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Hi SM Family,

With two long weekends, raising $13m of the $30m Continuity Fund, simultaneous Demo Days in Melbourne, Auckland and Sydney, a few team members getting COVID, and two Fellowships launching, it’s safe to say April flew by.

The good news is, we’ve locked in our Q2 KRs, we are rested, and we are ready to dive headfirst into May.

Ask

1. Finance Manager- We’re looking for a Finance Manager who can build a finance function that lets us realise our massive ambitions. If this sounds like your jam, apply here. If you know someone who would be a great fit, spread the word!

2. Accelerator Applications- Applications are open for our Winter22 Accelerator cohort! Apply here. (Applications close on May 29th; the 13-week program starts on July 11th.)

3. Student Fellowship Applications - Student Fellowship applications are open! If you are an ambitious student, or know anyone who fits this description, please direct them here.

Startmate goals

We call this the Triple P strategy: Programs, Products, Platform. 

1. Programs — get everyone working in their power lanes and launch 7 new programs.

• The S22 Accelerator program ended with four Demo Day celebrations. By most reports, the energy in the room was electric, and it was just fantastic to be back together IRL.
• The Media Fellowship has launched and the programming is fire. Our Fellows have heard from Junkee Co-Founder Tim Duggan, The Daily Aus Co-Founder Zara Seidler and Studio Self Founder Joan Westenberg, to name but a few, and we are only just beginning.
• The Women Fellowship kicked off with a bang! This cohort, we have 90 wickedly smart, ambitious and talented women who are going to change the startup ecosystem. Watch this space!

2. Products — build our first tech product and raise a financial product (the Continuity Fund).

• We’ve onboarded 223 Fellows and 159 companies to the Talent Engine. With our next cohorts of Women, Media and Student Fellows soon to join the platform, we’re now diving into customer discovery to better refine our value proposition for 2.0. Stay tuned!
• The Continuity Fund has reach $13m in verbal commitments from the Startmate Family. Next, we’ll open the opportunity to family offices.

3. Platform — integrate programs and products to work together on one platform.

• No major updates on this front.
  

Good

• Ewa Lobaza joined us as Customer Relationship Lead. Hurruh! Do you want to hire talent or partner with Startmate? - hit her up! (ewa@)
• Fun stat: 68% of startups from our Winter 2021 raised their next fundraising round within 6 months of finishing the Accelerator.
• We’ve had our first-ever, seven-figure LP commitment for a single fund.

Bad

• 12 years into Startmate, we’re setting our North Star and going through the iterations but we haven’t hit the mark yet. Got an idea? Reply and let me know what you think Startmate’s north star should be!
• The Student hackathon has been postponed because we didn’t nail our timing. However, learnings abound, and the whole team benefited from Cam’s post-mortem presentation. The Student Fellowship is going ahead as planned.
• The Founders Fellowship has been pushed back so Megan can focus her efforts on the Accelerator. This was ultimately a tough call, but the right one.

Ugly

• As a Leadership team, we have only spent a handful of time in person and our medium-term strategy needs some old fashioned in-person whiteboarding, so we can give the team more clarity about where we're going and how we're getting there. So we’re getting together for three days next week to work through this.
• Our investor communication needs upgrading - we’re slow - even with the great news and exciting work of returning millions of dollars back to investors. Help us find a Finance Manager!

Thanks, Team!

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Michael Batko

CEO, Startmate