Imagine presenting in a pitch meeting and your audience is stifling yawns, checking their devices as you talk, and finally they walk out of the meeting with deafening silence. It is in these meetings that the power of storytelling has often been overlooked. I speak from experience having been in the audience of these presentations.… Read more »
One of Australia’s best tech and innovation festivals, South Australia’s _SOUTHSTART, is offering 10 startup founders to take the stage for its pitch showcase in 2025 The annual 3-day event brings together founders, investors, and industry visionaries to connect, and shape the future, next year from March 4-6, in Adelaide’s Garden of Unearthly Delights, as well… Read more »
Imagine walking into a room of investors feeling confident, calm and certain that you’ll put your best pitch forward. When the stakes are high – and one meeting could make or break what happens to your business next – it can be challenging to feel this way. The key to feeling confident is preparation, and… Read more »
Proptech Build Buddy, a platform that allows users to design, approve and build their new home, will head to Silicon Valley next month as the Australian flag bearer in the Global Startup World Cup. Build Buddy is revolutionising the home building industry with easy-to-use platform that explain what you need to do, when and how, without… Read more »
Generative AI and ChatGTP have their fans, but if you really want to excite someone, enlist technology to make their daily lives easier. And that’s just what The Laundry Lady, an online marketplace that deals with the drudgery of a washing, has done, bringing tech and innovation to a market we’re going to call household… Read more »
There’s plenty of startup action happening in the Sunshine State at the moment, and that’s on show this week at Something Tech. The two-day festival, August 29-30, once again brings together Queensland’s tech and innovation community in their own unique way for “a saturation of expertise, community sharing, and networking”. Festival cofounder Pauline Fetaui, from… Read more »
It’s easy to get these basic things wrong and easy to get them right, so let’s get them right! First up: videos are sometimes an investor deterrent. Unless you’re a video startup or there’s something visual about your customer experience that is essential to understand, don’t send investors videos instead of decks — they are… Read more »
For better or for worse, some small things can make you look like a beginner when pitching to VCs. During my time at Square Peg as a senior associate, I’ve seen plenty of things founders and startups do well, but also don’t, during their pitches. So here are my top five things to avoid –… Read more »
Three Australian startups have been chosen from more than 3000 applications globally to take part in the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield event at Disrupt in San Francisco this week. AI-based marketing B2B Rammp, fashion tech venture Theodore, and fintech Cape will follow in the footsteps of unicorn alumni such as DropBox, Cloudflare and FitBit in taking… Read more »
The annual ARENA Renewables Startup Showcase is heading to Melbourne this year, with applications now open for startups interested in taking part. Pioneering startup network Innovation Bay and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) have teamed up again for the fourth showcase, which takes place on Wednesday, November 1, at Cargo Hall in Melbourne. They’re looking for early… Read more »
In this essay, we are imagining a pitch from an early stage deep tech company, probably still working inside a university. An investor red flag might not be obvious to a founder. Why would it? They build up over years as signals of weakness and they are best avoided. Knowing what they are makes it possible to… Read more »
Eight startups founded or led by women will pitch this week for the chance to represent Australia on the global stage as part of the She Loves Tech Global Startup Competition. Now in its third year in Australia, seven-year-old She Loves Tech is a global platform committed to closing the funding gap for female entrepreneurs… Read more »
The Commonwealth Bank’s venture-scaling arm, x15ventures, has selected four payments startups as the finalists for its Xccelerate22 program. The four – Paytron, YouPay, Cape and Persollo – were chosen from 16 fintechs chosen to take part in the Xccelerate Community Day a fortnight ago, going on to take part in a a deep-dive session known as the Pathway to… Read more »
Industry dinosaurs like me can still remember when there was no such thing as a startup pitch competition. But times have changed: the glaciers have retreated, bipedal mammals have become the dominant life form, and there are now more startup pitch competitions each year than coffee shops near Wynyard Station. Good for startups, right? Yes… Read more »
Before you start pitching, roleplay the investor perspective Pitches need to be given from the perspective of the investor. These things are too often forgotten The investor’s job is to make a financial return for their investors. They get thousands of pitches per year. This means they are distracted and also that they’ve probably heard… Read more »
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King River Capital is building a $157 million sixth VC fund to back AI 
FinTech Australia’s pre-budget submission warns of ‘two-speed’ ecosystem hurting new startups without R&D tax incentive reform 
Artificial intelligence expert Lee Hickin departs Microsoft to become National AI Centre director 
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