Startmate

Articles by

Holly Brooks

Accelerator

Investments

Startmate

Requests for Startups

Holly Brooks

September 6, 2025

At Startmate, we’re industry agnostic. We invest in people first. This is our Request for Startups, a non-exhaustive list of areas we’re particularly interested in, co-authored by our mentors.

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

Investments

Top 20 Startmate companies

Holly Brooks

September 6, 2025

Since 2010, Startmate has invested in over 300 startups. Today, these companies are worth over $4.5b and employ over 3.5k people.

LEARN MORE

First Believers

The next investable wave: where Bill Tai sees billions being built in AI, energy, and creator economies

Holly Brooks

September 4, 2025

"You don’t need to be smarter than the world. You just need to be in the right market at the right moment."

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

Meet Startmate’s Winter’25 Accelerator cohort

Holly Brooks

September 4, 2025

The Winter ’25 cohort is full of founders chasing the edge of what’s possible and dragging the future closer.

LEARN MORE

Startmate Collective

From playground chats to app store: How Kate Barany built the Playtime Planner parents were waiting for

Holly Brooks

September 4, 2025

When Kate Barany became a mum to two high-energy boys, she quickly realised parenting required more planning than a wedding and more group chats than a high school reunion.

LEARN MORE

Startmate Collective

A match made by values: How Rachel Harker is redesigning connection with Tribal

Holly Brooks

September 4, 2025

As a clinical psychologist, Rachel Harker spent years sitting with young people 1:1, listening, supporting, and witnessing the quiet epidemic rising beneath the surface.

LEARN MORE

Startmate Collective

Ladymates has a new name: Startmate Collective

Holly Brooks

September 4, 2025

This membership has grown into one of the most powerful and fast-growing offerings at Startmate, a community for ambitious women across tech and startups to connect, grow, and lead.

LEARN MORE

First Believers

What makes a billion-dollar founder? Bill Tai’s investor lens on talent, timing, and market design

Holly Brooks

September 3, 2025

Bill Tai, early backer of Canva, Zoom, and SafetyCulture, shares how he evaluates founders and investment opportunities.

LEARN MORE

First Believers

From curiosity to grit: Anna Barber on what truly sets great founders apart

Holly Brooks

September 3, 2025

Anna Barber, Partner at M13 and former Managing Director of Techstars LA, argues that the greatest determinant of venture outcomes comes down to people.

LEARN MORE

Startmate Collective

You can't be what you can't see: Startmate Woman Leader of the Year Award #Startmate Collective - Leaders.

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

At Startmate, we believe in the power of visible role models. The saying “You can’t be what you can’t see” rings true, especially in leadership.‍

LEARN MORE

Startups 101

WTF is Product Management?

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Ok. So we all hear the words “Product” and “Manager” thrown around. But WTF actually is Product Management and what does a Product Manager do?‍

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

🫵🏽 Your ultimate guide for getting through the first round of the Startmate Accelerator

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Every 6 months, we get 500+ applications for our Accelerator. There are three stages to the application process.

LEARN MORE

Startups 101

WTF is No-Code and WTF is the No-Code Fellowship?

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

When most people hear the word “code” in a sentence, they think of a complex arrangement of GREEN letters, numbers, and figures trickling down like raindrops against a black backdrop.

LEARN MORE

Startmate Collective

What are peer advisory groups???

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Included in memberships are "peer advisory groups" that meet once a month and form an incredibly valuable and popular part of the membership experience.

LEARN MORE

Community

“We’re all a work in progress”: The path to high performance in startups

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

There’s no doubt, startups are hard work. The high-risk, high-reward environment characteristic of startups is a beautiful and chaotic way to test yourself.

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

The next generation of Transformers: How Pitcrew AI are enabling autonomous fleet management

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

The future of self-driving transport is here and knocking at our door. Founders Tim Snell, Joe Bullock and Pat Ivory have been answering some of these knocks, launching Pitcrew AI in 2020.

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

Design Mode Activated: Co-Design Your Next Product with Zipline AI

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Zipline is transforming passive online stores into interactive, insight-rich experiences where creation and IP begins with you.

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

Meet Luniate: The Startup Turning Financial Content Into a Competitive Edge

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Luniate offers a lively platform that bridges the gap between financial firms and the investors of tomorrow.

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

Meet Landid: The Startup Transforming the Way Tradies Quote Jobs

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Quoting in the building industry is slow, manual, costly, and overlooked. Landid is changing that by helping tradies spend less time on quotes and more time doing what they do best.

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

Meet Gloss Guide: The Beauty Discovery Engine Behind Your Favourite Looks

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Gloss Guide is building the infrastructure to turn beauty inspiration into reality, saving artists thousands in marketing costs and helping clients find the beauty professional for them.

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

Meet Fluency: The Ops Engine That Turns Chaos into Clarity

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

While sales, support, and engineering teams all have real-time visibility tools, ops teams are left without a system to understand what's happening, when, or how.

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

Meet Evidentful: The AI Platform Automating Witness Interviews for Police

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Evidentful is an AI-driven platform designed for police forces to help them automate witness interviews and capture them in 60 different languages.

LEARN MORE

Community

Meet Climate Tech Fellow: Shu Das

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Hear from Shu Das, an experienced Chartered Accountant and recent Climate Tech Fellowship graduate.

LEARN MORE

Community

Meet Climate Tech Fellow: Madeleine Maslin

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Madeleine is a lawyer, writer, tech policy researcher, former federal election campaign manager, and Chief Problem Solver at circular economy powerhouse, Alchemy Global Solutions.

LEARN MORE

Startmate Collective

Startmate's Woman Leader of the Year 2024

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

These stories of leadership are so incredibly inspirational to read, exactly the stories we need to shine a light on, for the very reason we started it because “you can’t be what you can’t see”.

LEARN MORE

Community

Meet Climate Tech Fellow: Heidi Dumesich

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Heidi Dumesich is a dedicated and skilled professional in the field of sustainability. Heidi is currently the Sustainability Manager at Ventia.

LEARN MORE

Community

Meet Climate Tech Fellow: John Keith

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Hear from John Keith, a banker and early stage growth investor that recently graduated from the Climate Tech Fellowship.

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

🤯 Startmate Accelerator: Frequent questions and misconceptions

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

We want to debunk the myths, clear up the grey areas and communicate unequivocally to our community what the Accelerator IS and ISN’T.

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

The Ultimate Creative Space: How SplootCode is reshaping the way we learn and use code

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

SplootCode founders Katie Bell and Mattia Fregola are on a mission to make coding simple, widespread and accessible to everyone.

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

“Replacing plastic everywhere all at once”: Fionnuala Quin (Fin) won’t rest until bioplastics have reached ubiquity

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Revolutionary climate-tech startup Kelpy is on a mission to eliminate plastic packaging, replacing it with sustainably sourced, marine degradable seaweed bioplastics.

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

Meet our Winter23 Demo Day cohort

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

The Winter23 Demo Day cohort is here, and they are going to make our lives 100x better.

LEARN MORE

Startmate Collective

Meet some of the original Startmate Collective

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

The real magic of Startmate Collective lies in the connections you build with talented, like-minded people who become not just colleagues but lifelong friends.

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

Meet our Summer'25 Accelerator cohort

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

It’s rare that you meet a founder whose ambition and drive take your breath away; meeting 28 of them at once is all but guaranteed to leave you breathless.

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

Meet our Winter ’24 Accelerator cohort

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

This cohort is ending online abuse, rethinking firefighting to make it safer and more effective, and building novel ways to support mothers post-childbirth.

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

Meet our Summer24 Accelerator cohort

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

If we had to use one word to describe this group, it would be hungry: hungry to solve problems, hungry to prove themselves, hungry to leave their mark on the world.

LEARN MORE

Student Founder Bootcamp

Meet Lutjen, final-year law student, on a pathway to find a more valuable purpose through founding.

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

We sat down with Lutjen Lee Winter’23 Student Fellow and founder of Farmbite an online marketplace enabling people to buy, swap, and sell locally grown produce.

LEARN MORE

Student Founder Bootcamp

Meet Charlotte, student fellow, STEM student and pursuing the non-traditional, entrepreneurial pathway.

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Alea shares her experience of the Student Fellowship, the startup she pitched during the Founder Challenge and why she feels drawn to founding.

LEARN MORE

Student Founder Bootcamp

Meet Archer and Davin, two uni students revolutionising the way we communicate on campus.

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Archer and Davin share their experience of the Student Fellowship, the evolution of their startup and why they have chosen to pursue the founder pathway.

LEARN MORE

Student Founder Bootcamp

Meet Alea, student fellow pursuing the non-traditional, entrepreneurial pathway.

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

We sat down with Alea Young, Summer’24 Student Fellow who is passionate about entrepreneurship and startups.

LEARN MORE

Launch Club

Launch Club to Accelerator

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Since 2021, 13% (5/39) of Accelerator companies have come through Launch Club. Keep reading to learn more about the companies and what made them stand out.

LEARN MORE

Launch Club

Lessons from the Launch Club: to build a startup, build your community

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Launch Club is a golden ticket into the Starmate village – a buzzing, vibrant, ever-innovative and inspiring village.

LEARN MORE

Startmate Collective

How to get your company to invest in your L&D

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Here are some hot tips for persuading your employer to invest in your education – even if there’s no set L&D budget or tuition reimbursement policy.

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

How Leesy is shifting the goalposts so homeownership is no longer the goal for the next generation of renters

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

If you haven’t personally experienced the horrors of renting, chances are you know someone who has.

LEARN MORE

Community

How Connor Finlayson built the largest freelance marketplace in New Zealand with no-code whatsoever

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

‍When Connor Finlayson founded the Unicorn Factory in 2018, his intentions were simple: Find more clients to freelance for. ‍

LEARN MORE

Launch Club

Accelerator

Which founder program is right for you?

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Interested in one of Startmate's founder programs, but not sure where to start? We've broken it down for you here.

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

“Finding life’s purpose”: How Raj Bagri is decarbonising diesel generators to save the planet

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

If you asked Raj Bagri six years ago what her life’s purpose was, she would have told you it was to build an impactful company that will change the world.

LEARN MORE

Women

Peek behind the scenes of the Women Fellowship

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

We get a lot of questions about what actually happens in the Women Fellowship, so we’ve put together a bit of a BTS to give you some tangible ideas.

LEARN MORE

Accelerator

Disrupting the Symphony of the mind: How Resonait is tackling the Mental Health Epidemic

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

It’s not every day you meet a founder who has spent the last 20+ years solving some of the world’s greatest humanitarian issues.

LEARN MORE

Student Founder Bootcamp

Bridging the divide between students and startups

Holly Brooks

August 28, 2025

Students are to startups what pineapple is to pizza. Don't believe us? Read on...

LEARN MORE

Community

7 of the most impressive no-code startups and operators in the Startmate community

Holly Brooks

August 15, 2025

With our No-Code Fellowship right around the corner, we thought it would make sense to spotlight some of the incredible community members leveraging no-code tools to change the world. Here are 7 of the most impressive Startmate companies and operators using no-code.

LEARN MORE