Golden Gate Ventures And JFDI.Asia Announce Strategic Alliance For Asian Startups

Top Southeast Asia VCs Golden Gate Ventures and JFDI.Asia have announced a new strategic alliance that will focus on supporting early-stage digital startups as they transition from concept to substantial pre-Series A funding.

The program will include intensive mentoring from both early-stage funding specialists to help companies gain market traction.

Golden Gate Ventures has offices in Singapore and San Francisco. It operates a seed investment program for digital start-up companies that have already launched a product and achieved market traction. Based in Singapore, JFDI.Asia’s accelerator “bootcamp” program takes teams of entrepreneurs from idea to investment in 100 days.

Golden Gate Ventures co-founders Vinnie Lauria, Jeff Paine and Paul Bragiel have joined JFDI.Asia’s bootcamp as mentors. Startups they nominate and which show sufficient traction through the bootcamp will be fast-tracked to additional funding of up to $600,000.

Lauria said in a joint statement that “the next billion people are coming online in our region. It’s a huge opportunity and an equally huge pool of talent in the region is set to make the most of it.”

Hugh Mason, co-founder and CEO at JFDI.Asia, said that he hopes the partnership with Golden Gate Ventures will be “the first of several alliances with key partners across the region who share our ambition to support the coming generation of digital success stories across Asia, for Asia.”

Golden Gate Ventures will continue to independently fund startups that have already launched and have shown traction. Both Golden Gate Ventures and JFDI.Asia, however, plan to draw their pool of pre-launch companies, to find promising candidates for the new bootcamp program.