There are a lot of startup programs in the world.
Courses, incubators, accelerators, online communities. Most come with glossy websites and big ol' promises.
So if you are hearing about Launch Club for the first time, it is fair to ask:
Whhhhhhat is this and is it for ME?
This article breaks down how Launch Club works, who joins, and what founders actually get out of it.
What is Launch Club?
Launch Club is Startmate’s 8-week pre-accelerator, designed for early-stage founders in Australia and New Zealand.
It’s built for people who are working on a startup idea and want to validate it properly, are building an early MVP and want feedback, structure, and momentum, or are simply curious about the founder path and want to experience it alongside others rather than stumbling through it alone.
❌What you do not need:
- A polished product (just an idea hehehe)
- A full-time team
- Revenue or a formal company structure
âś… You do need:
- A real problem you care about
- Commitment to doing the work
- Openness to testing your assumptions in public
Who joins Launch Club?
Founders come from across industries and backgrounds. Think:Â software engineers with a product itch, operators in big companies who see broken systems up close, students experimenting with their first startup or repeat founders exploring a new idea.
The common thread is ambition.
These are people who want more than “nice side project.” They want to see whether their idea can stand up in the wild.
Launch Club focuses on scalable, venture-style startups, so unfortunately it's not a fit for:
- Agencies and service businesses
- Internal corporate innovation projects
- Charities and traditional non-profits
- Lifestyle businesses that are not designed to scale
If your ambition is to build something large, impactful, and venture-backable, you are in the right place.
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What do you actually get in the program?
At its core, Launch Club gives founders three things: structure, support, and stakes.
The structure is what turns intention into momentum. The program runs for 8 weeks and includes a weekly all-hands session on Monday evenings, plus optional workshops and office hours on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. There are clear milestones around problem validation, MVP building and storytelling, and you can expect roughly 3–6 hours per week of structured time, on top of whatever you invest in customer work and building. That design is intentional: Launch Club is built so you can participate while working or studying, without it becoming another full-time job.
The support comes from mentors, squad leaders and peers. Early in the program you’re placed into a small squad of founders who become your core crew. You share weekly updates, talk honestly about what’s working and what isn’t, and keep each other accountable when the initial excitement wears off. Each squad has a squad leader, usually a founder or operator a little further down the track, who helps you focus, prioritise and unblock when everything feels important at once.
Around that small group, you plug into the wider Startmate community: mentors with real experience in product, growth, go-to-market and technical architecture; investors who understand pre-seed and idea-stage founders; and a network of alumni who’ve taken ideas from Launch Club into the Startmate Accelerator and beyond. You’re not just handed content and left alone. You’re held by a support system that understands the early-stage chaos.
The stakes come from two anchor moments in the program: Investor Roulette and Pitch Night.
Investor Roulette is where you sit down with real angel investors and VCs, share what you’re working on, and get direct feedback on how they see it. It’s less about “closing a round” and more about understanding how investors think while you still have time to course-correct. Pitch Night arrives at the end of the program, when you present what you’ve built to the Startmate community. It’s your first serious rep telling your story in public, with a chance to unlock an interview for the Startmate Accelerator where you could receive $125K investment in your startup. These moments are not theatre for the sake of it; they are deadlines that force focus.
What do founders actually leave with?
You will not walk out of Launch Club with a guaranteed term sheet or a finished company. That is not the goal. Here's a couple of bullet points outlining a couple of things you'll get out of the program:
- A clear understanding of your customer and problem
- Hard-won insights from real conversations and tests
- A version of your product that is in front of users, not sitting in your head
- A sharper story about what you are building and why it matters
- A community of founders who know your journey and can keep backing you
- A concrete next step, whether that is pushing for more traction, applying to the Startmate Accelerator, or pivoting
For many founders, the most underrated outcome is psychological: they start to see themselves as a founder, not just a person with an idea.
How is Launch Club different from other programs?
đź‘ą ITSÂ đź‘ą SOÂ đź‘ą GOOD đź‘ą
*cough*
Plenty of programs will show you slides about startups. Launch Club is built to make you act like one.
That shows up in small ways: live sessions instead of hours of pre-recorded video, real-time feedback instead of solo homework, and a cohort that moves with you rather than a login you forget about after week one. There’s also a direct line into the Startmate ecosystem of roughly 4,000 founders, operators and investors, which means the people teaching you are often the same people who may later become mentors, customers or backers.
Not to toot our own horn buuuuttttt Startmate is the most active early-stage investor in ANZ.
Meaning after 15 yrs of investing in 350+ of ANZs top startups we've learnt a thing or two.
Launch Club is not just a course, it is a way to get onto the radar of the people who may one day write your first cheque or champion you into the Accelerator.
Hey if you are somewhere in the middle, that is usually a sign you should lean in, not out.
Keen to meet you đź‘‹
