A one-day programme, KineticOne will mainly act as a deal sourcing unit for the seed-stage VC firm

Mount Parker Ventures, a seed-stage VC investor based in Hong Kong, has launched a one-day intensive accelerator programme for startups in the logistics and supply chain spaces.

Christened KineticOne, the accelerator will mainly act as a deal sourcing unit for Mount Parker.

Startups from anywhere in Asia can apply. The accelerator will then evaluate the startups’ ability to solve a worthwhile problem and monetise the solution.

Only five to seven startups will be selected for each cohort.

The early session is an intensive business strategy and pitch workout, where the mentors will evaluate and give feedback about the startups’ strategy as well as iterating on their pitch to investors. In the late session, startups will pitch in front of an audience of investors, industry professionals and other startups.

KIneticOne is still finalising the mentor lineup, but it will mainly comprise VCs and founders of later-stage logistics startups.

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“This is a no-equity programme, so the business model is very different. We are financing this and running it as part of the deal-sourcing function of our fund,” Jude O’Kelly, General Partner of Mount Parker Ventures, told e27. “We are starting with an intensive one-day accelerator in Hong Kong in July. In late 2019, we will start running these regionally — in Singapore, Jakarta, Ho Chin Minh and Bangkok.”

Elaborating the USP, he said unlike a typical accelerator programme which primarily focuses on the startup pitch (which usually takes about half the time in an accelerator), KineticOne will work with the startups to set their core business model, establish their internal tracking metrics, and help them on customer development. “This will actually be the beginning of our fund’s interaction with the startup as we will be tracking them for potential investment thereafter,” he said.

O’Kelly also shared that the one-day programme will probably be turned into an intensive one-week programme in future.

“We  want to keep it very short; we do not want to compete with the other regional accelerators. Strong startups will usually not consider an accelerator due to the time demands, relocation requirements, or equity give-up (usually 6-8 per cent on valuations of under US$1.5 million ). As such we are running this as a lightweight, regional, no-equity programme,” he added.

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