Since April 2010

The biggest startup community in Indonesia.

#StartupLokal is where startups, investors, media, developers and people working in IT meet each other and find something to build together. It runs workshops, talks and networking evenings, and the meetup itself has fallen on the first Thursday of the month since 2010.

It began as a Twitter chat. In April 2010 a handful of people using the #StartupLokal hashtag agreed to meet in person, and on 6 May thirty-three of them sat down at the Starbucks in fX Sudirman. Nobody has charged for a seat since.

There is no membership, no application and no fee. The community has never owned a room either: for sixteen years somebody has lent it one, month after month.

By the numbers

Counted from the archive on this site, not typed into the page. They move when the community does.

123

meetups held

years running

214

people who have spoken

3,475

photographs in the archive

700

companies in the directory

How we got here

16 years of meetups, a book, a trip to Ireland and the first startup incubator in Indonesia.

2010
It started with a hashtag.
#StartupLokal was born from conversations on Twitter. That's why it starts with a hashtag. From there, we planned to meet up for the first time.
2010
Meetup v.1
On the sixth of May, 2010, thirty-three people came to meetup number one. Soon after, ninety-seven. By the end of that first year, two hundred, connecting and collaborating with like-minded people.
2011
Lessons from Enterprise Ireland
In 2011, Enterprise Ireland invited us to see how a country grows startups inside its universities. That same year we published a book called #StartupLokal Kita, where eighteen early founders shared their experiences and struggles.
2012
Project Eden
Coming home from Ireland, an idea had taken hold, and that idea became Project Eden, Indonesia's first startup incubator. Twenty startups pitched for a place at Investor Idol. Marissa Mayer and the Google team even dropped by.
2012 to 2021
Telunjuk becomes Compas
One of Eden's first startups, Telunjuk, went on to raise from three venture funds. In 2021 it was acquired. Today you know it as Compas.co.id.
2014 to 2018
The meetups never stopped
And the meetups never stopped. In 2018 we celebrated our eighth anniversary with Telkom, alongside five hundred attendees.
2019 to 2020
New formats
We wanted more impact, so we changed the format. Workshops that bring new and aspiring founders closer together, in smaller groups. Then Covid came, and we moved to webinars.
Today
16 years on
16 years on: over 120 meetups. 214 invited speakers. And 25,000 people who came to learn, and stayed to build.
Let's connect and collaborate.
Welcome to #StartupLokal: Indonesia's oldest and biggest startup community. Let's connect and collaborate!