MEC Discover

MAP Velocity is now MEC Discover. Find out more and apply below.

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MEC Discover is an 8-week early-stage pre-accelerator for founders who are ready to explore the commercial potential of their startup idea or research.

This pre-accelerator enables you to test your concept against real market demand, refine your solution, and build the confidence to move from insight to action, knowing your idea addresses a genuine need.

By the end of MEC Discover, you will have a clear roadmap for next steps, a network of like-minded founders to support you, and the foundational knowledge to continue your entrepreneurial journey.

Over the 2 months, MEC Discover provides support through evening workshops featuring expert speakers, founder stories and group activities. Surrounded by a cohort of high-potential founders, our carefully designed program aims to propel early-stage startups and their founders forward, increasing the likelihood of founder success. To enhance the journey, MEC Discover boasts a diverse and supportive community that ensures participants have a support system, a collaborative environment and a safe space to be challenged and test their startup.


The program costs $500 per founder, and a University of Melbourne affiliation is preferred for this program, with a small selection of places available for social impact, external participants and scholarship positions.

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Frequently asked questions

Eligibility

  • The program is industry-agnostic and is open to both for-profit and impact startups. This is because we believe in creating an environment where startup and impact founders can influence and support each other with their business, technical and impact acumen.

    University of Melbourne affiliation is preferred for this program, with a small selection of places available for social impact, external participants and scholarship positions.

  • MAP defines startups as organisations that are scalable, have potential for high growth and or high impact, that use innovation and or address scalable markets.

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    For startups that are already too large (in terms of employee count) or need to work from dedicated offsite facilities due to the nature of their work, we are flexible, but active participation is still required to be eligible.

  • No, to be eligible for Velocity programs, the participating founder must be located in Victoria.

  • First-time founders
    Yes. We have had many first-time founders in MEC Discover. We support you by surrounding you with people running companies at similar stage to yours and founders who run similar companies to share networks and expertise.

    Solo founders
    Yes. While we focus on a startup's team, we do take solo founders who have deep knowledge of the problem they are solving and the ability to deliver it.

    Non-technical founders
    Whilst we certainly like to see startups lead by teams with strong technical talent, it is not a requirement to be accepted into Velocity. If you don’t have a technical co-founder or employee, we encourage founders to seek out that talent while in the program.

  • Our MEC Discover Program supports early stage startups that are at problem-solution fit where startups are focused on validating whether they are solving a meaningful problem and pressure test the biggest assumptions in their business model. We accept startups with innovative solutions, transformative ideas and scale for impact. To be competitive, you will need to have a clear concept, and done some early validation prior to entering the program. We also need to see a strong commitment from you and your team - demonstrate an ability to execute.

Selection

  • MEC Discover supports early stage startups that are at problem-solution fit where startups are focused on validating whether they are solving a meaningful problem and pressure test the biggest assumptions in their business model. We accept startups with innovative solutions, transformative ideas and scale for impact. To be competitive, you will need to have a clear concept, and done some early validation prior to entering the program. We also need to see a strong commitment from you and your team - demonstrate an ability to execute.

  • No you don’t. We understand that you may not be at this stage just yet. Even if you do have a demo ready to go, we encourage you to chat to our team about when in stage two (the in-person interview) if it would be most appropriate to show it off.

  • We understand that you will be very keen to hear back about the status of your application, and we will endeavour to process applications as soon as we can. At each stage of the process you will be notified about when you can expect a response by.

Application

  • You can, and office hours is probably the best way. You can book Office Hours with our team once you’ve expressed your interest.

  • You are welcome to submit more than one application if you want to submit multiple startups for consideration, but please note that we will ask you to select only one if both make it past the second round of applications.

  • Unfortunately we can’t accept applications past the deadline.

Program

  • Equity or ownership
    No. MAP does not take any equity or ownership in your company. Instead, we expect MAP founders to join our community, which means giving back by supporting the next generation of startup founders, and being a mentor and ambassador for MAP. This may include contributing to workshops, mentoring a startup in a future cohort, or making a helpful connection to a fellow founder in our community.

    Intellectual property
    No. You retain full ownership of all intellectual property (IP) your startup creates.
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  • It is $500 per founder to participate in the program. If you have a multi-founder team, we recommend at least 2 founders participate and/or set up a process to feedback information to the rest of the team so key learnings are shared.