Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and reflect every once in a while, you could miss it, So let’s reflect.
Since 2010, Startmate has invested in over 350 startups. Often pre-revenue, pre-product, for all our founders, we are their very first believers.
Today, these companies are worth over $4.5b and employ over 3.5k people. But what does that matter? Numbers are numbers. It’s the stories behind these numbers that underpin our success.
The magic of the Startmate community is the mindset of ambition and paying it forward. Our founders are world-class. They have defied all odds and achieved wildly impressive success. But what makes our founders so unique and powerful is their mateship and the attitude of paying it forward.
Mike Cannon-Brooks, Atlassian was a founding mentor and investor of the Accelerator, mentoring Mike Baukes, Upguard, and Casey Ellis, Bugcrowd in our early cohorts. Kate Morris, Adore Beauty, mentored Andy Miller, Heaps Normal, who now payed it forward by mentoring numerous D2C companies. Cliff Obrecht, Canva, mentored Rory San Miguel, Propeller, who mentored Hartley Pike, Sitemate.
Michael de Nil, Morse Micro, was our first ever hardware investment in 2016 and triggered a whole new wave of great hardware investments, like 5B, Great Wrap, Uluu and Sicona to name a few, who all came back to mentor later cohorts.
And the circle of mentorship continues.
💥 Meet the Breakout Startmate Alumni
The magic of Startmate is grounded in the people who make it possible to start and build exceptional companies. So let’s meet a few of them:
🐛 Bugcrowd (2013): A crowdsourced security platform that connects organizations with a global community of security researchers for bug bounty programs and vulnerability testing.
🧮 Sitemate (SYD17): A construction tech platform that provides software for digital forms, data capture, and process management to streamline paperwork and processes.
🌐 Morse Micro (SYD17): A Wi-Fi HaLow connectivity solution provider offering a single, low-power, long-range chip for massive-scale Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
🚑 Lyrebird Health (W23): An AI medical scribe for healthcare practitioners that securely listens to consultations and intelligently generates clinical notes and documentation.
💼 Work180 (SYD18): A jobs platform and community that endorses companies genuinely committed to advancing women's careers, empowering women to make informed job choices.
🧠 Mindset Health (MEL18): A digital therapeutics company that uses hypnotherapy apps to help people manage chronic health conditions like Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).
✍️ Edrolo (2013): An online learning platform that provides video lessons, practice questions, and data-driven insights to help high school students achieve top results.
⚡ Vertus Energy (W21): A company that has pioneered an innovative technology utilizing electricity to stimulate bacteria to significantly enhance the output and speed of biofuel production.
🍻 Heaps Normal (MEL20): A non-alcoholic beer company that brews delicious, alcohol-free craft beers like their Quiet XPA.
🏗️ Workyard (2016): Workforce management software built for construction crews, offering all-in-one solutions for time tracking, scheduling, and job cost management.
🦅 SwoopAero (MEL18): An integrated drone logistics service providing autonomous air delivery for medical transport, emergency management, and ecommerce shipping.
♻️ Airrobe (MEL19): A circular fashion platform that connects brands and customers, making it seamless to resell, rent, or recycle pre-loved clothing.
🐋 ULUU (S21): A material science company that is developing a plastic-replacing material made from seaweed that is truly biodegradable.
🪐 Propeller (2015): A company that makes a multi-core processor parallel computer architecture microcontroller chip for embedded applications.
🔋 Sicona (S21): A next-generation battery materials technology developer that uses silicon to enable higher energy density and faster charging in Lithium-ion batteries.
🔒 UpGuard (2012): A complete cyber risk posture management platform that unifies risk monitoring and assessment across supply chain, attack surface, and human factors.
💸 Amber (MEL18): A renewable energy retailer that gives customers direct access to wholesale electricity prices and uses smart tech to optimize solar, battery, and EV usage.
🔐 Exclusive fund, extraordinary returns
Startmate is a community-driven seed fund, we invest $120k in each startup at a $1.5m post-money valuation or match their latest funding round. This means we don’t need to raise billion-dollar funds. Instead, we raise capped $3m microfunds every 6 months for each Accelerator cohort.
When micro funds invest as first investors, if just one company in the group reaches a valuation of $50-$100 million, it can rapidly achieve the 3x fund returns typical in venture capital. Startmate Funds consistently perform incredibly well. 11 years, we’re in the top 25% of global VC. In 5 of those years, in the top 5%.
But it doesn’t stop there. And not just on paper. Our Fund distributions alone have outperformed the paper returns of global VCs in three separate years. At Startmate, we’ve doubled down our support for breakout Accelerator companies by investing further through our Continuity Fund. This ensures they receive significant additional investment from Startmate in subsequent funding rounds.
Action: If you’re interested in our funds, here is the full overview.
💙 Founders helping founders
Startmate is first and foremost a community of Australia and New Zealand’s most ambitious founders. Our community-driven seed fund allows our alumni (founders and ex-founders) to invest in current founders. It gives them skin in the game and ensures they are fully committed to the success of the cohort. You’re not met with half-hearted advice, or fly-in fly-out advisors, but deeply committed mentors who are investing their time and money in you.
Every Accelerator mentor is an investor and our investor pool has included the likes of:
Atlassian founders Mike Cannon-Brooks and Scott Farquhar
Canva founders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht
Adore Beauty founder Kate Morris
CultureAmp founders Rod Hamilton, Doug English and Jon Williams
Luxury Escapes founder Adam Schwab
There is no better mentorship and advice than from founders who are a couple of steps ahead of you, have been in your shoes and can show up with empathy. The beauty of Startmate is the community paying it forward and alumni giving back to the next generation.
If you want to accelerate your company, the Accelerator runs twice a year and invests $120k.
🚀 Apply for the Startmate Accelerator
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