A new wave of startup founders graduated this week from Curtin University’s annual accelerator program, Curtin Accelerate.
The 13 teams, representing a broad range of industries from health to ag, pitched their business ideas to prospective industry partners and investors in the hopes of becoming the next scale-up or even unicorn.
Over the 10-week program, the group developed their business ideas under the guidance and mentorship of program lead Larry Lopez, Australian Venture Consultants partner and well-known startup supporter, investor and advisor, along with support from world-renowned
venture capitalists, startup founders, and experts in entrepreneurship.
In my 30 years working in the startup and innovation space, I’ve always felt most energised when working with individuals and teams during the initial phase of their startup journey. The dedication, passion, and hard work the 2022 Curtin Accelerate cohort have put in to
Larry Lopez
building their new businesses has been truly inspiring and I’m confident they will all experience great success following on from their time with the program.
Curtin Accelerate is WA’s longest-running intensive startup accelerator program. Rohan McDougall, Curtin’s Director of Commercialisation, said the results of the program speak for themselves.
“More than 50 businesses have passed through Accelerate over the past nine years, going on to attract millions in investment funding and launch ground-breaking innovative products.
“In our pursuit to becoming a global leader for commercialisation and innovation, it’s essential Curtin remains top of mind for entrepreneurs looking to take their innovative thinking to the next level.”
“This year’s Curtin Accelerate cohort embody all the qualities of successful startup founders and we’re excited to see what they do next.”
The Curtin Accelerate 2022 cohort
AFID (Automated Fish ID) / Founder(s) Dan Marrable
Monitoring fish biodiversity and biomass are the best indicators of ecological health. Automated Fish Identification (AFID) is a digital assistant designed to reduce the cost and manual labour required to monitor our sensitive maritime ecosystem. Through machine
learning and artificial intelligence, AFID automates the process of measuring and cataloguing fish species to incentivise the adoption of video-based monitoring techniques around the world.
Agrisave / Chilumba Machona
Agrisave is on a mission to empower farmers to grow, scale and maintain high quality yield. The problem is that farmers lack data and guidance to make informed decisions. That’s why Agrisave is building sensors and software to collect information that helps farmers visualize and understand the composition of their soil profile.
Aquatic Australia / Rick Copeman
Aquatic Australia was founded to find ways to solve big problems using only sustainable methods. Their current aim is to build a facility capable of producing both seaweed and sea cucumbers utilising inland saline water to facilitate a polyculture environment. Their intended impact is to reduce the fishing pressure of sea cucumbers, leading to natural buffers against reef acidification, and largely improved reef-building capacity. All while increasing growth rates of seaweed, sequestering carbon, and producing a natural, nutrientrich food additive for livestock
iFluid / Masood Mastofi
Drilling fluid is a key component of the drilling process, which provides important functions such as borehole stability, sample quality and facilitating rock fragmentation. iFluid is a drilling fluid automation technology composed of hardware, software and chemicals that
autonomously measures drilling fluid properties, and optimises drilling fluid based on drilling condition. The system provides a platform for data driven and consistent decisions in remote areas of drilling.
Dualitee / Susannah Soon, Torsten Reiners, Roberto Minunno
Australian houses often underperform in thermal comfort, cost-effectiveness, and energy efficiency. Dualitee is designed to empower homeowners to better understand and optimise their home’s energy usage. Through the use of low-cost IoT sensors, artificial intelligence,
and machine learning, our system recommends and automates settings for optimal internal comfort and energy consumption.
Hug Health / Daniel Hug, Kevin Wernli
Hug Health is a team of digital health professionals developing innovative technological solutions to improve healthcare outcomes. Their initial product, SummaRise, is an intelligent falls assessment and management system used by aged care facilities to make the review of
falls faster, smarter, safer and aligned with best-practice guidelines. Through the aggregation and visualisation of falls data, the team are helping aged care facilities provide better care for their communities.
MC-Market / Michael McLevie
MC-Market is a marketplace for buying and selling gaming-related goods and services relating to the videogame Minecraft. Their vision is to be the safest and easiest platform for young entrepreneurs to learn about business and earn money. With over 350,000 active members, MC-Market allows teenagers and young adults to offer and request services such as development, design, writing, and more.
Onetide / Rebekah Manley
Onetide is an award winning, innovative, Australian owned and operated engineering company that specialises in the rapid deployment of engineering solutions in power, water, communications, maritime logistics and essential infrastructure to remote locations. We apply our ‛technical limit’ proprietary engineering designs and sovereign advanced additive manufacturing capabilities to design and deliver novel, engineering solutions to withstand the harshest environmental conditions and meet the highest safety standards.
RadiXplore / Russell Menezes
RadiXplore is an AI system that enables organisations to leverage unstructured data to make informed decisions. The resource industry has millions of pages of documents and under 2% of this is being used. Last year, mining companies using RadiXplore found unrecognised
critical minerals worth $60 million within unstructured data. Oil and gas companies, on top of finding the next billion-dollar oil well, are using RadiXplore to transition to net zero. RadiXplore has identified use cases within other verticals like finance, law, medicine and construction.
Research Screener / Leo Ng
Research Screener is a web-based application that assist researchers to find more relevant research articles more efficiently. By using a machine learning algorithm, Research Screener can rank research articles based on relevance according to the researchers’ expertise. More
than 350 researchers world-wide have used this system and 6 institutions in Perth including South Metropolitan Health Services and Child and Adolescent Health Services have licensed this system.
South West Biotech / Claire Parker
Food waste is a global challenge that has environmental, economic and social impacts. It costs the Australian economy about $20 billion a year. Black Soldier Fly farming provides a solution and is a rapidly growing industry and an excellent example of a circular economy. The flies themselves are the only waste. South West Biotech effectively closes the loop in the value chain, extracting valuable biopolymers from the exoskeletons of the flies using another waste source in the patent pending process.
Thatwas.pro / Matthew McGillivray
Thatwas.pro is a streamlined online video editing system designed to help video game streamers get more fans. Current editing software is best designed for full scale video projects. Thatwas.pro focuses on what’s important for gamers. The tool allows users to easily brand, edit and post clips, keep track of how they’re performing, and repurpose content that’s performed well. Our goal is to help streamers experience growth by integrating business marketing tactics that are relevant and time-efficient.
Upitch.me / Sherin Breuer
Ditch CVs and get ready to pitch. Upitch.me is a video recruitment platform for students and graduates looking for internships, project-based work or entry-level jobs. Companies pitch to candidates via a selfie video. They pose up to three tailored interview questions that can
encompass anything from role-playing to work samples (one of the most predictive forms of future job performance). Candidates respond to those questions through video pitches when applying for the job.
Missed out? There’s always next year…!
Applications for Curtin Accelerate 2023 will open 10 September 2022 and will run in January 2023.
Anyone developing their startup idea and considering participating in next year’s program is encouraged to reach out to the Curtin Commercialisation team at [email protected].
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Curtin University is a sponsor of Startup News.
