The Makati Miracle: Startup Village's Impact on the Philippine Startup Ecosystem

Established in 2017, Startup Village is a Philippine-based incubator and accelerator focused on enabling disruptive technology startups within the Philippine ecosystem. They provide comprehensive support through mentorship, training programs, shared workspace facilities, and dedicated access to investor and customer networks. The company’s model empowers promising ventures to navigate critical stages of development. It also fosters collaboration and facilitates market entry for impactful, transformative technology businesses. With that, why don’t you join me in learning more about Startup Village with its President, Carlo Calimon.

Can you share with us your journey and background that led you to become the President of Startup Village? What inspired you to be actively involved in the startup ecosystem?

I've been in the entrepreneurship space for almost 20 years. Since I finished grad school in AIM, entrepreneurship was the path I ended up in. I started with helping the development of the MSMEs in the country by guiding them, mentoring them, and teaching them. During the earlier years of my career, I was part of the group that integrated entrepreneurship into the national high school curriculum. I helped create the frameworks for the national entrepreneurship curriculum today. This happened between 2006 to 2012. I've been in the entrepreneurship space ever since. I started several businesses along the way, although some of them were not fortunate enough to have survived.

We did our first app in 2009 when things were just starting out, when the trends were just pointing to a particular direction. But unfortunately, it didn't materialize. It was the big idea at that time, but it was too ahead of its time. Ultimately however, it was a great learning experience. 

This prepared me for our next venture. We were fortunate enough to have been part of the first batch of Ideapace winners. That's how we started from a startup perspective. We went through the incubation process. Since we were batch one, everybody was still learning. 

A few years later, I was fortunate enough to have won an award from Rappler and Smart, which was the Be The Boss Awards. I was the Boss for Mobile Readiness, and the prize included a trip to Silicon Valley. When we were in Silicon Valley, we were very inspired with the whole experience and things just came back full circle for us. We were doing entrepreneurship, education, and then startups. It was then when my co-founder and I had this idea about having our own incubator that just focused on early stage startups. We finally started with a facility in Makati. In the beginning we didn’t know what we were going to be or what we would become. We were trying to figure out what to do right then. After some time, we figured it out and that's how we came to be today. That’s how it all came along. 

What is Startup Village and what makes it unique from other incubators/accelerators? What services does it offer to the community?

We're an incubator accelerator. We’ve been helping develop the local ecosystem while also helping out young entrepreneurs, especially idea-stage startups. Initially, we just ran incubation programs, but we realized that focusing on early stage startups is quite time consuming and it takes some time to gestate. As a result, we started coming up with programs that addressed the needs of later-stage startups or more mature startups. What makes us different is that we are an entrepreneurial organization, for entrepreneurs run by entrepreneurs.  We’re industry agnostic and stage agnostic. We are able to work with everybody which gives us a lot of flexibility.  

But more importantly, we are able to develop our own innovative programs that complement rather than compete with existing programs. We're able to create solutions and identify problems in terms of what's lacking in the ecosystem. Will find the gaps and develop programs and products for these.  

What challenges do you think Filipino startups commonly face in today's business environment, and how does Startup Village address these challenges?

I think that, oftentimes, founders forget that they have to create impactful innovation. It has to be game-changing but relevant. Problems have to be solved realistically, innovatively. The issues faced by startups cut across all the life stages of startups.

Education is a pressing challenge that we face. It’s always an issue because while founders are able to generate these ideas, oftentimes they don't have the business capability or business acumen to actually run a business. That's what we're trying to address. We help them not own the idea, but find relevant ideas and teach them how to execute this as a business. In relation to education, there's also a lack of investor education, especially angel education. If there are a lot of mature and experienced investors, but they don't know how to invest in startups. They don't have the patience and don't understand the risks. Another thing that's lacking are the resources from investment. The lack of investment points back to the very simple issue, which is: it's an emerging market. The industry hasn't proven successful enough for people to jump into the bandwagon. There is a need to create more of these success stories so that more investors are willing to put money into the market. 

Another thing is that I think there's a need for us to level up on what we know from a technology perspective and from an engineering perspective. Because only in opening up that aspect are we also able to see how we can use modern technology to solve previous problems. It’s all about doing things better than it was before. That's where innovation comes in.

Lastly is that we need more corporations to hire and work with a startup from a client perspective. Why? Because it's the corporations who have the resources, the machinery, and the need. But they don't want to invest outside of their company, they’d rather invest inside. This actually kills innovation from outside. I do understand that innovation can come from the inside, but one cannot rely on just one side to generate the innovation. 

Can you share success stories or significant impacts Startup Village has had on the startup community?

We just launched our global accelerator program. It is the first time that we're doing it. Our objective is to place Philippine startups on the global stage. The objective of our first cohort is to have their demo day abroad. It will be done in Canada during the Collision 2024  conference in Toronto. We did this because we wanted to create global success stories. When I was in the conference last year, I saw how big it was but wondered why there were no Filipinos there. At the same time, I looked at all of these concepts and knew that we could easily do these concepts here in the country. I think the reason why Filipinos are absent there, is because there is a lack of exposure. 

In this particular program, we openly selected five startups that cut across different communities. Our partners from Canada selected who would qualify. Our task was to accelerate the startups for the next 5-6 months to prepare them for the global stage. The startups eventually spent two weeks in Canada. Aside from the online mentoring programs and lectures that they have, they spent a week for face-to-face acceleration and then exhibition. We were able to launch that last November during the Philippine Startup Week.

We have a lot of success stories depending on the program. For example, with Engage, which is our Silicon Valley and Canada immersion trips, we brought over 100 corporates, startups, educators, and students to the centers of innovation under our project match initiative. We also have Match where we supported the matching of 1500 MSMEs, helping them become digital while also helping 120+ startups get more traction. From our incubation program perspective, we've had over 200 startups or potential startups go through our program. Since this is in the early stages, we didn’t expect them to convert immediately because there's a point of self-discovery. Despite this, I'm happy to say that we had a good percentage of them start and really kick off their businesses. Lastly, we have also successfully connected several startups to investors over the years.

Carlo Calimon is the President of Startup Village. Carlo provides the company with strategic direction, networking, representation, and fueling innovation among many others. He is an important figure in empowering the different functions of Startup Village. As seen in Carlo, He is passionate about turning startups into successful businesses.

Visit www.techshake.asia if you would like to know and connect more with Startup Village.