Research Outline

Start-ups and Incubators: Case Studies

Goals

To identify case studies that show how start-ups enhanced their internationalization readiness working with incubators. The research will try to include as many cases from Australia as possible, but will expand the research to any country, if Australian companies are limited. For each case study, the research would provide a brief overview of the incubator’s program, names of the start-ups it has helped and explain how the incubator helped the start-ups to prepare for international success.

Early Findings

Xendit

  • Xendit is an Indonesian start-up fintech company that provides payment infrastructure across Indonesia, such as processing payments, running marketplaces, disbursing payroll and loans, and detecting fraud. The company was founded in 2015.
  • Xendit was accepted for the Y Combinator program in 2015, where they spent 3 months developing their products and acquiring key investors.
  • Y Combinator is a leading startup accelerator that has facilitated the success of companies like Dropbox, Airbnb, Instacart, Weebly and Reddit. The company invests in 200-240 start-up projects per year.
  • The total amount of investment amounts to $150,000 per company, which also includes a 3-month education process in Silicon Valley for the founders and CEOs of the company.
  • The goal of the program is to "create an environment where [founders] can focus exclusively on building products and talking to users."
  • Using the YC training, Xendit was able to meet Justin Kan, the co-founder of Twitch, who is one of the company's main benefactors.
  • Xendit is also featured in Y Combinator's Top 101 list by valuation at position 53. Each of the companies on the list have a valuation of at least $150 million.
  • Y Combinator also facilitated the growth of the company, as they were able to grow their network of users to 13,000.
  • Since 2015, the company has been able to raise $18.3 million in funding and attract many large-scale clients such as Sumasung, Suzuki, Travelio, and Allianz.
  • The company also claims that they have recorded a 25% month-to-month growth in their transaction volume in the past 2 years.