An Incubator From Down Under: Meet StartMate?s First Batch of Aussie Startups

Last year, a group of Australian startup veterans and executives created Startmate, a seed fund and incubator designed to provide small, early-stage investment and hands-on mentoring to local startups. Bringing the Y Combinator model to Australia, Startmate chooses 5 startups to participate in its 3-month incubator program. It then seeds those 5 companies with $25,000 and offers them access to its impressive list of mentors, which includes Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, the founders of the software company Atlassian that last year raised $60 million in funding from Accel Partners. Startmate's 3-month program includes two demo days, one in Sydney and one in Silicon Valley, and culminates in a two-week trip to Silicon Valley, in which the startups are introduced to American investors.

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