100 Australian Startups to Watch in 2018
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We are a country full of well-loved startups including Atlassian, Envato, Campaign Monitor, Canva, Hey You and Vinomofo to name a few. But the big successful known stories really are the tip of the iceberg, and it’s a big iceberg (there are over 50,000 people with the job title ‘founder’ in Australia.)
Over the course of the year, we’ve been breaking down our startup ecosystem, city by city across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane. Sydney is the largest of the Australian startup hubs with 35 percent of the nation’s startups, followed by Melbourne at 14 percent and Brisbane at 9 percent.
But that’s just 60 per cent of our success, with more innovation coming from Perth, Adelaide, Canberra and Tasmania – and it’s about time we shined a light on them too.
Pre-seed startups are also having a massive impact on the Aussie tech scene. Companies like Snappr, which let you to book a photographer for any event instantly, and 1scope, an education platform which secured $1 million in beta, are paving the way for more entrepreneurial innovation in Australia.
So whether you’re an entrepreneur rooting for others on our shores or a tech enthusiast wanting to see our Australian upcoming tech eco-system, grab your coffee, pull up a pew and let’s celebrate 100 startups from across the country.
The ultimate list of 100 Australian tech companies
PERTH
Feedme
Founded: 2016
Feedmee is an AI-based food discovery app that learns and recommends the food you love based on your eating behaviour. The app was created and founded by Tyler Spooner, Brenda Lai and Anthony Manning-Franklin to taking the decision making out of eating for their clients so that they can spend more time eating food they like and less time scrolling through the endless unappealing options. Founded on strong social morals, Feedmee donates a meal to someone in need every time someone books a table or orders food delivery through the app. The app can be downloaded on iOS, with Android coming soon.
Power Ledger
Founded: 2016
Power Ledger, with their gender diverse founding team, is bringing P2P solar energy trading blockchain technology to the world. The technology allows renewable energy asset owners to decide who they want to sell their surplus energy to and at what price. Power Ledger was founded by Jemma Green, Jenni Conroy, Dave Martin and John Bulich. Through blockchain technology they can provide a transparent, auditable and automated market trading and clearing mechanism for the benefit of producers and consumers. To date, they have raised $34 million AUD.
Boundlss
Founded: 2013
Boundlss combines machine learning, biosensor data, AI, NLP and a team of human coaches to help health & life insurers provide innovative, personalised, behaviour based insurance products. Founders Jonah Cacioppe (CEO) and Mike Kruger (CTO) met at a meditation course in their teens. With a joint passion to see people healthy and happy, they set about creating a digital Health Assistant. Looking ahead, the team have a goal to improve the health of over 100 million people by 2020 with their AI-Human Health Assistant and Conversational Platform.
QuizJam
Founded: 2015
QuizJam is a MarTech company delivering reach, engagement, acquisition, advertising, market research and sales from the one gamified platform. Its Omni-Channel technology can be easily embedded into websites, native applications and in content for publishers. This Perth based startup was founded by Joel Steel and Glenn Morton with the goal of making engagement fun, whilst focusing on important metrics around market research, lead generation and advertising. QuizJam has partnerships with leading publishers such as Mamamia and Seven West Media, agencies such as Havas Worldwide and Sportsmate Mobile who have embedded QuizJam into their eight sporting applications with over 1.5 million monthly active users.
Cribber
Founded: 2015
Cribber creates engaged worksites, connecting employees and contractors online, regardless of location. Cribber CEO Mike Watson had worked on remote sites as an electrical engineer managing teams of electricians in Australia, NZ, and the Middle East. Co-Founder and COO, Jasmin Ward had worked in risk and compliance with the likes of BHP and Chevron. They both noticed that compliance was manual and communications were onerous. They now work with clients like Woodside, CB&I, and Lightsource energy. They are graduating the Muru-d accelerator program and have raised $150,000 since launching.
Techboard
Founded: 2014
Techboard is an Australian startup and tech company discovery and intelligence platform. They enable companies to claim or set up profiles and use the profiles and their ASX-style announcements platform to promote themselves. Through the collection of this data, Techboard monitors the progress of these companies which goes towards a monthly ranking of trending companies and other data products. A handy resource for us at The Martec. Founded by Peter van Bruchem and Rafael Kimberley-Bowen, Techboard has begun to expand Australia wide. They now have over 1700 searchable company profiles, growing by 100+ profiles per month.
ActivePort
Founded: 2017
ActivePort is a managed services provider that has harnessed Software Defined Networking (SDN) with a cloud-based service portal so that customers can instantly provision and scale vendor-neutral carrier and data centre services. The platform offers direct access to AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Office 365, as well as to the top peering exchanges. It also provides direct access to private cloud services, disaster recovery, and network backhaul. Founded by Pat Cleary, Grant Farrow and Mark Middleton, ActivePort was recently named as a semi-finalist in the 2017 Western Australia Innovator of the Year program.
Kikka Capital
Founded: 2014
Kikka offers fast cash loans for small businesses. They use data-driven online lending platforms to provide short duration credit products to consumers and small business owners across Australia. By assessing their business in real-time, based on the business’s health and current performance, business owners can receive loan approvals quickly. Kikka Capital was founded by David Brennan. Since launching, Kikka has originated over $12 million in lines of credit and received $2 million in Seed funding from Flexigroup.
HUMM Technologies
Founded: 2017
HUMM Technologies was created with the goal of expanding human potential with wearable neurotechnology. HUMM is developing a wearable Brain Computer Interface to help gamers achieve and maintain Flowstate in Esports. The wearable harnesses developing neuroscience in Electroencephalography (EEG) and transcranial stimulation (tDCS) technology to accelerate training and stimulate better performance from the human brain. Founded by Timothy Fiori, Iain McIntyre, Ahmud Auleear and Christopher Norman, HUMM is VC backed, already gearing up for hiring new staff and looking at expansion into other industries.
GeoMoby
Founded: 2013
GeoMoby is a location intelligence platform. They are using advanced geofencing, machine learning and real-time geolocation algorithms to help clients realise the value of their data, better communicate with their end-users, increase productivity and eventually improve their bottom line. The idea came when founder Christophe Baudia was backpacking across Australia and realised how difficult it was to get useful information at the right time and place when visiting a new city. Today they have an established presence in the US, Europe and Asia Pacific with revenue that has grown by 100% each year for the past 2 years.
Smartbeat
Founded: 2015
Smartbeat is a SaaS focussed software development company. Wondering how they could measure ROI for marketing and advertising in bricks and mortar locations, founders Todd Sainsbury and Paul Trappitt looked to re-imagine wifi. They designed world-first patent-pending technology, ‘wifi apps’ which allow marketers to connect advertising efforts to customers in bricks and mortar locations with 1 click and no downloads required. Their solution advertises or re-markets to customers online to attract them in store.
Frigbot
Founded: 2015
Frigbot is powering the Internet of Fridges. Founded by Darren Dwyer, Frigbot is a cellular wireless monitoring device, that plugs into the programming port found on modern commercial refrigeration equipment. This cloud-based technology connects refrigeration equipment to the cloud with access to all functions over the internet from your computer, tablet or smartphone. Customers can configure the Frigbot to send regular email reports and graphs that show time and temperature performance, making it easier for refrigeration companies to track the performance of their products.
Fleetsu
Founded: 2014
Fleetsu is an enterprise-class telematics provider. Founded by Jakub Felinski, Fleetsu collects and analyses big data streams from GPS, telemetry and IoT sources to create efficient asset management. In doing so they provide businesses with tools to optimise and coordinate the use of vehicles, machinery and equipment. The company is now looking to raise $1 million in VC funding to improve their capabilities and continue their expansion across the country. This would be in addition to the $1.2 million the business has secured so far in Angel investments.
CANBERRA
SponServe
Founded: 2015
SponServe is a software solution that streamlines and enhances sponsorship servicing and inventory management through simple to use cloud-based software. The ACT-based startup was founded by Daniel Oyston, Mark Thompson and Tim Canham. Their solution allows their clients to plan and track completion of required tasks, manage inventory, provide on-going reporting, insights and sponsorship acquittal. To date, the team has received $600,000 in Seed funding and acquired 90+ clients worldwide.
Spinify
Founded: 2016
Spinify turns employee performance data into leaderboards and displays them on a TV, computer and mobile phone App. The lively leaderboards are designed to engage and motivate staff to focus on completing the metrics that matter for business success. Spinify was founded by Matt Bullock who believes the fundamental role of a leader is to ensure the right people do the right things. Leaderboards achieve this by providing immediate performance feedback on staff completion of activities. Visible performance drives action and employees work harder to top the leaderboard.
SignOnSite
Founded: 2013
SignOnSite is a Workplace Health and Safety platform that enables customers to automate their site visitor registration process. It solves the issues of lost-time and lack of safety that surrounds the current paper system. Founded by Alexandria Garlan, Krishan Caldwell and Mitchell Harmer, SignOnSite creates compelling workplace safety technologies with easy-to-use design. They’ve worked alongside government, WHS authorities and construction industry players to develop industry compliant solutions.To date, they have received $590,000 in Seed funding and have $1.6 billion worth of active projects currently under management on their platform.
TASMANIA
Biteable
Founded: 2014
Biteable is the world’s simplest video maker. Tasmanian founders Simon Westlake, James McGregor and Tommy Fotak felt that anyone should be able to create wondrous animated videos just as easily as they could create a Powerpoint presentation. So they created Biteable, a simple platform which allows customers to build videos online, preview and share with their team before spending a cent. They now have over 2 million registered users and the platform is being used to create over 130,000 unique videos each month. The team have so far raised $1.1 million Seed funding and have recently opened an office in Melbourne.
ADELAIDE
Presagen
Founded: 2016
Presagen’s unique AI platform allows rapid development and delivery of cloud-based products for automating human behaviour, and image-based medical diagnostics. Founded by Dr Michelle Perugini and Dr Don Perugini, Presagen brings together deep learning, computer vision and other techniques to analyse large data-sets of historical medical images in order to create accurate medical diagnostic tools. The platform uses Defense technology to automate complex human-centric tasks; such as automating core back-office, front-office, or administrative tasks, to increase productivity, performance and consistency.
Augment Space
Founded: 2016
Augment Space is a team of innovators and virtualizers, working to make the process of virtual, augmented and mixed reality simple. Founders Akash Nigam and Priyanka Nigam created Augment Space as a simple, innovative and affordable solution to showcase and market interior and exterior environments online. These solutions can be used in industries from education to construction and real estate to tourism. Virtuality allows their clients to create high impact virtual tours that are immersive and fully interactive, responsive and can be viewed on a variety of platforms including smartphones, tablets, computers and virtual reality headsets.
Fleet Space
Founded: 2015
Fleet is an agile, next generation connectivity company. Founded by aerospace engineers Flavia Tata Nardini and Dr Matthew Tetlow, as well as serial entrepreneur Matt Pearson, Fleet’s mission is to Connect Everything using cutting-edge communications and space technologies to maximise the resource efficiency of human civilisation and enable the next industrial revolution with their free, ubiquitous connectivity platform. They’re making it faster, simpler and cheaper to connect the world’s devices. Fleet has offices in South Australia, California and the Netherlands. In early 2017 they closed Series A funding of $5 million.
BRISBANE
Storyboard Social
Founded: 2016
Storyboard lets you create engaging and rich stories from your photos & videos. Storyboard’s main feature is its extremely accurate mapping function. Founder Darren Tonkin ideated his platform while retelling stories; he wanted to be able to not only share images but also visually map out where he had been. The bootstrapped business has a small team of three and won numerous awards including QUT Creative Enterprise Australia’s Creative3 Pitch, Tropical North Queensland Innovation Inspiration Award. At Creative Business Cup in Denmark Storyboard competed with the best startups across 65 countries, to take out 13th place. Storyboard is available on the App Store and Google Play.
Travelshoot
Founded: 2015
Travelshoot is a service that helps you book with a local photographer while travelling. The platform provides a way to connect travellers with local and professional photographers. The idea came to founder Sarah Pearce when on holidays with her husband and having the fortune of experiencing a professional shoot in NYC. Their break came when they won the “My Shark Tank Australia competition” which announced Travelshoot as Australia’s favourite new business concept in 2015. Since then the enquiries have been flooding in. The team have raised $500,000 from Steve Baxter and Creative Enterprise Australia to continue their growth.
BenchOn
Founded: 2016
BenchOn is an online Supplier Sourcing Platform that matches idle employees to short-term contracts from reputable companies. Witnessing the employee under-utilisation issue in businesses across Australia, founder Tim Walmsley set out to fix this problem. Their B2B Supplier Sourcing Platform allows businesses to put their workforce to work by matching their idle employees to short-term contracts from reputable companies. Since launching in 2016, BenchOn has signed over 200 companies, hosted $20 million worth of contracts and received Seed investment of $130,000 from investors including Blue Chilli Investment.
Advvy
Founded: 2014
Advvy is a media technology company leading the digital transformation of workflow in the media and advertising industry. The Advvy platform transforms inefficient manual campaign planning processes into a workflow solution to allow enterprise Media Agency employees to work smarter while giving management real-time visibility into their campaign activity and performance. Founders, Chris Macaulay and Tristan Ozinga, both from the Media, saw a need to move away from the manual, clunky systems and processes. They have raised over $1M to date from VC fund, FutureNow Ventures and are currently raising a $2 million pre-series A round.
Megaport
Founded: 2013
Megaport is a start-up turned ASX-listed company that has evolved into a powerhouse within the tech industry. Megaport makes connectivity easy and enables digital transformation and cloud adoption for enterprises. Rapid growth since inception has resulted in over 730 customers, and 165 enabled data centres in 37 cities across 19 countries. Megaport is partnered with the top five global Cloud Service Providers: Amazon Web Services, Alibaba Cloud, Oracle, Microsoft, and Google. Established in 2013, founded by Bevan Slattery, and led by Vincent English.
Process PA
Founded: 2015
Process PA is cloud-based software that automates association procedures and paperwork, saving committee members from administration time. Founder Matthew Rowan created the platform while learning himself how poorly these processes work for secretaries and committee members across organisations across the country. Matthew and co-founder, Mick Gerrard, joined forces when discovering they both had a keen interest in process driven technology solutions and a very similar approach to working. So far the team have raised $94,000 from investors muru-D and RCL Accelerator.
Tappr
Founded: 2012
Tappr is a FinTech company developing the next generation payment system technology for sme’s. Founded in a living room by Brett Hales and Kerry Esson, Tappr brings a wealth of tools that online businesses take for granted, in-store. The solution’s main focuses including being payment agnostic, terminal agnostic, data-rich and seamlessly integrates with the Tappr app or other POS providers. Their vision is to enable merchants to accept any form of payment their customers prefer. To date, the team has secured over $5m in funding.
Haystac
Founded: 2012
The Haystack team have developed a stylish & smart digital business card solution geared for small, medium and enterprise clients. Haystack cards can be sent to anyone on any device and utilize a learning algorithm to intelligently update contact information over time. The company was founded in 2014 by Ran Heimann, Matan Heimann and Nir Heimann. Haystack cards are currently being used in more than 100,000 companies around the world, including a number of Fortune 500 companies. So far the team has raised $1.34 million in investment.
MOVUS
Founded: 2015
MOVUS is a provider of Industrial Internet of Things solutions. MOVUS was founded in 2015 by Brad Parsons and Michel Lamarre, to help businesses find ways to optimise the resources they currently manage, by bringing new thinking and innovation. Through improved management, businesses can save money, create greater employee satisfaction, generate less waste, and have a positive impact on the planet. The team have built the FitMachine a full-stack sensor solution designed to capture machine failures in advance using AI. They have received $900,000 in seed investment and $350,000 in State and Federal Grants.
Wanderlust Tribe
Founded: 2014
Wanderlust aims to use smartphone technology to connect people from around the world by creating a user-friendly app that allows people to easily find and connect with other travellers. Keen traveller and founder Shane Williams is creating the app to help facilitate amazing travel experiences. You can meet travellers & locals before you leave for your next trip or find out who’s in the area when you arrive at your destination. Making meeting like-minded people while you travel as easy as pulling out your smartphone.
Gruntify
Founded: 2014
Gruntify is an innovative tasking and data management platform taking mobile, cloud and geospatial technologies by storm. It allows organisations to manage workflows, assign tasks, analyse, map and report collated information through a snap and tap application that reports real-time image and location data. Created by GIS People, Gruntify was developed in 2014 as a solution for Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads. Today it is utilised by the likes of Microsoft and government entities worldwide. They plan to expand into North Africa and the United States this year.
Pixc
Founded: 2014
Pixc helps online stores increase their sales with better product content. Founder Holly Cardew knew that professional photos help to highlight products and make e-commerce businesses stand out from competitors, resulting in more ‘add to cart’ actions. Pixc is a platform for all your photo editing needs. They provide a quick, efficient and easy way for their clients to have retail-ready photos within 24 hours. They’ve helped thousands of e-commerce store owners to sell more products and have users in over 30 countries.
Folktale
Founded: 2016
Folktale is a mobile app that puts the power of a film director in the palm of your hand. The platform provides a marketplace that connects brands with a community of contributors by providing a fun and engaging platform for the curation and co-creation of video content. Folktale was founded by Sarah Mak, a Canadian behaviourist and David Lloyd-Lewis, an Australian filmmaker, who shared an obsession with storytelling and impact. The team has received pre-seed funding through the Blue Chilli & CCIQ’s Collaborate program as well as a grant from the University of Waterloo in Canada. Their tool is available for download in the app store.
Reekoh
Founded: 2015
By using an integration model, Reekoh reduces the complexity of combining best-of-breed IoT solution components. Reekoh delivers this capability through their Plugin Marketplace and data workflow design tools, providing modules for users to integrate IoT device data with over 100 cloud platforms, tools and services. Hardware makers, application and service developers can utilise plugins in the marketplace to also reach customers who are building IoT solutions on the Reekoh platform. This platform for IoT was founded by Dale Rankine (pictured) and Benj Sicam.
Crowd Delivery
Founded: 2015
Crowd delivery is an on demand delivery network powered by “Heroes”. Customers can enter their shopping list from multiple stores at the same time, such as Coles, Woolies, the local butcher and greengrocer. Then one of these Heroes zips around, picks up your items and deliver them in around 30 mins. The idea is the brainchild of, the founder and CEO, Warwick Cox‘s daughter in 2015 at the age of 4yrs old. The team have plans to expand across Australia in the next 6 months and scale dramatically. Crowd Delivery is on the App Store or Google Play.
GO1
Founded: 2015
GO1 is software that allows clients to train their staff and customers. GO1 was founded by Andrew Barnes, Vu Tran, Chris Eigeland and Chris Hood as a way to make it easier for companies to find, book, and complete corporate training. They have seen great success including being accepted in the Y Combinator Summer Program and in 2015 received early investment of more than US$1 million. In December 2016 the group secured a further $4 million in funding allowing them to continue their global expansion. They now operate out of Sydney, Brisbane, KL, Vietnam and San Francisco.
ClipChamp
Founded: 2013
Clipchamp offers a unique suite of video tools that runs entirely in the browser, giving users a fast and simple way to collect, record, edit, upload and share videos. Their technology makes compressing and converting videos up to 20 times faster than traditional methods, without impacting visible quality. Founded by Alexander Dreiling, Soeren Balko, Tobias Raub and David Hewitt, Clipchamp has published 3 products that are all gaining international traction.
Maxwell MRI
Founded: 2016
Maxwell MRI is an AI and MRI powered diagnostic test for prostate cancer. They give clinicians, researchers and companies the tools they need to accelerate the design, development, delivery of clinical diagnostics built upon medical imaging, pathology and other data. Maxwell MRI was founded in 2016 by Elliot Smith and Matthew Brown with the goal to reduce unnecessary, invasive and costly follow-on tests and improve the patient experience. By combining deep learning with modern medical imaging Maxwell MRI is set on developing a method of prostate cancer diagnosis that is faster, more accurate and more affordable, without the side effects of current methods.
Outfit.io
Founded: 2013
Outfit is a brand automation and marketing production platform that is transforming how businesses and agencies large and small create, collaborate, localise and distribute brand assets. More than 1,200 clients from across 40 countries use Outfit. Founded by Bruce Stronge, the entrepreneur behind NetEngine and Trigger, Outfit has raised $1 million in investment and is expanding to the UK and US. Outfit has been featured in the AFR and Marketing Magazine Australia, and is shortlisted as a finalist in Anthill Magazine’s #Smart100 Startups for 2017.
Confeti
Founded: 2017
Confeti is a wedding planning startup that shows users the wedding suppliers they should talk too. Confeti was created by Paul Carr after starting a venue hire company called Zenue which helps people find cool and unusual venues for events. Pretty soon after launching Zenue, they realised the bulk of users were brides-to-be. He noticed couples were spending 10+ hours a week to find wedding inspiration but struggling to connect that with suppliers in their area. Confeti’s superpower is the machine learning tech that eliminates suppliers based on a user’s dislikes and prioritises suppliers based on their likes.
Travello
Founded: 2014
Travello is a social network for travellers, currently being used in over 170 countries. The platform allows you to find and connect with travellers around you or in a new destination, match travel plans, interact on the Dynamic Travello News Feed and they even have a free WiFi finder. The creation of two avid travellers, Mark Cantoni and Ryan Hanly, Travello was the solution to their personal frustration. From humble beginnings in 2014, Travello has now raised $1.3 million investment and is continuously adding countries to their list. The app can be downloaded on the App store or Google Play.
Flystein
Founded: 2015
Flystein is a personalized flight search service for individuals and small corporations. This self-funded startup was founded by Roman Kalyakin and Vlad Protasov who wanted to share their knowledge of flight hacking techniques to others around the world. Since their launch, they have leveraged a large team of travel hackers to satisfy over 1700 happy customers. Saving each customer an average of $250+ per trip. They have partnerships with Hacker Paradise, Terminal 3, Teleport and Embark.
Adepto
Founded: 2013
Adepto gives organisations the power to create and leverage their own marketplace. Through SaaS and consulting services, Adepto helps businesses to find, engage and directly manage their own contingent workforce. Founded by Chris Milligan and Michael Derwin, the Adepto team set out to shift their cost base from fixed to variable, and create true organisational agility. Adepto takes a view that all talent is ultimately contingent – so they focus on helping business manage their external talent as well as enabling internal mobility.
FunCaptcha
Founded: 2013
FunCaptcha is the world’s only managed CAPTCHA service. It uses a patent-pending 3D model approach to create gamified puzzles that leverage gaps in machine vision. Founded by Kevin Gosschalk and Matthew Ford, FunCaptcha determines if a user is human and stops automated abuse with image-based games that are easy to solve. Since their launch in 2013, FunCaptcha has raised $2.21 million and become an integral security solution for the likes of Electronic Arts, Kik, Distil Networks and many others.
PetCloud
Founded: 2014
PetCloud is a website which connects busy pet owners with local pet services across Australia. They are partnered with RSPCA across most States, and now with Greencross & Petbarn, making them one of Australia’s most trusted and convenient pet care service providers. Founded by Deb Morrison, PetCloud is an online community for pet parents to connect with pet sitters who have been screened and are ready to care for your pet. All reservations include insurance, 24/7 customer support, and daily photo updates of your pet enjoying their own vacation, letting you enjoy yours.
SYDNEY
Veromo
Founded: 2015
Veromo is a platform to get your business off to the ground by streamlining and automating most of the setup process of starting a business. Veromo was born through creating a positive solution to counter a frustrating experience faced by Founders Luscheyne Mellon and Andy Giles when setting up their first business together. Their first round of funding circa $935k helped to get their MVP to market. Luscheyne and Andy have their sights set on providing a fully integrated, one-stop digital solution for SMEs to launch a business from anywhere in the world.
Sprout Stack
Founded: 2016
Sprout Stack is revolutionising how fresh produce is grown and distributed, without compromising the environment. The Sprout Stack team have achieved this by using vertical hydroponics in a highly controlled environment called the Sprout Stack Farm; This results in year-round, chemical free, locally grown fresh produce. Founders Francisco Caffarena & Michael Harder have built 3 fully functional Farms, with their own IoT automation system. Already Sprout Stack are supplying fresh produce to local restaurants and shops in Sydney’s North Shore.
Uno Home Loans
Founded: 2015
Uno Home Loans is the first platform to help you search, compare and settle a home loan all in one place with as much or as little help as you need from a team of experts. Founder Vincent Turner has over 15 years experience as a fintech entrepreneur. His first company, Pisces, built mortgage software used by over 90% of Australian banks, processing $50bn/year in mortgages. His latest venture, Uno, is Australia’s first digital mortgage service. Uno has secured $21.5m investment from Westpac. They have been growing 30% month on month since their launch.
Persollo
Founded: 2015
Persollo is the world’s first platform for targeted social selling powered by data and AI. The platform allows brands and influencers to convert social and digital media engagement into sales in less than 15 seconds. Founded by Olga Oleinikova and Kyrylo Medvediev, Persollo has helped 700+ businesses across 16 countries to increase their conversion to 300% from social media. Those clients include the likes of New Balance, Australian UGGs Original, HotelsCombined and Marie Claire.
INAMO
Founded: 2016
INAMO develops wearable products, including waterproof accessories, wristbands and key-rings, that double as a contactless prepaid bank card. Founder & CEO Peter Colbert, is on a mission to free you from your wallet & looks to the day that INAMO’s customers will be able to use their wearable products to catch public transport, access buildings, as ticketing for festivals, and even your gym membership. In May 2017 the company announced a successful seed funding round of $1.5 million led by Club Investible & private investors.
The Yield
Founded: 2014
The Yield is an AgTech solutions company which develops IoT-based solutions for agriculture and aquaculture. They’re on a mission to transform food and farming practices by building safe, scalable digital technology. Founder Ros Harvey is an experienced entrepreneur who is passionate about utilising technology to play a role in the sustainable governance of the planet. Since launch, their first product Sensing+ has won numerous awards. In April this year, the team announced a successful Series A funding round of $6.5 million,this funding takes investment in the company to $11.5 million in two years.
Pennybox
Founded: 2015
Pennybox is an app that teaches kids about money, banking and finance in a fun, practical and highly gamified way. The goal is to empower kids to learn real-life money concepts such as budgeting, setting savings goals, negotiating, banking, interest, and debt. Before Pennybox, Co-Founder Reji Eapan was a finance analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and UBS. The second half of Pennybox, Co-Founder Adam Naor, left a 7-year career with Google to combine his passion for finance and tech. To date, they have raised 250k from external investors and won the NSW MVP grant.
Mad Paws
Founded: 2014
Mad Paws was created to fill in the pet boarding market for affordable, and local pet accommodation whilst still maintaining the care, love, and attention pets received at high-end, expensive, pet boarding services. Founder Alexis Soulopoulos founded Mad Paws after graduating from University of Sydney Business School. After just eight months of operation, the startup raised its first venture capital round of $1.1 million to further accelerate its growth. Mad Paws is now Australia’s number one pet services marketplace and is expanding fast.
HIVERY
Founded: 2015
HIVERY build prescriptive analytics tools, leveraging data using AI and Machine Learning to find new humanly impossible patterns that drive new profits. HIVERY was born following a big data hackathon that brought together Franki Chamaki and Jason Hosking, serial entrepreneurs from the Coca-Cola Founders platform, and Charles Gretton, Matthew Robards, and Menkes van den Briel, data scientists with backgrounds in AI and Operations Research. The team at HIVERY plan to continue to develop AI SaaS products in the retail and FMGCs space, and as set up offices in USA and Japan.
HashChing
Founded: 2015
HashChing is Australia’s first online home loans marketplace that instantly connects borrowers to verified local mortgage brokers registered on HashChing using an AI-driven algorithm. Founded by Atul Narang and Mandeep Sodhi, HashChing has already gained great traction receiving over $7 billion worth of home loan applications, $6 billion of that in last 12 months alone. Moving forward HashChing’s target is to have 1,000 active mortgage brokers on the platform and $20 billion worth of home loan applications by January 2018.
Soapbox.ai
Founded: 2016
Soapbox is developing the first Intelligent Customer Service Platform leveraging leading edge Machine Learning and NLP. The group have released Sofi, an Intelligent Virtual Agent that adds intelligent automation to existing customer service and support platforms. Sofi engages with customers through an omni-channel conversational interaction to resolve customer issues without human intervention. Founded by Dion Williams and Paul Heath, Soapbox was born from the observation that customer service organisations are under increasing pressure to reduce operating costs whilst maintaining high levels of customer service.
CurrencyVue
Founded: 2015
CurrencyVue helps mid-sized businesses understand their FX exposure by integrating major ERP systems into their platform, allowing their customers to manage invoices and orders from a single location. Established by Matt Tyrrell, CurrencyVue used feedback from beta customers they decided to enter another period of product development. They have signed an integration partnership with OFX
(previously Ozforex), closed their Seed Investment round in March 2017 and have employed a development team.
BRiN
Founded: 2016
BRiN is the world’s first artificially intelligent business advisor & she’s able to provide support to millions of clients simultaneously. Founder Dale Beaumont, wanted to make education accessible, and support instantaneous to millions of business owners around the world. In April 2017, Dale and his team released the next generation of BRiN, which knows the answer to more than 5,000 commonly asked business questions. The app has been praised by Forbes, Huffington Post, Business Insider, Gizmodo, The Next Web, GQ and Sky Business. You can find BRiN on the App store or Google Play.
CoVentured
Founded: 2016
CoVentured is a platform designed to connect Startups and Corporates. Founded by the team behind Australian corporate accelerator, Slingshot, CoVentured was created to bridge the gap between corporates looking to explore the innovation of startups and startups looking to leverage the credibility and client base of corporates. General Manager Nick Dunford and Slingshot CEO Karen Lawson officially launched the platform earlier this year with 2000 startups and 25 corporates on board.
Leezair
Founded: 2014
Leezair creates apps and integrations that allow people to experience their surroundings more often and more conveniently. Born out of frustration, as most great platforms are, the concept came to Founder Enguerrand Vidor, when he was travelling in the Philippines. Frustrated with the difficulty of trying to book scuba diving, Angus realized that the entire activities market wasn’t meeting consumer needs for a mobile app that enabled last minute bookings in real time. Leezair aims to inspire adventure and encourage freedom through personalisation. The team are now a proud participant of the Qantas AVRO accelerator program.
Flare HR
Founded: 2015
Flare is Australia’s first all-in-one HR and Employee Benefits platform, which is completely free. Flare HR manages all of your HR needs from digital onboarding, connecting to payroll, leave management, performance reviews and more. Founded by Jan Pacas, Daniel Cohen, Saul Kaplan and Colin Mierowsky, Flare has signed up over 30,000 employees in its first year and has received initial seed investment Reinventure Group.
Spacer
Founded: 2015
Spacer is Australia’s marketplace for space. This platform offers a Peer-to-Peer Marketplace for Self Storage, linking Hosts with Renters. Founded by Mike Rosenbaum and Roland Tam, the platform provides an efficient and more cost effective self-storage solution for your boat, car, caravan, furniture and household goods, in a secure environment for all users. The team secured $1 million funding early on in the piece and in March 2017 they announced the acquisition of US-based Roost as part of their strategy to tap into a $27 billion US market.
Grassrootz
Founded: 2016
Grassrootz helps ‘for purpose’ organisations raise more funds and reduce their cost of fundraising. Grassrootz was founded by Ben Graetz and Angela Dunn due to their frustrations with the limitations of existing software products available to raise money online. Grassrootz offers charities the brand control of a custom build – without the expense – which has lead to fast adoption by charities such as St Vincent de Paul, Starlight, Cure Brain Cancer, and the Cancer Council.
Sonder Design
Founded: 2015
Sonder Design have created a world first dynamic E Ink keyboard which features 50 customisable keys for all your design, technology, editing and gaming needs. With app-specific layouts on the keys for all your applications, Sonder’s keyboard will intuitively swap between layouts. You can create macros and hotkeys and switch between languages. Sonder was founded by twin brothers Francisco and Felipe Serra-Martins. The company has offices in Sydney, Hong Kong and Taipei.
Loan Dolphin
Founded: 2015
LoanDolphin is a loan bidding marketplace where banks and brokers compete to win your Home Loan. Founders Ranin Mendis and Rod Dutra met while working in a ‘Big 4’ bank. LoanDolphin is a truly customer-centric digital loan service that helps it’s customers easily and effortlessly find market-leading interest rates. They are not affiliated with any one bank or mortgage broker and remain focused on creating a transparent financial marketplace for all Australians. In November 2016 the team successfully raised $1.1 million from investors to expand their presence in major capital cities.
Audience Republic
Founded: 2015
Audience Republic is a marketing platform for events, helping organisers sell more tickets. Founded by Jared Kristensen, Audience Republic power the marketing for events worldwide, including Justin Bieber, Bruce Springsteen, Sticky Fingers, Broods and Rufus, to name a few. Event organisers simply setup campaigns which leverage social media & rewards to incentivize fans to invite their friends to purchase tickets, integrating with existing ticketing providers like Eventbrite or Ticketmaster. In February 2017 the team announced they closed a $525,000 seed investment round to continue to enhance the platform.
Camplify
Founded: 2014
Camplify is Australia’s leading peer-to-peer RV sharing platform connecting people wanting to hire caravans, motorhomes, campervans, and camper trailers with RV owners in a peer-to-peer sharing environment. Founder Justin Hales and his wife noticed all of the RVs sitting on lawns in his area doing nothing for the majority of the year. Just 10 days later Camplify was launched. Similar to an AirBNB model, Camplify allows aspiring campers who lack the equipment, the ability to go on holidays using other people’s RVs. In June 2015 the team secured $625,000 in funding from investors and February 2017 the team secured a further $1.9 million in funding.
Spaceship
Founded: 2016
Spaceship is a web-based application that that enables Australians to invest their super into tech companies such as Apple, Google, Uber, Tesla, and more. As these stories tend to go, the idea for Spaceship came from the founders own personal frustrations with the financial services industry. Founded in 2016 by Kaushik Sen, Andrew Sellen, and Dave Kuhn, Spaceship will give Australians the opportunity to have more control of their super and to invest it in an area that they are passionate about. In September 2016 the team successfully closed $1.6 million from high profile investors including Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes.
Splend
Founded: 2015
Splend is Australia’s preferred supplier of vehicles for on-demand rideshare and delivery services such as Uber and UberEATS. Founded by Chris King, Splend seeks to create the opportunity for people to become their own boss by using Splend’s vehicle platform, training and mentoring team. Their mission is to help Splend Members to become more profitable, safer and happier drivers. In February 2017 Splend announced a $3 million strategic equity investment from Investec to expand their fleet of cars from 1300 to 4000 in Australia.
Marketlend
Founded: 2014
Marketlend is a peer to peer lending platform to small and medium enterprises that offers investors secure and robust investment in business with loss protection and insurance. Investors buy a tradeable note that secures part or all of the loan, and it is managed by a trust manager with the trustee handling all cash collections. Founder Leo Tyndall launched Marketlend after an extensive career in financial services industry. In June 2016 the team announced that it has closed a $1 million investment round led by Jon Barlow, who has been appointed as a non-executive member of Marketlend’s board of directors.
Muru Music
Founded: 2014
Muru is the world’s first Artificial Intelligence DJ Brain. Muru has combined AI with deep learning and the fundamentals of DJ-ing to create the first automated song classification engine, that can classify a song in under 5 seconds with 99% accuracy. Founder, Nicc Carter-Johnson, who has also been a professional DJ for 16-years, including a 7-year residency at Pacha Ibiza – initially came up with the idea while consulting to hospitality venues. Although a b2b technology company, Muru’s mission is to become the industry standard for song classification and provide the tools for the digital music industry to really thrive.
Morse Micro
Founded: 2016
Morse Micro is a fabless semiconductor startup developing Wi-Fi HaLow chips for the Internet of Things market which are 5x smaller & cheaper, 10x longer range and 200x lower power than conventional Wi-Fi chips. It is WiFi re-invented for IoT. Founded by Michael De Nil and Andy Terry, experienced ex-Broadcom Wi-Fi engineers; Morse Micro’s mission is to enable the multi-billion device IoT market with its low power Wi-Fi HaLow chips.
Sound Scouts
Founded: 2014
Sound Scouts is a game designed to test the hearing of children. They have taken the science of a hearing test, embedded it into a mobile game that allows them to collect data and continually improve their offering. Founder Carolyn Mee, understanding that hearing issues impact learning, hopes that Sound Scouts will eventually be adopted by the government to provide cost-effective hearing screening to all Australian children. It can pick up undiagnosed hearing issues that may affect a child’s social or academic development. In March 2017 Sound Scouts were announced a winner of the SXSW Accelerator Pitch Event in the Health and Wearables category.
Easyshare
Founded: 2014
Easyshare is an online platform for paying rent and bills. Housemates can set up their own individual payment method and easyshare takes care of the rest. The platform will collect rent from each housemate and pay the total to the property manager or landlord. Easyshare also take care of splitting bills, tracking shared expenses and helping with shared savings. Payment options are flexible with the ability to pay via bank transfer or credit card. Founded by John Bush, easyshare has already helped customers to pay over $10 million worth of rent and bills.
Cover Genius
Founded: 2014
Cover Genius is the parent company of RentalCover.com and BrightWrite. It is one of the fastest growing Insurtech startups globally. The company was founded by Chris Bayley and Angus McDonald, former leaders from Google and Yahoo respectively. RentalCover.com is a global distributor of car rental insurance that partners with online travel agents worldwide. To date Cover Genius has raised $1.5 million in seed investment and has offices in Austin, TX, London and Sydney, Australia.
Simpla
Founded: 2015
Simpla is a tool for developers that makes building and editing web content easier. Founders Sean King and Bede Overend created Simpla to allow developers to edit content seamlessly inline, build websites ten times faster and simply create awesome things. As a modular, open ecosystem of components, developers can use the ones they need as building blocks for their own content system. In April 2017 the team have announced the launch of Simpla 2. The goal for Simpla 2 is to open up the element ecosystem, so developers can build their own Simpla elements and contribute them back to the community.
Ordermentum
Founded: 2014
Ordermentum is a web-based ordering and payments platform for the food and beverage industry. Founded by seasoned tech and F&B professionals Adam Theobald and Andrew Low, Ordermentum was created to solve the F&B industries problem when it comes to collecting orders and chasing payments. It is a two sided network allowing retailers to order from all suppliers and for suppliers to grow brand engagement, eliminate all data entry and offer insights through data.
Tyde
Founded: 2016
Tyde is a unique platform that transforms the connection between patients and clinicians. Founders Tom Synnott, Sudeep Gohil, Shamus Cooper and Romain Bonjean are working on bridging the gap between clinicians, patients and their Electronic Health Records. The team have built the first commercially available application that seamlessly, securely and intelligently accesses the Federal government’s MyHealthRecord initiative. By combining health data sources in a centralised place, providing access to you and your healthcare team, they are shifting the focus to patients and creating a new era of health engagement for Australians.
Valiant Finance
Founded: 2015
Valiant is Australia’s leading business loan marketplace which enables business owners and their advisers to get tailored business loan options and advice in a matter of minutes. Founders Alex Molloy and Ritchie Cotton proprietary technology gives business owners the ability to explore products from a universe of over 60 lenders and get matched to the lenders that they have the highest probability of being funded by. Valiant currently offers products from lenders that cover the entire spectrum from short-term working capital lenders to the Big 4 banks. They have raised $800,000 in investment.
LayAway Travel
Founded: 2015
LayAway Travel Australia is an online travel company specialising in lay-by holidays. Founder Andrew Paykel, formerly COO of Fisher & Paykel, believes in giving customers control of their personal financial outcomes and holiday lay-by is opening the door for all Australian’s to travel. Their customised lay-by payment platform is available for White Label applications and provides front end and back office support. In the 18 months since the venture started more than $1 million of capital has been raised and they have sparked the interest of both Jetstar and Qantas. Plans are in place to expand into other countries.
Yello
Founded: 2014
Yello is revolutionising the way takeaway deliveries are managed. Building a better driver search and delivery management system for the foodservice industry. Yello is a marketplace that helps restaurants find, manage, book, train and pay drivers and helps drivers manage & grow their business. Founded by Steve Fanale and Johnny Timbs, Yello is a complete driver engagement platform. In October 2016 the team announced their partnership with Menulog to enable restaurants without drivers to offer food delivery and tap into their food tracking tech.
Ignition Wealth
Founded: 2015
Ignition Wealth provides online investment and superannuation advice solutions for the Australian financial services market. Founded by Mike Giles and Mark Fordree, Ignition Wealth provides automated advice, tools and calculators to Australian professional financial businesses and financial institutions. They are Australia’s largest robo-advice specialist. So far the team have successfully raised $4 million to help expand and grow out their offering.
Tapview
Founded: 2015
Tapview provides micropayment services that are easy for the provider to integrate and easy for the customer to pay. It is an easy way to convert your readers into paying customers. Founders James Jansson, Alexey Feigin and Jordan Rastrick believe that paying for content online is currently broken. Tapview is a “read more” button with a small payment attached. A user can click this button to access content on any website that has Tapview integrated, spending from a single balance across all sites – a pay once, consume many times model. It works on all modern desktop and mobile browsers and does not require the user to install an app or a browser plugin.
Nano-X
Founded: 2014
Nano-X is an innovative cancer treatment system being designed and developed in Australia. Nano-X will change the delivery of radiation therapy from large reference centres to small-town hospitals. An advanced on-board imaging/planning system captures 3D images in real-time, controls the radiation beam, and automatically delivers the right amount of energy to the right tissue, requires fewer dedicated staff. Founded by Ilana Feain and Paul Keall, Nano-X simplifies radiation therapy by moving radiation therapy system complexity from hardware to software. To date the team have received a $2.5 million grant to continue their work.
Equitise
Founded: 2014
Equitise offers an equity crowdfunding platform for private investors to invest in early-stage companies and startups. Founded 2014 by Chris Gilbert, Jonathon Wilkinson and Panche Gjorgjevski, Equitise is a trans-Tasman investment platform. They bring together the Australasian investment network, providing a platform for high growth and innovative companies to partner with investors who believe in them. Equitise is backed by Investec, AWI, H2 Ventures, Tank Stream Ventures, BridgeLane Capital and well-known Angels. They are creating an intuitive and automated investment ecosystem which is highly social and inclusive for all investors.
Incent Loyalty
Founded: 2016
Incent promise to be the future of loyalty, harnessing the blockchain to turbocharge merchant revenue in a way that traditional schemes cannot. Because Incent is a digital asset reward, merchants can outsource infrastructure costs and liabilities to the blockchain, while the consumer is rewarded for their custom instantly, with an incentive that has intrinsic value. Founded by Rob Wilson, Incent is the first universal merchant-backed loyalty platform. It’s better loyalty through smarter rewards. It was announced in November 2016 that the team have raised over 1 million in seed funding.
Hyper Anna
Founded: 2016
Hyper Anna is your personal AI powered data analyst. Hyper Anna helps organisations get closer to their data by serving sculpted insights to their employees. She will write the codes, analyse the data, produce the charts, and present you with actionable insights. Founders Natalie Nguyen and Sam Zheng liken her to Siri or Cortana over the top of any company’s database that enables you to ask plain English questions about the key drivers of your business. The deployment takes 3-5 business days, compared to other alternatives which take 6 months to 1 year for a number rigid dashboards.
CancerAid
Founded: 2016
CancerAid is an app that empowers cancer patients and their caregivers. It aims to be the gold-standard tool for cancer patients worldwide. CancerAid’s founders are cancer doctors, Nikhil Pooviah and Raghav Murali-Ganesh. The team have already raised a substantial amount in seed investment and generated significant revenue from customers before the product has reached initial development stage. CancerAid is the first of its kind tool that helps anyone diagnosed with cancer to navigate through each stage of their cancer journey, receive care remotely and reduce the isolation of illness.
Seatfrog
Founded: 2016
Seatfrog is the next generation of merchandising technology for airlines. A mobile first, customer centric auction platform for upgrades on the day of departure, selling seats guaranteed to otherwise fly empty. Started by founders Iain Griffin, Ben Ient and Dirk Stewart to offer an intuitive mobile experience giving travellers access to business class seats which would have otherwise flown empty. Since their launch in 2016, the team have set up a global partnership with Amadeus, and taken $1.2 million in investment.
Spriggy
Founded: 2016
Spriggy is an independent technology and education brand, helping families teach children about money in today’s digital age. Their prepaid card and app are available for children as young as eight years old to use with their parents. Founders Mario Hasanakos and Alexander Badran created Spriggy out of a desire to provide a simpler way for parents to give their kids pocket money, while teaching them valuable habits for managing money.
Wattblock
Founded: 2014
Wattblock offers quick, customised energy saving roadmaps online for strata buildings which can reduce their energy consumption by up to 65 per cent. The business was co-founded by Brent Clark and Ross McIntyre to assist buildings with energy tariff optimisation, planning energy efficiency projects, product and service selection, financing and planning ahead for solar, batteries, electric vehicle recharge and embedded electrical networks. They won a place in Telstra’s muru-D technology accelerator program in 2014, then in 2015 completed a capital raise of $1 million and opened an office in Brisbane office to expand their Australian footprint.
Blueshyft
Founded: 2014
The Blueshyft platform allows businesses to accept cash payments for their digital goods and services. Founder Kain Warwick wants to revolutionise the utilisation of the largest retail network in Australia and connect the local convenience of bricks and mortar locations with e-commerce products and services. To date, the team has raised $3.77 million from investors and mid-2016 they started a joint venture with Bitcoin exchange Bitcoin.com.au. Blueshyft is an iOS-based platform installed in over 1,200 retailers across Australia.
Data Republic
Founded: 2014
Data Republic is a data sharing platform, making it easier to share information between individuals, companies and governments for wiser decisions and better outcomes. Founders Paul McCarny and Danny Gilligan founded Data Republic to allow companies to collaborate with data in a safer, more secure way. Since then, they’ve had collaborations with ANZ earlier this year to create a controlled data sharing platform, and the NSW Government, ensuring access to shared data sources. Data Republic allows their clientele to govern the data flows within their own organisation for secure data sharing.
MELBOURNE
Plattar
Founded: 2015
Plattar is an Augmented Reality app builder & content management system. Founder Rupert Deans and his team have been working on the SaaS platform for 2 years before officially launching February 2017. Seeing that AR was difficult and costly to create and considering this was the case in website development before the likes of WordPress, Rupert knew there was an opportunity to create the world’s first Augmented Reality enablement platform for businesses and individuals to create, manage and deploy Augmented reality and mixed reality experiences. Plattar has already raised $1.1 million capital from News Corp.
TRIBE
Founded: 2015
TRIBE is a marketplace that connects social media content creators with leading brands to transform word of mouth recommendations. Founder, Jules Lund, well-known TV & radio host designed the platform as a personal workflow solution to assist with his own time management of brands offering him payment to post on his social accounts. Today TRIBE has 13,000 influencers in the app and 2600 brand campaigns through the platform and has secured $5.35 million in Series A funding to support their global expansion.
Afterpay
Launched: 2014
Afterpay is the new way for Australians to pay. Their easy-to-use payment process allows shoppers to buy their product today and pay it off in 4 equal fortnightly instalments. Launched by Nick Molnar, Afterpay floated on the Australian Stock Exchange in May 2016 and partners with hundreds of Australia’s leading retailers such as Cue, Marcs, General Pants, Glue, Topshop and Hype DC. Their process is now available both online and in-store. Afterpay was awarded “FinTech Innovator in Payments” at the inaugural FinTech Awards 2016 and “FinTech Organisation of the Year” at The Finnies, May 2017.
PurePonics
Founded: 2016
Growing pure food by aquaponics in urban farming. More taste, less waste and grown close to where you live and eat. Founded by entrepreneurs Steve Gleeson and Paul Hopper, PurePonics is an innovative AgTech startup combining Aquaculture and Hydroponics to produce fresh, safe and sustainable food, with no use of chemicals. Since the company’s inception, they have sourced specialist researcher Yoni Sharon from Israel, built facilities in Geelong, begun to generate their first revenue stream through production and will soon be looking for more investment to accelerate their expansion across Australia and beyond.
ResponSight
Founded: 2014
Every user has a behavioural fingerprint; a unique, nuanced way they use their own computer. Behavioural fingerprints can be monitored to detect malware and attackers, who don’t behave the same way as a typical end user. Investing in detecting security breaches as early as possible allows organisations to take control. Founded by Jeff Paine the idea for ResponSight was first pitched at BlueChilli’s Disrupt@Scale startup program and they were announced the winners in February 2015. In 2016 they raised $1.15 million in a seed funding.
Timelio
Founded: 2014
Timelio is a high growth FinTech company with an online marketplace for invoice finance and supply chain finance. Timelio brings together growing businesses directly with a network of investors who fund their invoices. Wife and Husband Founders, Charlotte and Andrew Petris, noticed how tough it was for Australian SMEs trying to grow a business without access to adequate finance. Timelio has raised $5.5 million in capital and aspire to be the first Australian fintech to fund $1 billion to Australian SMEs.
The Lumery
Founded: 2016
The Lumery is a unique collective of MarTech & AdTech experts providing brands with Advisory, Strategy and Execution services on the applications they have today, and will have in the future. Tired of the ‘buzz word approach’ around MarTech, Founders, Rajan Kumar, Ben Fettes and Simon O’Day believe that brands have traditionally had limited options to call upon when seeking agencies. In less than 6 months the team has set up shop in Cremorne and have a talented team servicing clients including Australia Post and Jetstar.
Littlepay
Founded: 2015
Littlepay is an Australian fintech start-up focused on developing micropayment processing services. Founded by Michael Walters, littlepay are backed by a global investment company with a long track record of investing in and developing payments technologies, littlepay are backed by a global investment company with a long track record of investing in and developing payments technologies.
Speedlancer
Founded: 2014
Speedlancer is a marketplace of 450 curated freelancers available on-demand. They deliver tasks in as little as 4 Hours or in Bundles for full-stack campaigns. Founded by 22-year-old entrepreneur, Adam Stone. Today Speedlancer offers writers, designers, researchers, lead-generators and developers. Their team includes Jon Westenberg in Sydney as well as a globally distributed team employees (in additional to their 450 highly curated freelancers) in the US and Brazil.
Passel
Founded: 2016
The world’s first crowdsourced online delivery option. With 20 years’ freight and logistics experience. Passel has secured angel investment and are embarking on a seed funding round. Passel will launch in Melbourne in September with a number of retail clients including Motto Fashion. They have already had positive feedback from Silicon Valley; which they plan to tackle after delivering 300,000 items in Australia next year.
MoneyPlace
Founded: 2014
MoneyPlace is an online marketplace that connects investors with credit-worthy borrowers. Users have to apply online in order to get a credit estimate after which they will be matched with suitable investors. Afterwards, borrowers will get this money electronically transferred to their respective accounts. MoneyPlace was launched by ex-NAB employee Stuart Stoyan in 2014 when he saw that banks were no longer doing their part to support customers. Stuart observed the peer to peer trend globally and took the opportunity to bring this concept to Australia.
ActivePipe
Founded: 2014
ActivePipe launches the real estate industry into the digital and increasingly consumer focussed 21st century market. Founded by Ashley Farrugia ActivePipe use automated email-marketing campaigns that operate on a real estate agent’s behalf, with communication that is powerful, consistent and personalised. Smart data analytics and advanced reporting features eliminate the guesswork, telling agents who is ready to transact so they can close more deals. ActivePipe are used by over 700 offices in Australia including Ray White, LJ Hooker and Barry Plan and they intend to expand to the UK and US.
Liven
Founded: 2014
Liven is a restaurant discovery and rewards platform that actually pays users to do what they already love to do – eat out. Founders, David Ballerini, William Wong and Grace Wong saw the emerging potential of mobile payments. They added a charity component to the app to allow people to share their rewards with those in need, giving charities an entirely new way to fundraise. Liven has recently raised $10 million in venture capital, and are now eyeing expansion into a third Australian city followed by the US and UK markets by years end.
Elevio
Founded: 2014
After a number of years working together agency side, Elevio founders, Chris Duell & Matt Trimarchi saw the way that support content was being delivered to users was fundamentally broken, and took it on themselves to rethink support content creation and delivery. Elevio has grown to be a success story of growing from a bootstrapped side project to being a venture backed company with investments from the likes of Blackbird and AirTree, with a growing team, hundreds of customers globally from Fortune 500 to bootstrapped startups serving their self service software on over 100M pages a month.
Agersens
Founded: 2014
Agersens is developing an innovative solution to enable automated movement and control of livestock. This device connects animals to the internet and benefits farmers by increasing productivity and reducing operational costs, improving the health and welfare of livestock, and improving our environment by helping farmers prevent cattle polluting our waterways. Founded by Ian Reilly Agersens has negotiated a worldwide exclusive licence to CSIRO intellectual property that trains an animal to stay or move within a virtual fence boundary. To date Agersens have raised $2.36 million in funding rounds.
Milanote
Founded: 2016
The notes app for creative work. Milanote is a place to put it all together. See your ideas, notes and research side by side. Used by designers, writers, marketers and other creative professionals from companies like Facebook, Apple, Uber, Google, Philips and Nike. Designed by founders Michael Trounce, Marc Clancy and Brett Warren and Ollie Campbell as an internal tool for their other business Navy Design before realising the tool was something that could be applied to any creative process. Deciding to spin it out, they launched Milanote in February, garnering over 40,000 sign ups in just the first couple of months.
Honee
Founded: 2014
Search, compare and book wellness, beauty and fitness services on Honee. Founder Matthew Jones wanted to make it easy to find wellness, beauty and fitness venues in Melbourne. They help Melburnians look and feel amazing by providing the most accurate and up-to-date information on their favourite venues, as well as helping businesses promote their brands and find new clients. They cater to services including beauty, nails, hairdressers, spas, massage, acupuncture, yoga, pilates and fitness. The team raised $512k in 2016 to continue expansion.
Curo
Founded: 2014
Curo provides families with the reassurance that their loved one is remaining independent and can continue to care for themselves. Using non-intrusive sensors in the home Curo provides insights via a smartphone application which aims to change the way the world looks at ageing-in-place and the relationship between family and their loved ones. Founded by Tim McDougall and Matt McDougall, Curo has received $1 million seed investment and expanded their operation to the US.
Lithodomos VR
Founded: 2016
Lithodomos VR produces and distributes archaeologically accurate reconstructions of the ancient world in virtual reality for tourism, education, and entertainment. Founded by Simon Young, Tony Simmons and Dr. M. Hamdi Kan, by December 2016 the company had released its first app, Ancient Jerusalem in VR. By the end of January 2017, the company had closed an initial seed funding round of $900,000 AUD in private investment and has since been rapidly expanding across Europe. The company’s products are available now on the App Store, Google Play, and Oculus.
Yume Food
Founded: 2014
Yume Food is a marketplace that helps connect businesses that have premium surplus or excess produce with other businesses that can use it. Yume was founded by Katy Barfield, after witnessing the amount of food that’s wasted in the commercial food sector. The existing food supply framework in Australia means that 9.5 million tonnes of food is discarded each year. It’s estimated that between 400,000 and 600,000 tonnes of that food is accessible, edible, quality food and could not just be rescued, but used, eaten and enjoyed. In February this year, Yume raised $2.6 million investment to continue their mission.
Liminal VR
Founded: 2014
Liminal VR combines neuroscience and design principles in virtual reality to induce a range of cognitive and emotional states in people. Their mission is to safely empower people to choose how they want to feel throughout the course of the day. CEO Damian Moratti is an entrepreneur with almost a decade of experience starting and running I.T. support and eMarketing businesses. Co Founder Nick Busietta is a major projects IT lawyer, psychology graduate obsessed with the idea that combining human psychology with the power of virtual reality is a natural progression for the human mind. Liminal are in talks with various educational institutions hoping to introduce Liminal’s research into their curriculum.
Blockfreight
Founded: 2015
Blockfreight provides innovative solutions for freight and shipping. Within their active R&D they engineer novel systems and standards to solve inherent issues and eliminate cost centres, which arise during the standard shipping process. Blockfrieght was designed to bring enhanced levels of operational efficiency and eliminate costs which can arise in freight. Blockfreight™ was founded with initial capital being provided by the founders, Julian Smith, Melbourne Bitcoin Technology Center Incubator and private placement of funds from active members of the MBTC community.
Creator Global
Founded: 2016
Based on the projected growth of Internet of Things (IoT) and their experience in designing over in-market 10m devices. Founders Slade Sherman, Doug Buckle and Travis Crothers designed a product development process for brands and enterprise companies that help them use emerging technology to solve their biggest challenges. Creator Global provide consulting services to help clients with Internet of Things strategy and development of connected devices. In North America, they are working with leading beverage brands like Coca-cola and Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewer. Locally in Australia, the team work with clients such as Telstra, the RACV and Bacardi.
Finch
Founded: 2016
Finch is a fintech startup with a vision to reimagine the consumer finance experience. Finch beat over 100 fintech startups from around the world for one of eight spots in Silicon Valley’s top fintech incubator – Envestnet | Yodlee. Founded by Toby Gardner and Shahirah Gardner, the two realised that traditional banks and institutions are struggling to understand the millennial generation and their financial habits. The app is a social spending app for Australian millennials that allows them to pay friends, stay friends, and achieve financial wellness together.
Fillr
Founded: 2015
Fillr’s ‘autofill as a service’ seamlessly integrates into clients apps, enabling customers to transact faster, boosting conversions and revenue. Their powerful mapping engine, algorithms and machine learning technology utilise advanced proprietary textual heuristics to read forms as close to human representation as possible. Founders, Chris Koch and Chad Stephens saw the opportunity for autofill technology beyond the property sector. Fillr now has offices in Melbourne and San Francisco and is backed by SoftBank China Capital (Alibaba’s largest investor), Southern Cross Venture Partners, Reinventure and Constant Innovation.
Airwallex
Founded: 2015
Businesses are evolving at the speed of light but payments lag behind. In this increasingly globalised world, having the right infrastructure for cross-border payments is crucial. Airwallex was founded by a team of entrepreneurs, Jacob Dai, Jack Zhang, Lucy Yueting Liu, Ki-Lok Wong and Max Li who knew international payments could, and should, be better. Airwallex is backed by high profile investors including Tencent, Sequoia Capital China, MasterCard and Gobi Partners. As of May 2017, Airwallex raised US $16 million.
ParentPaperwork
Founded: 2014
ParentPaperwork is easy to use online forms system for schools, students and parents,replacing paper forms in schools. ParentPaperwork officially launched and have gone from strength to strength signed Brisbane Catholic Education Office schools (140 schools), KIPP Public Schools Houston (32 schools), a range of marque private schools including Scots College (Sydney), Canberra Girls Grammar and Hume Anglican Grammar. They are partnering with GroupCall in the UK, have secured a couple rounds of seed funding and are also exploring integrations with other Edtech products.
Doshii
Founded: 2015
Connect your ordering app, payment device, loyalty and reservations platforms to POS. Doshii is the smart new API platform that coordinates all your apps and payment systems. Founded by Sean O’Meara, Doshii was created to fix the growing need for integration between apps. Doshii is the only Australian ‘middleware’ API for the hospitality industry. So far Doshii have signed several of the largest POS in Australia, including Impos, H&L & SwiftPOS. They have a global agreement with Omnivore, who is the Doshii of the US. This means Doshii can provide Aussie Apps access to the US market and vice versa.
Thanks for sticking around to the end and checking out what Australian startups have to offer. Their innovations help address a wide range of issues and meet the needs of consumers and organisations in Australia and worldwide. We can’t wait to see what the next 50,000 ‘Founders’ have to offer the Australian startup scene.
Keep watching these Australian tech companies to see how they continue to succeed in the future!
