Mission Statement for Role

Startmate's Accelerator Lead is arguably one of the most important and impactful roles on the startup ecosystem across Australia and New Zealand.

You'll be standing on the shoulders of giants like Niki Scevak, Samantha Wong, Nick Crocker, James Tynan, Michael Batko + more. Our accelerator (aka 'the unicorn factory') unearths and supercharges ANZ's most ambitious early stage founders and brings together some of the most talented and experienced mentors across the ecosystem.

As our Accelerator Lead, you will:

• (1) ensure we attract and see the most ambitious founders, including growing the number of applications we receive

• (2) engage the best mentors in ANZ, and

• (3) run our world-class accelerator that gives our founders an unfair advantage by instilling customer obsession and being the ultimate founder <> mentor connector.

You will be the face of the Accelerator, tasked with ensuring it is the most trajectory-shifting experience possible. This means you’re first and foremost an exceptional relationship person, with the ability to both empathise with and drive the founders towards truth seeking through customer discovery and product focus.

Role Scope: Your Responsibilities

• Responsibility 1: Uncover the most ambitious founders

  • Description: If we want the most ambitious founders in ANZ to be Startmate founders, one of our key levers is to ensure that we attract those ambitious people in the first place. Whilst the investment team will oversee and drive our investment decision making process, you’re ultimately responsible for unearthing the most ambitious gems and getting them into Startmate.

  • Example: Representing Startmate at Startup events, conferences, helping inform how our community programs can act as funnels into the accelerator, advising on the founders fellowship as a funnel.

• Responsibility 2: Run a trajectory-changing Accelerator

  • Description: Oversee the founders experience of the Accelerator program from end to end to ensure we’re continuously accelerating and having an outsized impact on exceptional early stage founders in ANZ. You’ll work closely with our accelerator ops lead to make sure the program is exceptional. You are the ultimate founder <> mentor connector - rather than solving the founder problems yourself, you find and connect the right people to create catalysing moments.

  • Example: Program design and facilitation, building exceptional relationships with the founder, unlocking them through getting them addicted to customer discovery and feedback, connecting them with mentors, organising demo day.

• Responsibility 3: Mentor Love

  • Description: You will build trust and craft an excellent experience for our mentors to them coming back for years to come. You will identify any gaps in the mentor pool and actively seek new mentors to fill those gaps to ensure we have rich and diverse perspectives. 

  • Example: Selecting and onboarding new mentors, getting & implementing mentor feedback, building relationships with key mentors, running mentor events

Position Requirements

Your background is less important than the key skills, which might include:

• Relationship Superhero - we’re looking for someone who spikes on their EQ and people skills. You can build trust, listen, understand what our founders and mentors want and need, and action that feedback accordingly

• Founder Empathy - you deeply care about Founders and their success. You will champion them internally and externally.

• Communication - you are a clear verbal and written communicator at scale. You are able to manage communication from 100+ Founders and 100+ Mentors at any given time.

• Organisation/Execution - it goes without saying that this role will require someone who has strong personal management skills and can happily keep 10 plates spinning.

• Feedback - you are not afraid to say it how it is. You thrive on getting feedback as well as giving constructive feedback which will not always be easy to deliver.

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, Noosa and New Zealand. We currently have an office in Melbourne with satellite offices in Sydney 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...