Startmate selects 16 startups for its biggest Summer Accelerator yet

Startmate’s Summer’25 Accelerator cohort is its biggest yet, involving 16 wildly different startups seeking to make a big impact is profoundly varied ways

Driving them are 28 hungry, fast-moving, relentless founders who see a different future: one where Gen Z’s are more connected than lonely, where commerce is collaborative, and where the 4 million tonnes of surplus textiles created a year are pulled back into the economy.

They come from as far away as San Francisco and LA, with several also heading across The Ditch from New Zealand.

These founders are using AI in novel ways; to create learning memory for voice agents, to solve more crimes and to automate process documentation. Because of their work, more people will have the opportunity to buy homes, parents will be better equipped to support their families and childhood development will be personalised to unlock every kid’s potential.

You’ll get a chance to meet them at Startmate’s hugely popular Demo Day in May. Details on tickets will be revealed soon.

In the meantime, here’s who’s going to be on stage pitching their brilliant ideas.

Chirp

Founders: Nick Armstrong & Johnson Lin 

Chirp cofounder Nick Armstrong 

Sydney, NSW.

One-liner: Chirp’s AI amplifies sales teams to qualify and close deals faster.

CRMs have hostages, not customers. Salespeople spend 72% of their time not selling; instead, they’re manually filling in multiple systems. 

Chirp orchestrates data and automates the entire sales pipeline from lead research to closed won, empowering sales teams to focus on their relationship building and time selling. 

The vision for Chirp is that all GTM teams who manage clients, prospects and partners will use a conversational interface and never do data entry again.

Nick and Johnson are well-placed to solve the sales funnel and data orchestration problem in SaaS. Nick has 20 years in founder-led sales and previously built a system that banks could use to move data safely, whilst Johnson built an AI platform for top-of-funnel marketing. 

Circular Sourcing

Circular Sourcing founder Courtney Holm

Founder: Courtney Holm

Melbourne, VIC.

One-liner: Circular Sourcing connects businesses to source and sell quality surplus textiles, increasing profit while reducing waste.

Over 4 million tonnes of surplus textiles are generated globally each year and with a lack of sustainable solutions for reuse, perfectly good materials are devalued, stockpiled or wasted.

Circular Sourcing’s vision is to be the premier sourcing platform for all circular raw materials, providing businesses with meaningful design solutions alongside impact metrics to comply with global regulations. Already, they’ve received investment from the Country Road Climate Fund and have secured several leading Australian retailers as customers. 

With over a decade of experience at pioneering circular fashion label A.BCH, Courtney Holm and the founding team combine strong industry networks with extensive experience in circular design, fashion, e-commerce development and technology. 

Duohub

Duohub founders Oseh Mathias and Jason Beck.

Founders: Oseh Mathias, Jason Beck & Jennisha Arnanta

Sydney, NSW.

One-liner: Real-time, continuously learning memory for voice agents.

Conversational AI is the future of the customer services industry, but for voice applications, AI needs to have precise recall about the subject matter, while learning from past interactions in real-time. 

Duohub saves companies months of engineering resources by giving them access to precise, low-latency graph memory with a 5-minute setup. 

The team brings deep experience across technology and business domains, including global infrastructure, graph memory systems, TTS models, voice agents, commerce, and enterprise sales.

Edsemble

Edsemble founders  Mel Liu and Duncan Anderson

Founders: Duncan Anderson & Mel Liu

Melbourne, VIC. 

One-liner: Improving early childhood development through personalised learning.

The first five years of a child’s development are critical for lifelong success. However, most parents lack a systematic plan to support their child’s growth or a reliable way to track their progress.

Edsemble does all the research to ensure parents receive the right products at the right time.

The company is starting with an age-appropriate book subscription for children aged 0–5 and plans to expand into personalised options for children, reporting for parents, and additional offerings such as games and toys for ages 0–10, all designed to support parenting and improve developmental outcomes.

Duncan co-founded Edrolo, an EdTech company serving over 200,000 students and generating tens of millions in revenue in 2024 while attracting $50 million in funding from Blackbird and AirTree. Mel co-founded Owltail, a podcast discovery startup, where he worked alongside Duncan for five years until it was acquired. He then joined Minbie, a baby product startup, to focus on acquisition and marketing.

Evidentful

Evidentful founders Duncan Faulkner and Ravi Sohal

Founder: Duncan Faulkner & Ravi Sohal

Queenstown, New Zealand.

One-liner: Automated criminal investigations for Police.

Globally there is a shortage of police officers available to investigate the high volume of reported crime resulting in 95% of reported crime remaining unsolved. Starting with witnesses interviewing, 

Evidentful addresses the police shortage by automating the witness interview process, removing the need to deploy a human resource. 

The broader vision is to automate the wider investigation process, including offender interviews, intelligence gathering, call handling and case file preparation. Piloting begins in early 2025.

Founded by Duncan, a former British police officer and exited tech founder and Ravi, an experienced software engineer, Evidentlul is poised to transform traditional policing.  

Fluency

Fluency founders Oliver Farnill and Finnlay Morcombe

Founders: Oliver Farnill & Finnlay Morcombe

Melbourne, VIC.

One-liner: Fluency makes enterprise process documentation 50x faster through automation.

Fluency transforms complex process documentation writing from a 4-6 hour manual burden into a 5-minute task with AI, helping enterprises avoid efficiency losses and costly compliance penalties.

Founded by long-time friends and self-taught developers, Oliver (24) and Finn (24) blend finance and engineering expertise, building a platform that has quickly secured major enterprise clients around Australia.

With its AI-powered system event capture and enterprise-grade security features, Fluency is building the future of process excellence while delivering proven ROI for customers within their first week of use.

Gloss Guide

Gloss Guide founders: Courtney Clemence and Ash Hoey

Founders: Courtney Clemence & Ash Hoey

San Francisco, USA & Brisbane, QLD.

One-liner: Gloss Guide is the trusted beauty services directory connecting independent providers and customers with a quality service guarantee.

Beauty consumers face inconsistent results with quality assurance and remediation, while providers are buried in marketing tasks, struggling to attract and retain clients.

Through Gloss Guide, consumers, for the first time, can navigate a directory of verified beauty practitioners, book their appointment and have certainty that if the services are below industry standards, they are insured with an easy refund request.

Courtney, a former lash technician and retail leader, brings deep insight into the frustrations of both consumers and providers. Her co-founder Ash, a 4x founder with an ASX exit, offers the operational expertise to build and scale disruptive solutions.

Landid

Landid founder Alex Hutchison

Founder: Alex Hutchison

Manly, NSW.

One-liner: The quoting automation platform for Tradies to win and deliver more profitable projects.

Landid empowers tradies everywhere to run and grow their businesses with ease and confidence. 

Landid harnesses AI to digitise every detail of any property, automating project scoping, planning and costing with high accuracy and reliability to save tradies hours of lost time with improved project conversion and profit margins.

Founded by a team of highly experienced builders with expertise in business design, software development and process automation for companies globally, Landid is reimagining the future of work for trade businesses everywhere.

Luniate

Luniate cofounders William Stone and Dominique Harrison-Bentzen.

San Francisco, USA.

One-liner: Luniate enables financial firms to accelerate content creation to reach the next-gen investor.

We’re in the largest wealth transfer in history, with millennials set to inherit $90 trillion. They demand authentic, real-time financial information, yet 50% of financial firms are archaic and fail to connect with this generation online.

Luniate addresses this with a content platform powered by AI agents. This platform automates the creation and distribution of compliant, sentiment-driven content, significantly reducing content production time from days to minutes.

Led by co-founders Dominique (CEO), former Global Head of Digital Marketing at UBS, and William (COO), a seasoned M&A and private equity veteran who has managed over $20 billion in transactions.

Together they are building the #1 investment content operating system for the world’s leading financial brands, powered by insights from a global community of next-generation investors.

NOD

NOD founder Haylee Killip

Founder: Haylee Killip

Auckland, New Zealand.

One-liner: NOD connects parents with trusted childcare professionals, instantly.

NOD aims to capture 1% of the $78B informal online childcare market within five years ($780m revenue) and seeks to reshape 9-5 childcare within the next decade, becoming the first choice for working parents.

Haylee Killip is a dynamic advertising expert and devoted mum to a lively toddler, bringing 15 years of expertise in crafting bold, memorable brands and campaigns that drive growth across diverse industries. Her knack for turning brand ideas into household names makes her a powerhouse in the world of marketing and brand building for startups.

Since August 2024, NOD has achieved an average 51% monthly growth rate of first-time users, a 56% repeat booking rate, and 61% average monthly revenue growth.

O3

03 founder Luca Yang

Founder: Luca Yang

Melbourne, VIC & Auckland, New Zealand.

One-liner: A physical social network to help Gen Z reconnect in a lonely world.

We’re the loneliest generation ever—physical communities are dying while social media leaves us empty.

O3 turns warehouses into workspace cafes, powered by a social app that scales beyond the walls. We’re building the first social network that lives in the real world. A hub in every city. Real people. Real communities. Real connection.

In 6 months, 500+ members joined the Auckland space, starting at $20/week. Melbourne is next, with space for 2,000 more. $1M in revenue, $1m raised, 100k fans online, and thousands on the waitlist.

Luca, CEO and founder, has experience as a banker, tutor, now designer and engineer. He also built and sold an education startup while partying at Harvard. 

PentaCue AI

PentaCue cofounder Jack Chan

Founders: Eddy Kurmakaev & Jack Chan

Melbourne, VIC.

One-liner: AI platform that lets electronics manufacturers discover qualified leads instantly by analysing their product components.

PentaCue AI is transforming B2B electronics sales by replacing manual lead discovery with intelligent AI-driven targeting. They have built a specialised search engine that analyses government filings, and industry data to identify companies actively developing electronic products. 

Their platform helps sales teams filter by specific electronic components and manufacturing requirements, revealing hidden opportunities that traditional methods miss.

PentaCue AI is already serving enterprise clients including Tesla suppliers, helping them identify qualified prospects that were previously invisible through traditional channels. The electronics manufacturing industry still relies heavily on trade shows and manual research – they’re making lead discovery data-driven.

Founded by two product and software engineering experts, Eddy has lead product at a fast-growing fintech startup and Jack is an AI software engineer with a background in big data processing.

Puralink

Puralink cofounders Harrison Crowe-Maxwell, Long Tran & Shyeon Delnawaz

Founders: Harrison Crowe-Maxwell, Long Tran & Shyeon Delnawaz 

Sydney, NSW.

One-liner: Puralink provides autonomous robots for pipe inspection, mapping, and repair.

Puralink’s mission is to eliminate pipe leaks and disruptions with autonomous robots that find and fix leaks 24/7.

Inspection and maintenance of pipe assets is a USD$500B+ industry. Locally, in FY24 Sydney Water lost over $130 million to water leaks and spent over $350m on pipe inspection and maintenance.

Puralink’s patented robots autonomously navigate complex pipe networks to find leaks, increase efficiency and cut costs. 

The founding team combines experience across machine learning, robotics, research and product management – giving them a fresh perspective to tackle a global problem.

Slice

Slice founder Amy Stevens

Founder: Amy Stevens

Auckland, New Zealand. 

One-liner: A marketplace that automates the home buying process for buyers, brokers and lawyers.

More than 40% of potential buyers don’t pursue homeownership because they feel uninformed, while over 35% of millennials believe they can’t afford a home, only to discover they qualify for finance after receiving guidance. 

Slice is creating a world where everyone has the opportunity to own a home. Slice simplifies the home-buying process with guidance and tools in one place, while leveraging AI to automate financial and legal services. This not only simplifies the process for buyers but also reduces inefficiencies for professionals (brokers and lawyers), allowing them to focus on high-value tasks and offer fixed-price solutions buyers can trust. 

The team has grown Slice to 1,800 buyers and 30 partners (6 figures ARR), delivering a dollar-for-dollar+ ROI and showcasing exceptional capital efficiency. Amy has extensive experience as a lawyer and financial adviser and has lived and breathed the challenges facing home buyers.

Vulnetix

Vulnetix founders Christopher Langton & Sean Marshall

Founders: Christopher Langton & Sean Marshall

Canberra, ACT  & Sydney, NSW. 

One-liner: Vulnetix is an orchestration and analytics layer above your security detection tools.

Vulnetix is making cyber security resilient to an ever-changing future by building an intelligent monitoring layer that prioritises security issues with business context such as coverage, analytics, and impact to reduce risk with less effort. 

Their technology harnesses a network effect, notifying customers about vulnerabilities and potential solutions based on other customer’s security issues while maintaining privacy.  

Both founders have more than 20 years of experience building software from scratch. Sean is an exited founder and was an early employee at several companies including Deputy, MobileDen (exited), PureCommerce (exited), and Tutch.

Chris has built the internal version of Vulnetix for 5 enterprise companies and government organisations and was an early employee at Punters and CMD Solutions. 

Zipline

Zipline founder Michelle Reeves

Founder: Michelle Reeves

Brisbane, Australia/Los Angeles, USA.

One-liner: Powering the future of commerce by enabling brands and consumers to collaborate on products.

Consumers are not responding to traditional e-commerce growth strategies, driving brands to adapt. With customer acquisition costs soaring by 222%, brands must prioritise cost-effective innovation to capture attention, deliver personalised experiences, and increase sales.

Zipline has already tested its product with brands including Gucci and Disney, increasing user engagement from 54 seconds to up to 47 minutes. Delivering valuable time for brands to convert and drive sales. Users co-designed handbags and sneakers expressing strong positive sentiments towards the brand; “I feel like I’m part of something special, an insider,” and “I love having a say, it’s like I have VIP access.“

Zipline integrates into the brand’s website with a custom AI engine trained on the brand’s guidelines. This ensures every user-generated creation reflects the brand’s unique style while safeguarding its IP and integrity.

With over 30 years of experience working with consumer brands such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Coca-Cola, Michelle has global expertise in retail, tech, and AI.