News Corp Australia to sponsor start-up tech co-working space Fishburners

Sydney tech start-up community organisation Fishburners has announced a partnership with News Corp Australia that will include financial sponsorship, training and mentoring.

The Ultimo co-working space houses over 150 start-ups, and regularly holds events and training initiatives for the wider community. Start-ups such as Tapestry and goCatch were Fishburners members.

Fishburners executive director Peter Bradd told StartupSmart the funds will enable them to develop their offering significantly.

“As Fishburners is a charity, we fund a lot of our projects through sponsorship and we’re run by volunteers. The News Corp sponsorship will enable us to hire a full-time general manager to take us to the next level,” Bradd says.

The funds will also enable the Fishburners team to run four editions of their internal accelerator program Fast Track in 2014.

Bradd adds Fishburners will be shifting focus next year slightly.

“We’re looking to focus on high growth companies that are investable and will employ staff,” Bradd says. “We’ll be focusing on supporting teams and getting more mentoring happening with some of our bigger companies mentoring backwards to the younger start-ups.”

In a statement, News Corp Australia’s group director digital product and development, Alisa Bowen, said the sponsorship would enable greater innovation within the community.

“Fishburners is a fantastic organisation that plays a key role in the development of some of Australia’s future digital leaders,” Bowen said.

“The potential for Australian digital start-ups is huge and News Corp Australia is pleased to be playing such a prominent role, through Fishburners, in developing and collaborating with the industry.”

Bradd says 2014 will see increased collaboration between start-ups and companies such as News Corp.

“We’re very excited that companies like News are working with start-ups, and enabling more access and open innovation with start-ups getting to access to corporate problems to fix.”