As a rising global entrepreneur platform meant to inspire, educate, and connect, Google Startup Grind, is organizing some of the largest conferences and startup events around the world which have been glorified by the likes of Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn’s co-founder), Eric Schmidt (former Google CEO), Cal Henderson (CTO at Slack), and Mikkel Svane (CEO of Zendesk), among many others. Presently, this global entrepreneur community has more than 2,000,000 members and is spanned across 400 cities in 120 countries.
Having provided professional growth advice to companies like Patron, the Japanese influencer sharing economy platform, I have recently assumed the responsibilities of the Growth Advisor at Startup Grind. My role, in this regard, is to assist the US & APAC Startup Grind Directors, with a specific focus on strategizing their growth in South Asia, and especially in Japan.
So as to strengthen the community, and to propel its growth, we are building strategic partnerships in the region, and collaborating with startup leaders, sponsors, media partners and, obviously, entrepreneurs.
In 2018, as in the years before that, we organized our Global Conference which our beloved CEO, Derek Andersen, flagged off with a vision of “helping others before yourself”, “giving first”, and “making friends”. The realization that being an entrepreneur can get lonely at times, this conference focused on alleviating the troubles of global entrepreneurs, in sync with Startup Grind’s overall motto.
That said, I’d like to now elucidate to my readers a crucial aspect of the Startup Grind mission.
Enabling a Global Startup Movement
Beyond all doubts, the Silicon Valley is still the capital in the world of startups. Yet, especially with the recent developments in AI, IoT and Blockchain, among others, budding entrepreneurs are making significant innovations around the globe.
Yet, lack of infrastructure, inefficient assistance, and unfavourable investment ecosystems are some of the major issues which cripple the global startup industry, especially in the economically backward or semi-backward regions.
Moreover, when I started with Startup Grind, there were no consolidated regional hubs in Asia, which could be representative of the startup ecosystem of the entire region. A hub that could act as a confluence of investors, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders from the region, wherein they could co-function to build a thriving ecosystem for existing and budding startups in their region.
Against this backdrop, one of the primary motives of the Startup Grind community is to transform the existing, so to say, vertical relationship between the European and Asian startup ecosystems, into a more horizontal one.
As an advisor, my responsibilities lie in developing strategies to mitigate these issues, primarily, by bridging the gap between investors and entrepreneurs, as well as, providing guidance regarding technological implementations, on top of offering holistic assistance in terms of growth strategy, project roadmap and so on.
In short, we envision an interconnected world in which entrepreneurial innovations from one region (wherever it may be) informs and inspires similar, or probably even more significant, developments in others. Together, we intend to create a startup-friendly future for the generations that be, and those to come.
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