Startmate reveals the 13 new startups it’s backed ahead of SXSW Demo Day

Female founders are involved in nearly 40% of the 13 startups in the Startmate class of winter 2023, with climate tech and AI among the key themes backed by the accelerator and investment program.

The Winter23 Accelerator cohort spans everything from AI-powered recruitment to misdiagnosed prenatal ultrasounds and inflatable space solar panels. 

Two of the startups emerged from Startmate’s new pre-accelerator program Launch Club, while another came about after the founders met at the Student Fellowship program.

Each one receives a $120,000 investment at a $1.5 million post-money valuation if its the startup’s first raise or Startmate matches the latest valuation of founders who have raised.

In a letter to investors this week Startmate CEO Michael Batko said that for 10 out of the last 12 years, Startmate was in the in the Top TVPI (Total Value to Paid-In Capital – aka the investment multiple) quartile of global VC funds.

“If you invested $1M across our first 6 funds it is worth $10.29M (even after fees and carry). 10x. And still growing,” he wrote.

“Not just paper returns. We’ve already distributed 2.69x cash on cash back to you.”

Topping that success is Upguard, with Startmate putting $45,000 in back in 2012. That investment is now worth $9.4 million – a 200x-plus return.

The early-stage investor’s performance remains strong even after cutting private company valuations by 27% over the last year following a broader downturn in public market caps.

Billionaires Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest are among Startmate’s investors.

All 13 startups from the Winter cohort will get the chance to strut their stuff at Startmate’s Demo Day on October 19, which for the latest cohort coincides with South By Southwest Sydney and will be part of that festival next month. Tickets for the event at Sydney’s International Convention Centre went on sale today.

And not wasting any time, applications for the summer Accelerator program are open now. 

Here’s the this year’s winter cohort:

Astrix Astronautics (Auckland, NZ) is set to provide the world’s first consistent renewable power solution, allowing humanity to finally step away from fossil fuels. It has developed inflatable satellite solar arrays that dramatically reduce the operation cost of satellites while still generating copious amounts of power. With their first prototype successfully deployed in space, they are on the journey to solve the energy sector’s global emissions.

AsyncBrain (Gold Coast, Qld) is ensuring teams make better decisions with fewer meetings. They are levelling up team brainstorming and decision making through their asynchronous collaboration platform. By promoting critical thinking in the early stages of brainstorming and documenting the different decisions being made, AsyncBrain enables teams to reflect, learn and make better, more efficient decisions in the future.

BioticsAI (Melbourne, Vic) is using AI to detect foetal abnormalities. They have built AI enabled software that accurately identifies errors in prenatal ultrasound screenings, localising abnormalities, generating high-quality documentation, and providing real-time feedback to clinicians.

With 1 in 2 foetal malformations being misdiagnosed during prenatal ultrasounds, BioticsAI’s solution will ensure that every pregnant mother receives patient-centric, precise and comprehensive care. 

DDLoop (Sydney, NSW) is building the modern data tool that lawyers deserve for due dilegence. Their legal data analysis platform presents information in a clear, easy-to-understand format and identifies common issues that lawyers are looking for.

Thanks to DDLoop, corporate lawyers will no longer have to endure the painful process of searching, analysing, and reporting data on government registers. 

Defy Hi (Sydney, NSW) is on a mission to make inspections for high-rise commercial buildings, safer and smarter. How? They have developed the Inspector BEAR (building envelope access robot) to capture, analyse and visualise data from high-rise buildings. Once captured, they create a model of the building, and use AI to analyse and localise the data atop of the digital building.

Their robots are leading the way for a more efficient, safer, and data-driven approach to high-rise building inspections.

Empathix (Auckland, NZ) are on a mission to deliver businesses with top talent, faster than ever before. Their AI powered recruitment platform does all the heavy-lifting for hiring managers, ensuring that job ads are far-reaching, candidates are well-vetted and interviews yield the best results. They deliver candidates to businesses in under a week.

Flohh (Melbourne, Vic) is solving teacher workload by making marking 40% faster. Teaching is the one profession that creates all other professions. And boy do our teachers work hard. Flohh has created an easy-to-use platform that streamlines the laborious marking process for teachers, and encourages students to engage with feedback before receiving their grades. Flohh has been global from Day 1. With 67% of teacher accounts being based overseas, they are transforming the education system as we know it. 

Lumos (Sydney, NSW) is unequivocally changing the world of offline advertising. Their platform offers a cohesive repository of credible mobility, audience, and demographic data. What does that mean? They can tell business owners exactly where their target customer demographic is, when and where to display ads and track performance to see which ads are generating the most sales. It is democratising marketing planning and providing crystal-clear customer insights for businesses around the globe.

Lyrebird Health (Melb, Vic) is automating paperwork for health practitioners, so they can practise medicine not paperwork. They have created an AI-powered transcribing tool that allows doctors to focus on the important stuff: their patients.  Through their platform, health practitioners can save 6-8 minutes on note writing, every single consult. 

Misti (Melb, Vic) is revolutionising the way medications are administered. Misti has developed a nebuliser to deliver life-saving biomolecules that will enable quick and effective response time to infectious respiratory diseases in children and older adults.  Misti’s mission: to protect every child from respiratory infection.

Nomad Suite (Brisbane, Qld) is streamlining construction fleet management, removing manual processes and providing access to real-time fleet data. Through their platform, contractors can document, track and proactively maintain assets making contractor’s lives that little bit easier.

Rainstick (Cairns, Qld) has calibrated the power of lightning to grow plants faster, harnessing traditional indigenous knowledge, now backed up by science. Rainstick’s hardware and software bio-electrically influences plants, starting with fungi, to grow bigger and faster without chemicals. Safely, wirelessly and with extremely low power usage.

Ubiquetherm’s (Auckland, NZ) vision is to provide clean, efficient heating and cooling for everyone, everywhere. With heating and cooling taking more than half the energy we used in buildings, they are leveraging cutting edge nano-technology (that they invented) to deliver ultra-low-cost heating and cooling solutions to homes, businesses and industry.