Founding a startup? Microsoft’s Hans Yang explains accelerator resources
What is Microsoft for Startups all about?
You can think of the Microsoft for Startups team as the champions for startups within Microsoft. Many of us are former founders and former entrepreneurs who essentially live and breathe the startup lifestyle. We focus on supporting early-stage startups that are just getting off the ground.
That’s why the partnership with Red Bull Basement is such a good fit. At Microsoft for Startups, we want to work with that founder starting their first company, developing their first product, building their first service.
So it sounds like you’re the perfect person to explain what an accelerator is.
A startup accelerator is a one-stop shop: It’s a fantastic way for an up-and-coming founder to get the resources they need, all in one place. Starting a company is difficult, and it’s not just the technology you need – it’s the people, the resources, the advice and the relationships. What's beautiful about an accelerator is that all those things are housed under one roof, generally under one program, and you can learn from the best of the best.
Networking and collaboration are an important part of Red Bull Basement
© Nika Kramer/Red Bull Content Pool
Participants in Red Bull Basement will have access to resources from Microsoft for Startups’ Founders Hub accelerator. Tell us about it.
As I mentioned, we want to help founders at every stage of their journey, and Founders Hub is a platform we created specifically to serve any founder coming up with an idea.
Founders Hub offers benefits, including Azure cloud credits and access to software and technology, for free. Our goal is to help startup founders get off the ground with the hopes that they’ll continue building on Microsoft because we enable them to achieve their goals.
Can you give a specific example of the kinds of resources available within Founders Hub?
One of the strongest offerings is access to Azure Cloud, our cloud platform that provides the compute power to fuel their company. Especially with the emergence of AI, Azure is the cloud platform that powers anything that any startup incorporating AI will want to do.
More inspiration for startup founders
AI is an important part of Red Bull Basement this year. What makes it so great for founders?
What’s amazing about the AI tools now, like Azure AI, is how fast you can do things. We recently released some AI code templates that a less technical founder can use to build their first AI application within less than an hour. Literally less than an hour!
AI is a tool that can do everything from creating graphics to writing copy to writing code. Or say it’s a chatbot that you want to test out, like we provided for creating a business plan in the Red Bull Basement application process: there are code templates that a founder or developer can just grab, put into their own code repository and then build off of. It's like a getting started guide that makes it so much faster to get things done.
The barriers to going from an idea into a business are lowering, and we want founders to see how easy it is to develop AI applications and capitalise on all this momentum.
But don’t you have to be a highly experienced developer to use an accelerator’s AI tools?
With the right AI tools, you don't have to be an elite developer. We designed Azure and Azure AI to be a comprehensive toolkit that makes innovation easier, so you don't have to be the most technical founder to go and create some really cutting-edge solutions.
These tools are transformative, and that’s another reason why it’s so exciting to partner with Red Bull Basement. Our goal is to democratise innovation, enabling founders to get their ideas off the ground and change the world.
That feeling when your idea takes off
© Ezra Acayan / Red Bull Content Pool
The national winners of Red Bull Basement will unlock a higher level of resources, right?
Yes, these teams will be able to access the next level of Azure tools to help develop their POC [proof of concept] for their pitch in Tokyo.
The national winners will also receive Copilot+ laptops equipped with AMD’s latest Ryzen™ AI processor technology, which utilise Microsoft’s AI technologies.
You’re going to be a judge at the Red Bull Basement World Final in December. What made you want to get involved?
If you talk to any founder, anyone who's been through this startup grind before, they will probably say that the journey has valleys as well as peaks. And it can be lonely. So being a judge is, in a way, kind of the obligation that every founder has to give back to the community. Hopefully I can share some of the experiences that I've had, so that others can learn from them and maybe take something away that helps them succeed on their own.
And selfishly, it's a great way for me to see all the amazing things that are coming up now. I love seeing that fresh energy, and that fun first step of getting off the ground. It energises me, and I'm really looking forward to meeting everyone and experiencing it.