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Hey Startmate Family,

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For 12 years, we’ve been known for the exceptional programs that power our community.

These have been duct-taped together with google groups, zapier, notion, airtable etc.

We’re finally upgrading this, so you (hopefully soon) will know Startmate for the products that power that community.

The first one is our Talent Engine, which fuels startups to find ambitious talent and all of our Fellows to find jobs in startups. Anyone can post their jobs for free, alumni get to also search the entire database of talent.

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Over the last month, we’ve been running our 20th accelerator selection process.

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Meet our second product in the Startmate range ❤️‍🔥

For 12 years now we’ve been cobbling together the process with a hacky combination of notion and airtable. It’s fair to say that it was slightly frustrating to use. But in the space of 2 weeks, Ryan built out a selection portal that has to be seen to be believed - and so here it is:

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I’m talking leaderboards (both for startups and selectors).

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I’m talking summaries shared after each stage and countdowns till the next.

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I’m talking a live feed of every review as it was submitted, space for discussion and debate on each company, and a voting submission form that engendered highly lucid investment thinking and communication.

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The results spoke for themselves: we had a record number of selectors involved (~150), record number of overall vote numbers (3,900 for stage one alone), and record number of votes per company (average = 8).

Congrats Ryan on the incredible build, thanks to every single person involved at every stage - we are so excited to announce this new cohort to you all in the very near future!

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What’s on?

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LET US HELP YOU

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Do you have news that you would like us to share with the Startmataverse? 

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We generally include:

• customer stories and highlights
• product launches
• funding news 
• press announcements or coverage 
• upcoming public events 
• specific roles you're looking to fill

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Ask

• 🤝MEET THE COHORT: Our new Winter23 Accelerator founders are for a whole week in Melbourne for their kick-off - want to get to know them? Come for drinks for the Startmate Community ONLY here on Wednesday 12th July 7pm
• 🔥MENTOR: The Accelerator cohort is kicking off on the 10th July - if you’d like to apply to join as a mentor sign up here!
• 🧑‍💻NO CODE: Curious about our new No-Code Fellowship? Register for our AMA on the 12th July here: https://lu.ma/qkt2j45h
• 🧑‍🚀LAUNCH CLUB: Curious about Launch Club? Register for our AMA on the 10th July here: https://lu.ma/gbpx5hv3

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Good

• 🚀ACC APPS: 43% of the applications for the accelerator were from either within our community or were referred directly from someone within our community. This is a significant jump from previous cohorts and has resulted in an overall higher quality standard of application. Bonus: >40% of startups that applied were women-founded!
• 🧑‍🚀LAUNCH CLUB: Founders pitched to Rampersand, Tractor Ventures and Blackbird as part of the Pitch Showcase to wrap up the cohort. Excitingly, 2 teams have been accepted into the Accelerator - an insane achievement to have built a startup in such a short amount of time
• 🥳 COMMUNITY DRINKS: We had ~180 register for Sydney and Melbourne drinks, ~15 for Perth, ~30 for Auckland, and ~35 for Brisbane!! Last Thursday of every month, get around it.
• 🚺WOMEN FELLOWSHIP: We’ve welcomed 120 brilliant and ambitious women and non-binary people into our community. Penny Holloway - fellow/recipient of the McHenry Writers Scholarship - has been documenting some of the key sessions - check out this, this and this.
• 🌎CLIMATE: Over 9 weeks, our 100 Fellows had 30+ hours of content, heard from 45 superstar speakers (over 60% women speakers), were supported by 30 incredible Founding Advisors,and got the chance to visit Vow, Amber, Goterra, Tritium, Great Wrap, Hullbot and Aquila. 
• 🐝FIRST BELIEVERS: We just received our best-ever feedback from the most recent FB cohort, with an average rating of 9.3/10. As a community we saw >600 startups, had 177 hours of pitching (insane), each FB had the opportunity to go deep on 21 startups, and FBs submitted over >4,000 investment decisions.
• 🧠HIGH PERFORMANCE: We kicked off our inaugural cohort of HPF with Craig Davis + 40 fellows (73% Startmate Alum - talk about calibre). 
• 🧑‍🎓STUDENT FELLOWSHIP: Kicked off this week with 170 super ambitious Fellows - 20+ are already founders, 110+ want to found soon. They learnt from some of the best in the startup biz this week over 12 different sessions, had speed coaching with 90 coaches, and had 2 + IRL social catchups.

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Bad

• 😵‍💫STRATEGY EXPLAINER: We’ve really nailed the internal strategy, but are still working on how to explain our strategy externally, which means that we still get the odd, ‘why on earth are you guys always launching 800 things at once? HOW DOES IT ALL FIT TOGETHER?!’ All will be explained in good time my friends, but rest assured, there is a master plan at work 🚀

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Ugly

• 🎯STRETCH GOALS: We’ve set more ambitious targets than ever, and it’s fair to say the team is streeetched to achieve them. We’re about to hit go on a few really key new roles that will help SM get to the next level - keep your eyes peeled 
• 🤕DATA NIGHTMARES: We’re trying to be more fastidious in tracking outcomes post-program, but with 1,000+ people going through Startmate programs per year, this has become a beast of a task.

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