The VU Hangar is open to anyone in the local ecosystem, including startups, small businesses and entrepeneurs as well as university staff, researchers and students.
Victoria University has created a free hub that provides business advice, services and office space to local startups, established small companies and entrepreneurs, BIT has reported.
The VU Hangar will be free of charge and will also be open to the university’s staff, researchers and students. Victoria hopes the move will provide a boost to the ecosystem.
The hangar will operate as a stimulator space, where innovators can go before joining a full-blown incubator program. It held an initial soft launch early last month and has already organised a hackathon event dubbed WestHack.
The VU Hangar was conceived by Peter Dawkins, vice-chancellor at Victoria University, who brought on board Gus Balbontin, former chief technology officer at travel guide publisher Lonely Planet, to get the project off the ground.
Thomas Anbeek, business operations manager at Startup Victoria, and serial entrepreneur Jordan Gianfrancesco have also joined the team.
Gianfrancesco said: “The main thing we are trying to bring is an entrepreneurial community not only to the university, but to the west in general.
“It is not a scary big place – it is a really welcoming, safe place to come to work on ideas and access information. That is a thing that is really important to us.”
