Press Play Ventures has a simple goal – help more women become startup founders.
The 12-week accelerator program won the GSD (Get Sh*t Done) Award, supported by Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer, at the Startup Daily Best in Tech Awards 2025 after delivering a dramatic impact for women founders in just 12 months.
Press Play was founded by Jumpstart Studio’s Sangeeta Muchandani, three-time founder, angel investor Preethi Mohan from NiceTo, Isaac Jeffries, and Poonam Advani – Best in Tech Future Leader of the Year finalist – in early 2024 and was backed by LaunchVic’s Alice Anderson Fund, which backs women founders.
The premise is clear: A program for women looking to step outside their corporate, scaleup or startup jobs to become a startup founder.
In just 18 months, they delivered a 12% uplift in women founders in Victoria, also having a broader impact on who gets to build, how support is delivered, and what inclusive innovation looks like.
Press Play has already helped 120 women to launch 104 startups. It’s a dramatic shift when women represent just 20% of startup founders and get less than 2% of VC funding.
The pre-accelerator helps women transition from employment into entrepreneurship through fully funded and partial scholarships (between 85% and 100%), zero equity, and hands-on, high-touch support.
A snapshot of talent
The alumni is its own remarkable snapshot of talent – 65% are mid-career women over 35, 62% are multicultural, and 73% new to startups.
Their startup roster spans MedTech, AI, DeepTech, Circular Fashion, FinTech, and more, including GonGlobal which raised a $1.6 million pre-Seed round; and Umbrellus, which partnered with RMIT for ClimateTech research and was accepted into LaunchVic’s CivVic Labs for the Circular Agtech Challenge.
Now they’re scaling Press Play Ventures nationally, with two streams: an online program for women across Australia and an in-person stream in Victoria, ensuring accessibility for women in regional and remote areas.
“Our goal is to create a robust pipeline of diverse, investment-ready women-led startups across Australia and then expand internationally,” Mohan explains.
“We’re also co-designing new initiatives with universities, incubators, and councils to embed inclusive startup education into mainstream systems, making sure gender equity is baked in from the beginning, not added as an afterthought.”
How to GSD
The team’s approach proves that when the environment is right, women thrive.
Accepting the GSD award, Mohan said it’s felt like whirlwind since launch, but looking back they really did Get Shit Done.
“The best feedback we get is from our founders, but this is the ecosystem actually recognising us, which is so special because we really are a program where we connect founders to the ecosystem. And to get that recognition is incredible,” she said.
“I think the biggest thing anyone can do [in the startup community] is lean in and support the people that are supporting the women. Because we’re already there putting in the hard yards and working with women to make it a warm and inviting experience. And we need the rest of the ecosystem to help them stay and flourish.”
So what’s one concrete thing the startup ecosystem can do to help GSD?
“This is something that we always tell our women founders. Done is better than perfect,” Mohan said.
“So it’s better just to put an idea out there and iterate and get it where you want it to be than just waiting and sitting on your hands. So any women watching this? Just get shit done.”
This article is brought to you by Startup Daily, with the support of Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer.
Thank you to our Startup Daily Best in Tech Awards partners:
