Startmate: Australia gets a new kind of startup capital
// August 19th, 2010 // Industry, My work, Startup
I’m part of a new technology venture launching today at Sydney’s Tech23 conference. I’m one of many startup founders who’ve bemoaned the lack of Y-Combinator-style investment in Australia, so when Niki Scevak asked if I’d like to get involved in something similar (with tweaks for the local market) and told me how he’d already done the bulk of the difficult strategic thinking, I was keen to get on-board.
Startmate wants to help technically-focused founders get started, with a small amount of capital, advice and a mission to Silicon Valley.
Startmate is a pool of funds and a roster of mentors who’ve all built hands-on successful web startups that began in Australia. We’ve been where you’re going and most of us are still on the journey, so we think we bring some useful perspective and experience to the challenges of getting an Australian tech startup up-and-running.
Our first program will fund five startups and begin in January, 2011 in Sydney. We’ll spend three months helping you launch your company and win your first customers.
Startmate is a bit different because:
- It’s brings together a group of Australia’s best-known web startup founders (and also me);
- It’s designed to help startups through the process of building a business that solves real customer problems
- It’s designed to prepare Australia’s best new startups to be ready for venture capital investment in Australia and the US
