A report from the Startmate Demo Day, which I attended last night...

[Dien Rice]

Startup accelerators are companies which take a few startups which apply, invest some money with them, and provide them with mentorship, in a bid to help them succeed...

Startmate is the top startup accerator in Australia, and is ranked by some as one of the world's top five startup accelerators... In the USA, some other well-known ones are Y-Combinator, Techstars, and AngelPad.

I was told that around 200 startups apply to be accepted by Startmate, and they accept just 12 startups a year into their program. The startups which are accepted have a high rate of success...

I attended Startmate's Demo Day last night, in Melbourne, Australia. The night started with mingling over drinks and very generous cheese platters. (I probably ate too much cheese, in reality...)

It was packed. Most people were on the young side (though not everyone), and the crowd was a mixture of entrepreneurs, along with investors, and anyone else interested...

The demos were about to start, and I sat down near the front.

They were fascinating, a blend of great upcoming ideas, mostly tech, but a few with a bit of a non-tech flavor to them.

The least "tech" one was www.Deliciou.com, which makes all-purpose seasonings. Their flagship product is a seasoning mix that makes anything taste like bacon! (However, they are still high-tech in their distribution and marketing...) Unbelievably, it's also vegetarian... They were seeking $2 million in investments, as I recall, and already were pumping out good sales figures...

One that interested me was www.Syntropy.xyz ... They're creating an automated digital assistant, which you can "program" by "demonstrating" (on your computer) what you want it to do. That is, you just have to do it once, and the Syntropy software will "learn" how to do it for you. I don't think it's available yet, but I'm keen!

After the presentations, more food and drinks... We were treated to an unlimited supply of various kinds of tacos (chicken, fish, beef, and vegetarian)!

During this time, I had a good chat with George Hartley (who had also presented on stage earlier), the co-founder of www.SmartrMail.com . SmartrMail is starting to disrupt the world of email marketing for ecommerce websites, so it was something I took a direct interest in...

Overall, it was a great night!

I'd been to a couple of other startup "demo" nights before, run by much smaller organizations. This one stood out by the youth of the crowd, and the raucousness of the young crowd's reactions, too (they were whooping and hollering after every presentation, with claps and cheers)!

I've been a startup investor in the past (for example, I personally invested in Geronimo https://geronimo.me ), but last night I went as an entrepreneur myself, to talk to other entrepreneurs... (I've co-founded a business with 4 other people, which provides tech to the money transfer industry... I can't talk about it much here just yet, as I don't want to give any help to our competitors, and we've only just gone "live"...)

A great night... I'll definitely go again...

Best wishes,

Dien