Last Wednesday, the 23rd of June, the Catalysr Pre-Accelerator program came to an end, and with it, so did my time as one of the two Brisbane Chapter Leads!

I enjoyed the experience greatly and I hope I was able to add some value to the participants. Because of the nature of the program, there was a huge number of people during the first couple of sessions but the cohort self culled from those who were motivated enough to apply but did not have firm enough ideas or commitment to continue for 12 weeks. But those who stuck to the end have solid ideas that I believe they are committed to pursuing to the best of their abilities.

As we still live in the shadow of COVID, the program did not run as intended. Because originally, the community sessions were supposed to be in-person. But the Brisbane chapter moved to online and was combined with ACT because just as the program started, Brisbane was put into a snap lockdown. Overall, I was glad for the change as I was able to manage my time better with the sessions being on Zoom.

Of course, as the program went on, we had COVID lockdown refugees from Melbourne and while some people did wish that the sessions were in person, even more, were grateful it was online. Catalysr will have to resolve this issue for the next iteration of this program.

Other issues facing Catalysr is that too broad range of participants. I was hosting people who were already undertaking a pilot, while others were still identifying a market niche. The pre-accelerator felt like it was combining a full entrepreneurship education program with a Startup Weekend. So that was one of my feedback to the operations team. I suggested that they consider hosting a weekend-long program that focuses on transferrable skills around market research, niche identification and idea generation that can also be applied by migrants and refugees in other aspects of their life like job search, identification of areas of education and then those who come out of the process with ideas are better suited to spend a longer period of time exploring what it would take to turn the ideas into a business.

That said, I think many of the folks in my cohort had great business ideas and I can’t wait to see where they go with them. I have given them my contact details and hopefully, they will stay in touch! I will also do my best to stay involved with the Catalysr program and do what I can to add value.

Finally, Catalysr has launched its accelerator program for businesses that are a bit more mature. I have encouraged a few of the participants from the Brisbane-ACT cohort to apply and I hope they will make the cut!