Google today announced the kick off of its inaugural Launchpad Start bootcamp in Nigeria.

Launchpad is Google’s mentorship-driven global startup program which has a goal of driving real success for startups. The 5-day program will focus on helping early-stage startups improve their business and product.

 The Google Developers Launchpad Program is a three-phase program. The first phase is Launchpad Build - a single-day event focused on any stage startups that are building their app, platform or business on Google technology. Towards the end of 2016, the first Launchpad Build events in Sub-Saharan Africa were held across Lagos, Nairobi and Cape Town. 

 Launchpad Start is a 5-day problem solving bootcamp designed for early stage startups. Each day of the bootcamp focuses on a different skill with a specific target outcome at the end of the day. Launchpad Start Lagos is a one week workshop that will commence from Monday 6th to end Saturday 11th of November 2017.

 A total of 20 startups have been selected for Launchpad Start and they will have access to one on one mentorship and instructor-led workshops that will provide them with  actionable, in-person training to help them tackle critical growth and scale challenges.

 Launchpad Accelerator, which is the final phase  is a 6-month hyper-acceleration program for late-stage participating startups who get access to a global list of Mentors, Google engineers and a 2-week all-expense-paid  bootcamp experience at the Google Developers Launchpad Space in San Francisco.

 Speaking at the start of this year’s bootcamp, Juliet Ehimuan-Chiazor, Google Nigeria Country Manager said, “ The growth of entrepreneurship in Africa is critical to the survival of the continent. Therefore, we are training startups with the aim of creating opportunities for job seekers who are just entering the labour market.

 “Google believes that empowering entrepreneurs and startups is essential to drive employment growth, and enable both economic and social development on the continent,” she says.

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