Startmate intake announced: Trends from the applications and the eight companies selected

Startmate has announced the eight companies that stood out from hundreds of entries and made it through the selection process to join the five-month accelerator program spanning Sydney and San Francisco.

Startmate co-founder and coordinator Niki Scevak told StartupSmart there were two key trends in the applications.

“As an accelerator you’re reacting to the applications that come in. Most prominently we can see a massive shift towards two things – mobile and big data or machine learning,” Scevak says.

“We saw a lot of mobile enterprise software which is something we’re really interested in as internet usage evolves. It was very exciting to get to see lots of people chasing these big goals.”

The software companies selected were automatic photo enhancement and organisation Lumific; visual analytics for legal discovery online HayStackHQ; mobile learning platform Inductly; pdf management for construction engineering Drawboard; parcel delivery tracking Flirtey; Whatsapp for calenders Foogi; email auto completer Composure; and prediction sports games SportHold.

This is the fourth time the program has been run. Several companies selected this year had applied for earlier intakes but failed to get in as their ideas were too broad at the time.

The focus for this current program for the coordinating team is to focus the accelerator program around the individual companies.

“Startmate is not a university course, it’s not a broadcasting of knowledge from experts to newbies. Scevak says. “We’re trying to make each company the centre of what we do and surround them with great people who can help.”

All eight companies are led by male founders.

“Honestly, having no female-led start-ups is so personally disappointing to me. In 2012 we had three, and I wish there were more women-led teams in this batch, but I’m really at a loss as to how to fundamentally fix that,” Scevak says.

“There is broad recognition there is a great imbalance and we need to tackle the root causes right down to reaching girls in primary school about studying tech.”

The eight companies will spend three months in Sydney, before demo days in Sydney and Melbourne in late March. They will then spend two months in San Francisco before graduating from the program.