Mission Statement for Role

Startmate is the epicentre of startup ambition in ANZ, and founders are at the heart of everything we do. We run Fellowships to supercharge our startups with talent and source founders, we run First Believers and raise our own funds to supercharge startups with financial investment, but the core of it all lies at our ability to attract, identify, accelerate and fiercely believe in the best founders in Australia and New Zealand.

This role will be one of the most pivotal roles in the startup ecosystem over the next few years. Startmate is home to Australia & New Zealand’s largest and longest-running accelerator. In the next 5 years we want to be investing in 100 founders per year. This means we need to be seeing more founders than any VC.

Startmate has what every VC is trying to build - a thriving community that helps to surface founders. We have the unique opportunity to unearth and support aspiring entrepreneurs right at the very beginning. To foster their idea validation, testing an MVP, through to them building a world-class company working on the toughest global challenges. In Startmate 2.0 we have seen it work - Empathix, Lyrebird, Aquila, Kite Therapy, Butter Insurance - to name a few.

As our Founder Associate, you’ll own the early founder pathway. 

There are two, equally important sides to this coin:

• Grow Launch Club and Buildmate into the best early-stage founder communities in ANZ; and then

• Leverage these communities to create the best early-stage founder dealflow pipeline in ANZ

Different founder segments face different problems so your product suite intentionally creates experiences that enable founders to take an idea, validate it, build their first product and surface them to Startmate for investment. 

You’ll use your relentless customer-focus and exceptional relational and executional skills to not just continue the momentum of iterating and running these programs, but to help build out these founder pathways from our programs and externally through to applying for the Accelerator. 

Role Scope: Your Responsibilities

• Program/product success - Foster founders to give them an unfair advantage in the early stages of their journey

  • Description: Build and manage programs and initiatives that solve founders' most painful problems that enable them to turn their idea into reality. 

  • Example: Launch Club, Buildmate, founder pitch night

• Founder scout: Unearth the most exceptional founders in our community for investment 

  • Description: Surface the best founders for investment, funnels toward our fund products and programs, and build initiatives that retain them within Startmate for when they are ready.

  • Example: Buildmate, pitch showcase

• Founder relationships & community management

  • Description: Build & facilitate high-trust, open relationships with our early stage founder community 

  • Example: Post-program alumni engagement, in-person & virtual events, founder pitch nights, ongoing comms with founders of interest

What you won’t do

• Track the SM portfolio

• Raise funds or execute investments 

• Corporate partnerships (but support in decision making and executing the partnerships)

• Own or execute the selection process or decisions for acc

Position Requirements

• Relentless customer focus: Incredible relationship and community builder

• Product & systems builder: You’ll own simultaneous projects where scale and seamlessness is key. You’ll manage and create the systems to help us scale our ability to run and bring more founders through our programs, and surface these founders for investment

• Creative problem solver: You have a strong product mindset with and solve problems from first principles. You can pull apart a problem and bring a fresh perspective to help carve a new path forward.

• Executional excellence: You self-manage and utilise systems to enable you to manage a high volume of work without things slipping through the cracks. We have a lot of autonomy and trust at Startmate, so you won’t be sitting around waiting for approval; you should be excited to jump in, figure things out, get-shit-done, make mistakes and learn on the fly.

Working at Startmate

We believe that building a diverse and inclusive team is critical to Startmate’s success. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, or marital, veteran, or disability status. We use Applied to ensure every applicant gets an equal chance of success.

We offer:

• Community: The Startmate community is a unique mix of founders, operators and investors — the one thing everyone has in common is ambition. Startmate is much more than just our team, it’s a community built on paying it forward.

• Autonomy: You will have very high autonomy to realise your dreams within your area

• Flexibility: We are a remote-first team with coverage across Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane and New Zealand. We currently have offices in Sydney, Melbourne, and Auckland.

• Access: You get to work with every well known and less well-known Australian and Kiwi startup, VC and angel — Canva, Safety Culture, Propeller, Vend, Xero, Blackbird, Square Peg, AirTree, rampersand, Folklore — you name it!

• Great vibes: Being able to bring your best self to work is really important to us. We index heavily on wellbeing and engagement to make sure that you’re able to turn up with energy and resilience each day.

• A share of Startmate’s success: We think it is important to share successes with the whole team. All Startmate employees receive carry in our funds and are owners in the management company.

About Startmate

We’re making Australia and New Zealand the best place in the world to build a startup. We’re achieving that through building a platform that unleashes startup ambition and accelerates exceptional companies.

At our core, we’re a community of the most ambitious founders, operators and investors propelled by a highly-trusted mentor-driven community, and backed by the best angels, venture funds and tech startups in the region.

Over the past decade we have invested in 180+ startups, with a combined value of $2 billion.

We’ve written a lot about what we love at Startmate, so check out our blog if you want some more information about us, and check out our mission, values, and team, and one of our most ambitious goals...