Dear GC entrepreneur community,

We’re super excited to be partnering with the team at GC Hub to deliver a pop-up AWS Innovation Day October 9th. AWS was built on startups that have become household names today and we’re actively supporting the next generation of startup businesses on cloud, hopefully many of your ventures. We have a great team with massive experience working in startups and helping them to achieve success. The team is backed by AWS’ Activate Program for startups. We’re looking forward to spending the day with you, sharing some of our know how and hopefully triggering insights you can take back into your businesses to further your ambitions. Whether you have an idea for a new startup, are well and truly down the startup path or are simply interested in understanding startup businesses, come along for the day. We promise it won’t be try or boring nor death by slides. Looking forward to seeing you soon.

– The AWS Startup Team

Agenda for the day:

9am: What is a startup?

• Stefan Knight, AWS Startup Account Manager. Stefan has more than 20 years experience working in startups in the US, UK and AU. He has had a variety of roles in product, business development, marketing, sales, etc. Startups he has been apart of have raised +$500M USD in capital, IPO’d, been acquired and of course, failed miserably as well.

9:30: AWS Activate Program Introduction

• Activate is AWS’s program to assist startups to get the most out of AWS services and grow sustainable cloud businesses.

• Francis Vierboom, AWS Startup Business Development. Francis was the Co-founder of Flirty and Propeller Aero. He has a wealth of recent experience building tech startups, raising capital and scaling early stage businesses.

10: Culture of Innovation

• Amazon has built its business by adopting a Culture of Innovation. This is not a notional idea but rather a framework for operating a company with mechanisms and accountability.

• Paul Woodward, AWS Territory Sales Manager. Paul has been with AWS since the ANZ team was launched. He is an accredited presenter of Culture if Innovation and Working Backwards.

11: Morning Break

12pm: Building with an AWS partner

• Tech Connect

2:45: Growth Marketing 101

• You have an MVP, now how do you get people using it?

• Harvey Liu, AWS Startup Account Manager. Harvey is a veteran of several of his own startups and working in others. He has core expertise in growth marketing.

3:15: Startup Tech Notes

• Working with early stage companies to validate tech choices, architectures and design for cost optimisation is a core part of the AWS Activate Program. The team’s Solution Architect will share some practical tips and insights relevant to early stage startups building on AWS.

• Nigel Gardiner, AWS Startup Solution Architect. Nigel has been a CTO of multiple startups in APAC including Honcho here in AU. He has built teams in Vietnam and Phillipines. He coaches our Activate startups with very practical tech advice from MVP through to scale.