Future Founders Festival is Australia’s biggest entrepreneurship program exclusively for international students. This program presented by StartSpace and Study Melbourne is completely free to participate in and represents the $500,000 investment of the Victorian Government to support the COVID-recovery sector under International Education Short-Term Recovery Plan.
This July, the Future Founders Program will be a four-day festival featuring start-up founders and industry experts and will also include a 48-hour Hackathon that aims to introduce students to entrepreneurship and Victoria’s $7 billion start-up ecosystem.
International students offshore will also have the opportunity to engage through Victoria’s innovative new Study Melbourne Hubs initiative. Building on the inaugural and highly successful Future Founders Festival last year – Study Melbourne has expanded the program to include community roadshows in regional areas, festival programming and Australia’s first international student incubator with $10,000 in venture scholarships on offer for up to eight start-up teams.
Immersive Bootcamp
Run over two weeks, the boot camps are an immersive program for students who are ready to commit, with a focus on reflective learning that will pressure-test participants and teach skills quickly.
What is StartSpace?
StartSpace is State Library of Victoria’s ‘incubator’ space that was established in 2020 to support the $90 million transformation program of the library.
The aim of StartSpace is to support set up local and global business to explore the future of the city and the state. The new coworking space is attracting aspiring entrepreneurs and business people to further their business development plans. In StartSpace, individuals have the opportunity to be mentored by successful StartUp business owners with the know-how in starting their business journey.
A look from Future Founders Festival 2020
Don Doughty from Kaplan Business School participated from the launch of Future Founders Festival to Hackathon of last year’s event. Through his participation, he managed to connect and team up with fellow international students – even those who are offshore. For Don, the speakers were the tools of guidance for the participants for providing leads to help project development and pitching the business plan in the hackathon.
Another international student, Prem Oommen from Deakin University recommends this event to international students. Prem mentioned that the experience helped him develop his team-building and collaborative skills and to understand the right audience and roadmap on how to translate the viable business idea to a final product.
If you think you are a budding entrepreneur – register your interest below to participate in the upcoming Future Founders Festival 2021:
