Startmate was founded on a culture of radical honesty and founders helping founders.
Startmate was created in 2011 when there was latent creativity and potential in Australia, but no venture capital or accelerators to support it.
So, Niki Scevak (who would go on to found Blackbird Ventures) and a bunch of successful founders (including Mike and Scott from Atlassian) put their money where their mouths were. Everyone invested $10k into a mini fund to invest in the next generation of early-stage founders, and started building a community of successful founders to support them.
Nowadays, we run two accelerator cohorts a year (in Sydney + Melbourne) and have a world-class community of VCs, mentors and alumni who share our vision, all of who invest their own time and money into each cohort. To date we have invested in 100+ startups.
Our Team
While we have 80+ mentors and 100+ alumni, Startmate is ran by a small team, across two cities.
Michael Batko, CEO
Freya Berwick, Events + Marketing
Sascha Kerbert, Business Ops Manager
We are based at Grok Ventures in Sydney, and The Goods Shed in Melbourne.
“To have a whole team behind you, driving you, doing everything they can to optimise you for success - it’s almost unbelievable what you can achieve.
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