Girl Geek Academy to run SheHacks incubator to support hackathon graduates

Female entrepreneurs participating in SheHacks hackathons will now have the opportunity to continue working on their startup idea in an incubator post-event, thanks to a new program run by Girl Geek Academy.

Girl Geek Academy is a Melbourne-based organisation founded in 2014 that runs female-focused hackathons, workshops and events in an effort to promote gender diversity in the tech ecosystem. It recently secured $1.3 million in funding to execute its female-first programs, and its most recent SheHacks event was the largest all-female hackathon in the world, according to co-founder and chief executive Sarah Moran.

The eight-week SheHacks incubator program is designed to encourage hackathon participants to continue working on building their product and maintaining team relationships post-event.

“So many times you see a hackathon happen, there’s so much energy, then nothing happens afterwards” Moran tells StartupSmart.

“To build momentum we need to keep pushing … providing support and then the trajectory to get from the hackathon to a fully fledged startup,” she says.

The incubator will be led by Holly Liu, co-founder of global mobile gaming developer Kabam, who will be the entrepreneur in residence. Read more

Angela Castles - Smart Company - 27 July 2017