500 Startups’ Australia accelerator program is axed by its partner before it even launched

Souce: TechCrunch


BEAM Team

11 Aug, 2017

500 Startups’ Australia accelerator program is axed by its partner before it even launched | BEAMSTART News

- From our Sponsors -

500 Startups continues to feel the impact of a sexual harassment scandal involving its co-founder and former managing partner Dave McClure. Two weeks after the closure of its Canada-based fund, its maiden venture in Australia is getting the chop before it even began.

The U.S. firm doesn’t have a dedicated fund in Australia, but it did announce an accelerator program — 500 Melbourne — in May in partnership with LaunchVic, a $60 million entrepreneurship scheme backed by the government of Victoria, Australia’s second most populous state. Now, however, LaunchVic has terminated its partnership with the VC firm.

The relationship had certainly gotten tense over the past month, since McClure resigned from 500 Startups in early July after a number of women came forward with sexual harassment allegations against him. LaunchVic put the firm “on notice” last month after it was kept in the dark over the claims against McClure, who had traveled to Australia to front the launch of 500 Melbourne despite the fact that he had taken a back seat at the firm following an internal investigation into the claims.

LaunchVic said it wanted to see a “change in culture” at the firm if the project was to go ahead, but the final straw seems to have been the resignation of 500 Melbourne head Rachael Neumann. Neumann quit the firm because she believes that “this is simply not the right time for 500 to launch in Australia.”

She explained on Twitter that she had traveled to the U.S. to meet with 500 Startups’ leadership over its Australia plan, but following discussions made a decision to leave.

“While I am deeply disappointed at how this has ended, I feel confident in LaunchVic’s strong course of action over the past month to give 500 Startups an opportunity to show leadership to improve culture in the startup sector and fix the issues at hand,” LaunchVic CEO Dr Kate Cornick said in a statement.

“Unfortunately, as we’ve expressed to 500 Startups, that without Rachael Neumann at the helm we don’t believe it will work,” Dr Cornick added.

“500 strongly believes in the future of the Australian tech sector, but now is not the right time to move forward with this new partnership. We look forward to future opportunities down the road,” a spokesperson for 500 Startups said via email.

The dissolving of the partnership won’t impact LaunchVic’s overall budget. A representative of the organization clarified to TechCrunch that the grant of over $2 million that it originally pledged to 500 Melbourne will not be allocated to the project or 500 Startups itself.

LaunchVic will instead use the grant to develop a different accelerator project that maintains links to the global and local startup community.

- From our Sponsors -

Latest Jobs

Customer Success Lead

Stable

San Francisco,

Full Time

USD 70000 — USD 110000 yearly

Sales Executive

Dripos

New York,

Full Time

USD 60000 — USD 140000 yearly

Account Executive, Healthcare

Stepful

New York,

Full Time

USD 100000 — USD 120000 yearly

Senior Software Engineer, SDK

OneSignal

San Mateo, CA,

Full Time

USD 160000 — USD 180000 yearly

Machine Learning Research Scientist

Output Biosciences

New York,

Full Time

USD 120000 — USD 250000 yearly

Staff Full Stack Software Engineer

Tavus

San Francisco,

Full Time

USD 135000 — USD 225000 yearly

Software Engineer - Python

Kaya

London, United Kingdom,

Full Time

Salary Undisclosed

Founding Full Stack Engineer

OffDeal

New York,

Full Time

USD 165000 — USD 230000 yearly

Business Systems Analyst

Prelim

San Francisco,

Full Time

USD 80000 — USD 100000 yearly

Full Stack Engineer

Pump.co

San Francisco,

Full Time

USD 100000 — USD 160000 yearly

BEAMSTART is a hub for everything Startups, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation. Connect with a global community of people, and stay updated with the latest startup jobs, news, and discussions.

 
© 2016 - 2024 BEAMSTART. All Rights Reserved (Legal).