, called AngelCube, is the first of its kind for Melbourne in recent memory. Applications open 29 July, with the first partnerships expected to roll out in mid-September.
The folks behind AngelCube include co-founders Andrew Birt, creator of the marketing agency StartUP, Adrian Stone, an angel investor and self-described web.2.0 startup junkie, and Nathan Sampimon, founder of web development company Inspire9.
In a cafe conversation with Anthill editor James Tuckerman, Stone explained that AngelCube expects to invest about $20,000 in each enterprise in exchange for around 10% equity in the company. The valuation methodology is not dissimilar to the models of seed fund pioneers Y-Combinator and HackFWD.
(To see how they work, check out the video below.)
AngelCube plans to bring to Melbourne the mentoring and kickstarting power that incubators/investors Pollenizer and StartMate have brought to promising ventures in Sydney.
The ventures will benefit from targeted mentoring and free startup space in Inspire9’s new Melbourne office.
It’s a six-month accelerator program that includes an opportunity to pitch to next-stage investors in Australia or the United States.
The fund also is gathering a group of effective mentors. The growing list already includes Scott Handsaker of Event Arc, David Wei and Ying Wang of Crowdmass and Adam Cunningham of DoMore.
“Sydney has StartMate, Pollenizer, Push Start and an active early stage angel community,” Stone says in a news release. “Melbourne has a clear lack of investors willing to support early stage web companies.
“We wanted to learn as much as we could about incubators like Y-Combinator, Techstars and StartMate, and apply our learnings in the Melbourne market. The result is AngelCube.”
