How do you land a brand deal with global music superstar Robbie Williams?
Easy – send him a song via voice note.
At Startmate’s recent Alumni Demo Day in Sydney, Andy Miller from non-alcoholic beer startup Heaps Normal (Startmate class of winter 2020) recalled how he heard from the singer’s team that Robbie was a fan. It’s been more than 25 years since he’s had a drink, but after coming across the brand on his Australian tour.
The superstar and brewer began chatting about becoming a brand ambassador, but when the conversation went quiet, Miller followed up by recording himself singing to Williams asking what his favourite drink was.
For more practical advice, we spoke to Andy and some of the other founders pitching on the night about their biggest lessons going through the accelerator.
His advice? Just start.
“It sounds corny, but it’s literally [to] believe in yourself and start before you’re ready, because you’ve already got everything that you need to be able to succeed.”
“And work it out as you go. The best way to solve the problems that you think you’re going to have is to just start doing something.”
Francis Vierboom, who cofounded drone start up Propellor Aero in 2015 (the same year he did Startmate), had two pieces of advice to share.
The first: work at another startup before starting your own.
“One thing I like to tell people is try not to start your first startup. It’s really valuable to get experience around startups and working in a startup, before you start one yourself,” he said.
“At least that works for us. And obviously lots of people just dive into doing it.”
The second is to figure out where your customers will be shopping for your products.
“It’s often a really hard question for startups. And for us as a company that was selling a software product to construction teams, it’s a pretty hard question to answer: when and where is a construction company shopping for software? It’s not many places,” Francis said.
“But figuring out distribution and how your customers are getting into the mood to buy you is pivotal to your business. And Startmate pushes you hard to go and find people that are in that buying mood.”
Andy O’Connor from JustFund (Startmate Summer22 cohort) had a similar problem, building financial solutions for people going through divorce. The advice he received at Startmate and now shares is to hone in on the customers.
“When you’re looking at a really significant social problem, it’s very hard to know where to start. Particularly when it comes to a technology business, where you have a significant product build cost before you have product market fit,” he said
“We had five fantastic mentors and they were all very clear — just stay as close to your clients as you can throughout the entire journey of the business. So [it’s] constantly speaking to clients and your customers to learn as quickly as possible where our product fits best in solving problems for them.”
We also asked the founders about how the Startmate community shaped the trajectory of their startup.
Think bigger
For Francis from Propeller Aero, it was about how they pushed him to think bigger.
“It’s always been a hallmark of Startmate that they want to level up your ambition. They want you to think bigger about how much scale you can achieve,” he said.
“And that’s obviously really important for the venture investors who are looking for those big, outsized returns in their investments too.”
WORK180 founder Gemma Lloyd on stage at the Startmate Alumni Demo Day.
Gemma Lloyd from WORK180 (Startmate class of 2018) said the Startmate community is one of the most supportive networks she’s ever been part of.
“The founders and mentors are so generous with their time and advice; everyone genuinely wants to see each other succeed,” she said.
“In an industry where only around 2% of VC funding goes to women, meeting other women founders and investors, such as [Skip Capital founder] Kim Jackson, gave me a real sense of belonging and a belief that change is possible when we lift each other up.”
Startmate CEO Michael Batko said they wanted to bring together some of the founders from across the years backed by the program to inspire the next generation of founders.
“At traditional Demo Days you see the success over 12 weeks, but you are still wondering which company is going to make it,” he said.
“Alumni Day flipped that on its head. Instead, you got to witness the awesomeness of the companies that made it, but also hear about the rollercoaster of a ride that building a company is. As Andy Miller, founder of Heaps Normal, put it beautifully, the journey is one full of curveballs: Good or Bad – who’s to say?.”
The next Startmate Demo Day for the Winter25 cohort is on next Thursday, October 23, at the Timber Yard in Melbourne. Details here.
- Evan Lim is the content lead at Climate Salad — a community supporting Australian climate tech founders.
