Could Virtual Accelerators be the answer to bridging the emerging markets and Silicon Valley?

Written by: Earl Martin Valencia, co-founder

As much as we all take it for granted, Silicon Valley is a special place. With the strip of land between San Francisco and San Jose, a large concentration of the most talented people, most cutting edge ideas, and an ecosystem that fuels this into companies all come into play. I myself feel privileged and lucky. The question is — can we democratize what we have in the Valley and bridge this to emerging markets like Southeast Asia, Africa, LatAm and others? Perhaps.

There are 5 unique traits that Silicon Valley has than any other place in the world:

1. Access to Networks — the hyper-concentration of experts in their own fields are conveniently in a small geographic footprint
2. Access to Knowledge — with the amazing research universities of Stanford and Berkeley around here plus the tacit knowledge of people that know how to build and scale companies is here
3. Access to Capital — with the majority of the VC money in the Valley, it is a place where capital can find the best ideas with investors competing for great deals
4. Access to Mindsets — being in an environment that values a bias for action, to be able to fail as a badge of honor, and to have people that believe they can change the world is an amazing place
5. Access to the Ecosystem — having an interconnected web of players that a company can tap into when they need the help

As some people know, I got to Silicon Valley through the traditional route of going to school here, specifically at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where I took my MBA. In fact, it was so accidental, that I became one of the first admits of the school never to take the GMAT but got accepted with the GRE. A little-known fact though is that I applied to Stanford multiple times before I got in.

After graduating from Stanford, and working at Cisco helping run their global innovation platform with participants in 100 countries, I decided to come back to the Philippines with the vision to help build the start-up ecosystem in the country and broader Southeast Asia. I did this through my role in starting one of the first emerging-market focused start-up accelerators in the world called IdeaSpace.

IdeaSpace was an amazing success, gathering 1000s of teams applying each year, looking to solve amazing problems like financial inclusion, education, healthcare, energy, water, agriculture, and others. This also became the basis for a number of programs in the private sector and the government. Even with much success, we were limited with geography, and the need to expand the network, and because of this, I opened the first corporate cross-border innovation office between the Philippines and Silicon Valley in an office in Montgomery Street in San Francisco. We had 2 physical offices — one in Manila and another in SF. In the Manila incubator, we saw that there was the friction that we had to pay for housing so that all entrepreneurs don't have to think of the high rent prices in the heat of Manila and move there.

Fast forward to today, I have done a round trip — back again to the Valley after many years, and I realize that our model of connecting emerging markets and the Valley has not changed much — until today. After my talk in the Philippines, inspired by the changes happening in this space, I, together with my co-founders Ping and Mika together with our Advisor Pool and Board of Advisors have crafted one of the first-ever virtual start-up accelerators specific to bridge AI and Data-enabled companies from the emerging markets. We call this Cognity Labs — where we select start-ups and will assemble advisors that can bridge the knowledge, expertise, and networks to the top start-ups — all done virtually — so that even at the early on-set, they build in Silicon Valley standards in their companies. We launched Cognity Labs during the first-ever ASEAN Tech Summit in Silicon Valley on July 18th.

Cognity Labs is not just an accelerator but is a broader movement to accelerate the emerging markets’ adoption towards building an economy based on the Fourth Industrial Revolution of AI, Data, and other cutting edge technologies. This doesn't mean we don't want to build billion-dollar businesses, but rather this actually accelerates the start-ups in this space to be pioneers and take the leadership in the ecosystem. In fact, we expect that each company that Cognity accepts must pledge 0.5% of their most current round for charity while sharing 2.5% to the advisory pool.

Virtual accelerators, like Cognity Labs, provide great flexibility to both the accelerator management but also the start-ups so that regardless if they work in a big city or in more remote areas, you can stand a chance and benefit directly from the program. Our thesis is to connect successful technologists and entrepreneurs in the US, the tech diaspora, to their home country to provide them a platform to be part of the journey of amazing companies but at the same time give back to entrepreneurs in the places where they or their parents came from.

Overall. It's almost 2020, and I am looking forward to virtually build this ecosystem with all of you and bring the best of emerging markets and Silicon Valley in one start-up accelerator program. Will we be successful in completing the vision of bridging the 2 geographies virtually? We are not sure, but one thing we know, it takes all of us, both in the emerging markets and the Valley to build this virtual bridge together.

Note: If you know of any start-up that would benefit from being part of the Cognity Labs Cohort 1.0, please let them know to apply before August 19th at www.cognitylabs.com.

About the Author:

Earl is a strategy and transformation executive, speaker, and venture adviser. He is currently the Managing Director of Digital Transformation for a Fortune 500 company and has advised hundreds of start-up companies, incubators, and VC funds in multiple continents. He is a Stanford MBA graduate and honored as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. He was also awarded by the President of the Philippines as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the country. Find out more about Earl at earlvalencia.com and his podcast “The Digital Mindset” that you can download from iTunes or Stitcher.