Eavesdropping on Sydney Startups: 5 quotes you might have missed in February

The Sydney startup scene moves fast. So, you can’t be blamed for missing a few golden nuggets of information over the last month. Here’s what we heard recently…

"It will make it easier for everyday Australians to invest in tech companies, and share in their success …. The index will provide diversity for investors and spotlight Australia's economic potential. Importantly, it will showcase the ingenuity, grit, and perseverance of our tech industry that continues to deliver world-leading technologies."

Hon Karen Andrews MP, Minister for Industry, Science and Technology

In the last week of February, the S&P/ASX All Technology Index, or the All Tech Index for short, went live providing investors with another avenue to take a stake in some of the most prosperous tech companies locally and abroad. The All Tech Index is expected to enhance the profile of listed tech companies across Australia and demonstrate how the sector is tracking. 3 of the top 10 guns on the index are companies born and bred in Sydney, cloud-logistics software developer Wisetech Global, fintech service provider Link Group, and AI-assisted data annotation platform Appen.

“We made the decision for this particular Fellowship to focus on providing women new pathways and key networks in the world of tech, so they can land the job they really want.”

Michael Batko, CEO, Startmate

Startmate unveiled its first women-only fellowship program aimed at assisting 30 women to land top positions at some of Australia’s leading tech startups. Kicking off in March, the initiative’s ambition is to shift the gender balance of the tech scene in order to bring about not only greater diversity, but pave the way for industry growth and create new pathways for undiscovered talent from a variety of high-demand industries. The program is expected to attract some of our tech scene’s brightest minds so be sure to check it out. Expressions of interest are now open via Startmate’s site.

“About 70% of people are disengaged at work and start a side hustle when corporate organisations could benefit from empowering the corporate rebel from within. Being a corporate rebel requires passion, courage, resilience & vulnerability that can be harnessed and realised through a community of likeminded people that IdeateUP will offer.”

Laetitia Andrac, Founder, Founder Essential Shift and facilitator for the IdeateUp program.

In conjunction with Essential Shift, Fishburners have launched Ideate Up, their first corporate entrepreneurship program supporting in-side hustles. The program will work to train corporates to build innovation and entrepreneurial skill sets in house and integrate personal passions and problem-solving tenacity within existing roles. The initiative comes in response to the growing demand of local organisations seeking ways to retain their top talent while also building internal capacity for innovation.

"So this funding is about growth with our enterprise clients, and allowing them to hire and engage a more diverse set of talent from Expert360 outside of what they may be doing today."

Bridget Loudon, Founder & CEO, Expert360

With the ambition to help create the workforce of the future and ultimately become one of the world's biggest on-demand employment platforms, Expert360 has taken a step closer to that reality, raising $12 million in an external funding round from existing investors. The funding will support the hire of a chief operating officer to work with Bridget Loudon ahead of a possible public listing, as well as see the expansion into more large companies globally.

“The real-estate industry has lagged behind many other industries when it comes to technology and advancements in large-scale enterprise-wide sales management and distributed sales teams.”

Adam Rigby, Founder & CEO, NurtureCloud

NurtureCloud, 3-year-old, Sydney raised proptech company last month announced its $3 million partnership with local real estate agency Ray White. Leading the charge to digitise the real estate industry NurtureCloud uses data, automation and market intelligence to help agents generate leads, market themselves better to vendors and improve the overall performance of their businesses. This investment will see Ray White take a 50 per cent stake in the proptech trailblazer and roll out the tech in stages across its franchise network.