Startmate flew 19 of its ’26 cohort to San Francisco this month for conferences with a16z, Sequoia, Accel, Menlo Ventures, Common Catalyst and Google Ventures, and held its first US Demo Day at Stripe HQ.
It’s the first cohort trip to San Francisco since 2020, reviving a practice that ran from 2011 till COVID grounded it.
Throughout the week, the Startmate founder sat by way of investor conferences, pitch-deck suggestions classes and conversations with ANZ founders who’ve already relocated to the US and raised from US companies.
The week closed with Startmate’s first San Francisco Demo Day, hosted at Stripe HQ, the place all 19 firms pitched to a room of US buyers, founders and operators.
Startmate CEO Phoebe Pincus mentioned the purpose of the journey was to lift the bar on what ANZ founders assume is feasible.
“There’s a large distinction between listening to you could construct a worldwide firm from Australia or New Zealand, and sitting contained in the rooms the place these firms are funded, challenged and constructed,” she mentioned.
“This journey was designed to shut that hole for our founders.”
Among the many alumni founders the cohort hung out with had been Melbourne’s Fluency, which raised a US$6 million (A$8.55 million) Seed round led by Accel in February and has since relocated its headquarters to San Francisco.
Head of founders Emma Grife mentioned it helps when Antipodean founders can see what it takes to make it within the coronary heart of Silicon Valley.
“San Francisco nonetheless issues as a result of it provides founders a special benchmark,” she mentioned. “It reveals them what quick actually seems to be like, what formidable actually feels like and the way the most effective buyers assume.
“For ANZ founders, that publicity is highly effective as a result of we’re already good at constructing by way of constraints. What we want extra of is entry, perception and proximity to international markets.”
Since 2011, the accelerator says it has backed greater than 350 startups with a mixed valuation north of $4.5 billion.
