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Welcome to this week’s standup! On the board today:
La Trobe's LaunchPad for those in the Care Economy - 50 spots, $5k, closes 23 Aug!
13 new members introduced themselves in Slack this week
Life After Launch Ep 2 has landed: tune in to Jodie Imam of Tractor Ventures story!
The Rundown: national AI framework, Heidi Health's $98m, Cover Genius joins the double-unicorns
Startup Muster is back and needs ten minutes from you all!
Before the Job Ad, the next AFC meetup in Melbourne
Plus the ecosystem events happening over the next fortnight
Building in the care economy? 50 spots, $5k, closes 23 Aug
If you're building anything in the care economy, this is one to know about.
La Trobe's LaunchPad pre-accelerator runs 12 weeks out of the Eagleworks Innovation Centre, backing care economy ventures with a tech edge. It covers market research, customer discovery, business model design and testing - the unglamorous work that decides whether an idea actually holds up.
You finish at LaunchPad Lift-Off, pitching for a share of up to $5,000. Anyone who completes the program also picks up 15 microcredential credit points toward La Trobe's Global MBA, which is not something you see in most pre-accelerators.
50 spots. Applications close Sunday 23 August.
You could be in this newsletter - reach 4600+ Australian Founders & Operators!
The Standup and The Startup Shortlist go out twice a week to founders, operators, and startup talent across Australia and New Zealand. Whether you're looking for a sponsored placement, want to share a job with startup talent, or have an offer or discount worth putting in front of this community - there's a spot with your name on it.
Meet AFC’s Newest Members this week!
Pulled straight from the intros over in our Slack, here are the founders, operators, and builders who joined AFC this week.
Chris Murphy - Founder/Principal, Murphy & Company (Sydney) - marketing and GTM advisory helping deep tech and defence founders make their technical capability legible to the buyers, investors and regulators who matter.
Jun Chin - Founder, Cape Digital (Melbourne) - runs a fractional marketing agency after 9 years in growth marketing scaling SaaS, EdTech and marketplaces across APAC and EMEA.
Ben Watiwat - CFO, Blackbird - finance operator who scaled teams at Vocus, SafetyCulture and Immutable, now focused on using AI and tooling to make finance less painful.
Alex Chernik - Founder, KotnextForge (Melbourne) - ex oil and gas project lead turned AI researcher (PhD, published at AAAI) looking for execution-driven people to build with.
Alexey - Partner, Co-Ventures - co-founder of Eucalyptus (acquired by Hims & Hers) and ex-early finance lead at Canva and Koala, happy to advise founders on talking to VCs.
Michelle Narayan - Founder, goodwork (Melbourne) - runs a solo comms and PR practice for startup, scaleup and government clients, previously at Airwallex.
Vivek Reddy - Founder, Known - operator with 8 years scaling Swiggy's quick commerce, now taking paid and fractional work on expansion, commercial negotiations and ops.
Muhit Anik - Co-founder, Kibo (Sydney) - building a digital incubator for minority co-founders while leading 100+ engineers, and offers product and tech advisory.
Deepti Nair - Founder, The Generous Table - ex-ANZ enterprise operator who built an AI kitchen assistant, and can help founders land their first bank or government client.
Josiah Lau - Exited founder - app portfolio acquired after 4.5 years, now looking to join an AI startup as founding marketer and happy to help with product growth.
Quintin Xu - Founder - left a stable tech job to build AI tools serving SMEs.
Michel Boudreau - CTO, GameGlass - 24 years in software building a multi-screen gaming experience platform, now seeking investors to scale.
Adrian Wills - Founder/Full-Stack Dev, Trickle (Melbourne) - hospitality insights platform for on-premise beverage data, recently relocated from NZ and keen to build a local network.
Not in there yet? Join Slack - this is where they're all hanging out.
Episode 2 of Life after Launch is here with Jodie Imam of Tractor Ventures!
Jodie Imam found her first customers by hacking Gumtree, and once ran a Doritos prank as a growth tactic and sold her her startup Occasional Butler to Airtasker.
The day she launched it, she says, felt like standing on a stage naked.
Now she runs Tractor Ventures, funding the Founders building tractors rather than rocket ships. She gets into where that model came from, how the Airtasker deal actually came together, and what a decade in the ecosystem taught her about who gets funded.
🎧 Listen to episode 2 → Spotify · Apple Podcasts · learn more at lifeafterlaunchpod.com
The top 5 pieces of startup news you need to know about this week!
Australia has unveiled a national AI framework and a new Office of AI inside PM&C, with mandatory Australian Standards for AI heading to National Cabinet this month. It brings new energy and water obligations for data centres and protection for creative works used to train models, with legislation expected early 2027 — the one to watch if you're building or raising in AI. Reported by SBS News.
Cut Through Venture's Q2 numbers are in: $1.7b raised across the quarter and $3.5b for the half — but just 31 sub-$5m rounds, the lowest early-stage deal count since 2020. The second-strongest start to a year on record up top, and a real early-stage squeeze underneath. Per Cut Through Venture's Q2 2026 report.
Heidi Health has banked a $98m Series B at a $704m valuation, led by Point72 Private Investments with Blackbird, Headline and Latitude. The AI medical-scribe scaleup now supports more than 2m consults a week across 116 countries - one of the standout local raises of the year. Reported by SmartCompany.
Cover Genius has joined the double-unicorn club at a US$1.9b valuation after a US$100m raise backed by Vista Credit Partners. The Sydney insurtech is riding 50% year-on-year revenue growth and more than $3b in cumulative gross written sales. Reported by SmartCompany.
FOI emails reveal how quietly the Industry Growth Program was paused, with the Department of Industry running an "if asked" comms strategy. The IGP is a key early-stage commercialisation funding channel - if your plans lean on it, factor in the uncertainty. Reported by Tegan Jones, SmartCompany.
Opportunities
Founder Institute Australia/NZ (Spring 2026) - part-time pre-seed accelerator for aspiring founders; Spring 2026 applications open now.
AND if you do one thing today - let it be the Startup Muster!
Australia's national startup survey is back - and we need your help.
Startup Muster is the data behind how this whole ecosystem gets understood - founder demographics, funding trends, the challenges founders actually face and where the growth is coming from. It's how the economy we're all building gets mapped. Without founders and the people backing them filling it in, that map is incomplete - and the picture policymakers, investors and the press work from is only ever as good as the people who show up in it.
So if you're building or supporting startups, this is the ask: take ten minutes on the 2026 survey and make sure your experience is in the national picture. If you do one thing today, make it this.
The AFC Event you need to lock in! Before the Job Ad
Thursday 13 August, 5:30pm - 8:30pm, EverestEngineering Melbourne
Every founder says hiring is the hardest part, so the effort goes into the job ad, the search, the offer. By then it's mostly decided. The people you want have already formed a view of your company from what you put into the market and what they hear from people who've worked with you.
Three founders and operators whose companies people actively want to join:
Pavi Iyer on being the earliest People & Talent hire at Fortiro and Mindset Health, and positioning a business to attract talent before there's a team
Danielle Schutte, Mobilise on why candidates take pay cuts to join them, and what they keep delivering internally to make it hold
Jobe Neal, Recreate on building in public until freelancers closed their own businesses to come and work there
Worth your time if you're hiring in the next twelve months, competing against bigger salaries, or you've grown fast and the culture is drifting.
Pizza and drinks thanks to EverestEngineering, our venue and catering sponsor. Thanks also to Kairos Recruitment and Innovation Victoria for their support.
The rest of the Ecosystem Events happening in the next fortnight!
🎉 Community Collective Melbourne Birthday Party - hosted by The Community Collective
📅 Wednesday 5 August 2026, 6:00 PM AEST
📍 The Commons, Collingwood
💬 Claude for Business: A Full-Day Hands-On Intensive
📅 Thursday 6 August 2026, 9:00 AM AEST
📍 Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre, Melbourne
💬 Nedd & Mates - hosted by We Are Mobilise
📅 Sunday 9 August 2026, 8:00 PM AEST
📍 Sydney Opera House, Sydney
💬 LUNA x Mighty: How to Stay Capital Efficient as you Grow - hosted by LUNA & Mighty Partners
📅 Wednesday 12 August 2026, 8:30 AM AEST
📍 Work Club Barangaroo, Sydney
💬 AFC Presents: Before the Job Ad - How Founders Build Companies People Want to Work For - hosted by Aussie Founders Club
📅 Thursday 13 August 2026, 5:30 PM AEST
📍 Everest Engineering, Melbourne
🎉 Community Collective Sydney Birthday Party - hosted by The Community Collective
📅 Thursday 13 August 2026, 6:00 PM AEST
📍 The Pillars, Sydney
🤝 Preparing for U.S. Expansion: Masterclass & Tactical Workshop (Melbourne) - hosted by Oz2US Ventures
📅 Tuesday 18 August 2026, 6:00 PM AEST
📍 Stone & Chalk, Melbourne
🎉 Community Collective Adelaide Birthday Party - hosted by The Community Collective
📅 Wednesday 19 August 2026, 6:30 PM AEST
📍 Stone & Chalk, Adelaide
That's a wrap for this week - see you in Slack in the meantime.
Catch you Thursday!
Megan 🚀