Antler Australia held its virtual Demo Day recently, live streamed from Sydney to almost 1,600 people around the world, off the back of more than 2,000 registrations.
“We are humbled and encouraged by the level of support the global and local tech startup and investor ecosystems continue to show Antler Sydney and our portfolio companies,” says Bede Moore, Managing Partner of Antler Australia.
“Attracting roughly 1,600 live attendees is a huge feat in the current climate of Zoom fatigue and COVID restrictions. It’s a great indicator really. It shows that the global investment community sees the value and impact of Antler is doing, and the portfolio companies we help to build and invest in.”
“We couldn’t be more proud of the portfolio companies’ founders who gave comprehensive and inspiring pitches last night,” says Anthony Millet, Partner of Antler Australia.
“Thanks to their hard work and execution, they have all received a high number of leads to pursue today from people interested in becoming investors, advisors, customers and more.
“With now almost 40 companies in our local portfolio alone, and more than 250 globally, Antler is truly defining itself as a leading global VC that enables and invests and the world’s most exceptional individuals.”
The event took place in the ausbiz studio in Sydney’s Barangaroo precinct, and through Antler’s purpose-built event page, the audience was able to ask questions to the founders live, and express their interest to engage further with each team following the event.
Over the course of the evening, the VC revealed the 13 companies which had formed and launched within Antler over the last five months.
From SaaS to FinTech, HealthTech, Future of Work, EduTech, and more, these businesses are on their way to becoming the defining companies of tomorrow.
Here are the companies that pitched (in order of appearance):
Remote Social
Remote Social is the ultimate destination for remote and hybrid teams to come together online to build connection and culture through play and shared experiences.
Building culture and connection within and across teams has never been as important – or difficult – as it has become in the new, remote world of work. Remote Social is delivering a new way for teams to connect.
The company’s platform removes the administrative burden normally associated with discovering and organising team activities to provide an evolving offering of games, activities and tools that strengthen culture, wellbeing and connection within teams.
“With more than 200 organic signups and beta customer interest from the likes of Atlassian, EBay, Google, Deputy, major banks and telcos, this team is fast gaining attention as companies seek the tools to help their organisations thrive,” said Bede when introducing the team at Demo Day.
The business is led by co-founder and CEO Jess Baird Walsh, who brings over 15 years experience spanning startups, media, commercial & NGOs. She is joined by co-founder and CPO, Michael Fitzbaxter, and co-founder and CMO Gerardo Contrerasa, who between them have worked with big tech brands such as Atlassian, Deputy, Adobe and Google.
Watch the pitch
Coder One
The fierce competition for top tech talent is the #1 challenge faced by tech recruitment teams today.
Early-stage developers struggle to promote themselves and upskill for top industry roles. Coder One bridges the gap by giving developers a platform to showcase their tech skills, and giving tech teams a platform to connect with emerging talent.
Coder One’s tournament platform features AI multiplayer games that aren’t played by humans, but played by bots programmed by developers.
“I am super pumped for their first AISportsChallenge coming up this December,” said Harini Janakiraman, Associate Partner of Antler, and global Head of Technology, when introducing the team at Demo Day.
The business is led by co-founder and CEO Joy Zhang, an avid gamer, e-Sports enthusiast and has a background in Product Management, R&D, UX, Corporate Strategy and a demonstrated ability to innovate from whitespace. She is joined by co-founder and CTO Armin Chitizadeh who has 5 years of research experience on AI and Multi-Agent Environment and has a PhD in Computer Science (AI).
Watch the pitch:
Upflowy
The average conversion rate from calls to action to qualified signups in the SaaS industry stagnates below 40%, as it is mostly managed by product teams, which makes iterations slow and expansive.
Upflowy let marketers gain full control on building and experimenting with their signup flows, taking away the load from the engineering team. It does so by letting non-technical users easily assemble best-in-class signup flows using no code tools and set up A/B tests on any part of the flow.
“Upflowy lets marketers gain full control on building and experimenting with their signup flows, using no-code tools to build, optimise and AB test,” said Anthony on the night.
Upflowy is led by co-founder and CEO Guillaume Ang, an engineer by trade, who has spent the past 10 years founding and scaling businesses, with a specific focus on operations and data. He is joined by co-founder and CTO Alexandre Girard, an experienced CTO/CPO who has had more than 8 years experience in consulting, software development and product management, as well as by co-founder and CRO Matthew Browne, who is not only a serial founder but also a tech investor.
Watch the pitch:
The One Two
68% of women are uncomfortable in their bras. The One Two are solving this problem with a hyper-personalised shopping experience, superior online fit technology and better bras.
Women spend $120bn on bras every year, yet most are unhappy. Bra shopping is impersonal and overwhelming. Women are not set up for success, most can’t identify or troubleshoot a good fit and most bras are poorly engineered. The One Two delivers a superior customer experience with hyper-personalised shopping, proven online fit technology and the world’s best bras. Gorgeous everyday bras. Fast online fittings. A two-try fit guarantee and a 30 day wear guarantee. Bra shopping just got personal with The One Two.
“The One Two are direct-to-consumer model in a hugely underserved market: women’s bras,” said Bede. “The One Two team is a winning combination of Tier 1 management consultancy and serial founder experience.”
Margot Balch leads The One Two as co-founder and CEO. She’s an experienced eCommerce founder, digital strategist and entrepreneur, and was part of the team that launched The Iconic in Australia. Her co-founder and COO, Maria Golushko brings strong strategy and operations expertise and previously founded a fashion brand out of NY and grew it from the vision to >$3M in sales.
“We believe this team is onto the next big thing in women’s fitting and lingerie,” said Bede.
Watch the pitch:
m8buy
Remember going to the mall with your friends? m8buy wants to do the same with online shopping.
The startup interviewed Gen Z and late millennials and discovered extremely similar shopping habits: discovering an item on social media, sharing the item with friends and family, and waiting for a financial incentive e.g. a sale. This journey is broken across various platforms.
To solve this, m8buy is helping retailers tap social buying by allowing online shoppers to share shopping activities, shop together in a time-boxed environment to achieve better price and value.
“Having soft launched their pilot product in mid-October, m8buy already has a strong pipeline of 15 online retailers across a range of categories,” said Harini.
The three co-founders are experienced operators. Johann Grunberger has been the co-founder of two Rocket Internet ventures and has experience raising over $3m. Kirit Kundu has previously been the CTO and Product Lead for consumer and small business digital products with a career spanning 20 years across Singapore, UK and Australia. And finally, Arjun Singh is a former J.P. Morgan Investment Banker where he led M&A, fundraising, and strategic initiatives.
Watch the pitch:
Sync Technologies
Construction is complex and fragmented. Sync Technologies enables construction businesses to turn data from existing and emerging technologies into action.
Sync is a catalyst for construction sites, empowering site managers, project managers and supervisors. The business’ first product is a Construction Assistance System (CAS), which syncs your existing technologies, automates processes and connects everyone, enabling complete situational awareness by creating a single source of truth.
“Sync Technologies are bringing digital innovation to the construction industry,” said Ant. “They are focused on on-site execution, remote data and legacy asynchronous communication systems by turning data into actionable insights.
“Currently working with four alpha clients, this team is also in the process of formalising their first major national client with a projected revenue of $2m in the first year alone.”
Carolina Dreifuss is the co-founder and CEO of Sync Technologies. She brings 12 years experience in construction across APAC to the business, while her co-founder and COO Alex Pryor brings with him 7 years experience in luxury construction and an additional 7 years experience in the Special Forces.
Watch the pitch:
GradVantage
GradVantage is a SaaS solution to create and run virtual grad onboarding and up-skilling programs.
Using GradVantage companies can reduce the cost and lead time of up-skilling grad hires in tech and SaaS industries by up to 70%. It also gives companies the ability to:
– Assess the skill gaps of hired grads and create a personalised learning journey
– Create a program from a library of curated content and role templates
– Connect the grads with mentor within the organisation
– Get learning content on demand from a marketplace of L&D content providers
– Connect the grads to a community of learners to foster a peer to peer learning ecosystem
– Supercharge the learning journey through gamification and AI based learning assistant
“GradVantage is a spin-out of Amit’s previous business, which he recently exited to a Fortune 200 company,” said Bede. “This is an incredible team that we are excited to be backing.”
The co-founders are Amit Choudhary and Atif Saad. Amit brings 15 years experience in global tech companies, in sales leadership roles across US, ME, India, Asia & ANZ, and his last startup venture was acquired by a Fortune 200 company. Atif similarly has 15 years of experience in leading IT professional services business. From Pepper Financial Group to Unisys.
Watch the pitch:
Flow of Work Co
Flow of Work Co is a talent opportunity and insights platform that makes it easy to match the aspirations of employees to projects and other development opportunities, helping organisations grow and retain critical talent and reduce cost.
For organisations who believe business performance is accelerated by the retention and continuing growth of existing talent, the Flow of Work Co platform identifies and matches the true underlying skills, upskill potential, and aspirations of employees, to the capability gaps of the business – both current and future.
Unlike the traditional model of ‘fire and rehire’ in order to acquire new skills for capability gaps, Flow of Work Co’s solution matches the aspirations of employees to projects and other opportunities while saving on recruitment and onboarding costs, and simultaneously enhancing workforce loyalty and employer brand magnetism.
Co-founder and CEO Helena Turpin is an HR innovator who has led digital, marketing and analytics functions and launched several tech products and services. Before Flow of Work Co, she spent 20 years solving people and work related problems for large global HR services companies, VC backed firms and Deloitte. She is joined by co-founder and COO Iris Appelo, a strong operator with deep HR expertise having acted in leadership roles and managed large client projects at Randstad.
And finally, co-founder and CTO Nicolai Lindholm, a developer turned project manager who has several years driving technology change and innovation for the world’s largest HR service company.
Watch the pitch:
eQALY
Over 80% of people want to age in their homes, in their communities.
eQALY integrates multiple data sources including in-home activity and biometric data, feedback from the elderly person, their family and carers to enable proactive identification of concerning trends both short and long-term.
Guided by disease specific care pathways, this enables home care organisations to provide the right care at the right time, supporting those facing frailty, loneliness, dementia and chronic disease to live the highest quality of life possible for longer in their own homes.
“Having spent almost 10 years in healthcare transformation roles, eQALY’s CEO Andy is in an exceptional position to lead this business. Paired with his co-founder Kelly, who has deep experience building from 0-1 and a keen focus on scaling companies – this team is ready to propel eQALY into success,” said Harini.
Portant
Portant is an automated reporting platform that empowers you to create stunning reports with less effort.
Simply, select a report from its curated library of templates, then place your future reporting on autopilot by automatically sourcing the project data from teams and tools on a cadence that suits your organisation.
“Portant has set out to build an end-to-end project reporting solution that removes the monotony for project managers, increases transparency for all stakeholders, and adapts to different organisations,” says Bede.
“With four development partners and almost 50 people already on this teams’ waiting list – they’re onto a good thing.”
This team is led by co-founder and CEO James Fyfe, a product creator, focussed on building compelling consumer experiences in the enterprise space.
As well as being a former founder, James has worked in engineering roles across a variety of industries, while his co-founder and CTO Blake Lockley is a passionate developer with experience in mobile, backend, and full-stack development, and similarly as previously launched his own business.
Watch the pitch:
Tactiq
Tactiq captures valuable meeting insights, which would otherwise be lost, so they can be voiced throughout the company.
Tactiq’s extension captures these insights and can easily be accessed through our knowledge traceability platform. Think: An all-in-one solution for meeting notes, summaries and knowledge management with the help of artificial intelligence.
“Already this team has over 110,000 users with their chrome extension, including paying users from Salesforce, Shopify, Netflix, Spotify, and more,” said Harini.
“They are also consistently seeing more than 10% WoW growth.”
Co-founder and CEO Ksenia Svechnikova leads Tactiq. Having previously worked as an engineer for companies such as Hipages and Atlassian, Kseniia grew frustrated by the number and quality of team meetings. She started asking herself how companies could make the most out of the meetings and so decided to solve this problem with Tactiq.
Before launching Tactiq, co-founder and COO Nick Nikolaiev similarly experienced a problem when he was working with his New Zealand team from San Francisco, while was running his previous AI startup.
Rounding out the team is co-founder and CMO Genson Glier who has a background in product and growth marketing, and has managed remote teams, based in the Philippines, Estonia and India in previous companies: Cheq, Zuper & Ambion Digital.
Watch the pitch:
StackGo:
All Marketplaces have different technical and commercial solutions, so choosing and integrating with the right ones takes significant effort and time. StackGo offers a single point of entry where software vendors can search the right marketplaces, make their integrations work, and scale their businesses.
Think: A simpler and faster way for B2B software vendors to sell through SaaS marketplaces.
“StackGo has already signed its first 5 partner pilot customers and has a waitlist of 40 more. Meet Stackgo,” said Anthony.
StackGo is led by co-founder and CEO Matthew Collis, a serial entrepreneur, with prior exit in B2B SaaS that scaled globally. Meanwhile, co-founder and CTO Manish Pahwa is an experienced engineering leader who has managed teams of over 200 engineers while leading Telstra’s Billing systems transformation. He brings relevant experience being a lead engineer in the Telstra Apps Marketplace and managed many complex enterprise integration type projects from concept to production.
Watch the pitch:
Feather
The global pandemic has rapidly accelerated the growth of the digital economy and remote work. Simultaneously, lockdowns have disrupted the ability for creators and instructors to deliver their services, from yoga classes to art lessons.
Feather empowers creators and instructors to seamlessly deliver online experiences. Unlike a marketplace, the Feather platform provides the tools for people to build their brand online and foster a direct channel with their audience. In minutes, creators and instructors can set up their profile to launch live events and on-demand classes, removing time-consuming admin and the need for multiple products.
The Feather team is made up of co-founder and CEO Shori Hijikata who leads Feather’s commercial strategy and growth, leveraging her prior experiences in management consulting and leading an ed-tech startup.
She’s joined by co-founder and COO Scott Ellice-Flint who has previously founded several award-winning startups and, in a previous life, worked as a management consultant. And finally, co-founder and CTO Celilsemi Sam Erkiner, an award-winning engineer, leading Feather’s technology and development.
Watch the pitch:
- These businesses were built with and invested in by Antler, the world’s largest early-stage investment platform. If you want to build your next company with Antler, applications for the next cohort can be made here.
StartupDaily is the official media partner of Antler Australia’s Demo Day.
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