Team Techstars Sydney: Why Zipline AI is the future of customer collaboration

Ahead of the TechStars Sydney ‘Demo the Future’ on December 8, Startup Daily is profiling the 12 startups and their founders in the 2025 cohort.

Next we are featuring, Zipline – AI, which allows customers to become collaborators.

Zipline AI

One-liner: Zipline AI gives consumer brands their own brand-safe generative AI – so they can co-create products and content with their audiences, while capturing new insights into what their customers really want.

Why does it matter?

“Today, every single e-commerce site has a search bar,” says Michelle Reeves, founder of Zipline AI. “Very soon, every single site will have a create bar,” she reveals.

Today, consumers already spend 58 billion hours a year designing digital products using brand logos and IP, Reeves points out.

“The problem is, brands don’t see what people are making. They miss out on the insights. And they don’t control their brand IP,” she said.

To solve this, Zipline AI is the technology that allows brands to invite their customers to co-design products, packaging, content and campaigns.

“The future of commerce is collaborative with customers. It’s creative. It’s co-designing.”

The problem it solves

Think about how brands sell products today. They guess. They do surveys, make products they think we will like, spend billions on ads, and try to convince us we should buy what they’re selling.

Guessing means 60% of products fail post-launch. In Australia, there is $2.5 billion of unsold goods sitting in warehouses each year.

“Zipline changes that,” Reeves said..

“What many misunderstand is that generative AI isn’t just a design tool, it’s a data tool. When consumers create with brands, they are telling us what they want. Brands get to see micro trends, regional trends, style and taste preferences – before they make a single product.”

How customers use Zipline

We’re all familiar with typing a prompt into generative AI. Zipline lets fans of a brand do the same thing with just a handful of words.

The difference is, it stays on-brand.

Forty-Love, a fashion brand, invited their community to co-design tennis dresses using Zipline. In just five days, fans created over 2,000 dress designs.

“Before we produce a single item we get to see what our customers love, what’s trending, and want next,” said Dee Ridge, CEO.

It turns out co-creation isn’t just design insights. It’s also a new frontier of marketing.

Forty-Love lowered cost-per-click by 65%, boosted email sign-ups by 17% and increased engagement time from 54 seconds to 11 minutes.

What’s more, brand affinity rose 46% after just one co-creation experience.

“No amount of ad spend can do that,” says Reeves.

Meanwhile, Beyoncé-backed beverage brand, Lemon Perfect has signed on to use Zipline internally for their marketing team to generate on-brand marketing assets and sales materials for retailers.

“We’re able to move at the speed of culture, not the speed of marketing agencies,” said Mari Lee ,the CMO.

Why Techstars invested

“Michelle is incredibly unique in that she’s a second time Techstars founder. She previously did the Boulder program in 2020,” says Techstars Sydney managing director Christie Jenkins.

“So I did what any good investor should do – I reference checked her!” Jenkins laughs.

“The MD of her previous program said: ‘I love Michelle. She’s super smart, hard working, a glue in the program. In short, I’d take her into my class regardless of what her business is… she’s that great.’”

“And honestly, as strong as that endorsement is, they undersold her.”

“Early stage investing is all about the founder – who they are as a human matters a hell of a lot more than the product. Michelle is the epitome of who I want to see at the helm of a company that will change how global commerce works.”

The most important lesson from Techstars Sydney?

Since she’s back for her second Techstars experience, Reeves knew what she was in for.

“First, we are stronger together,” she says. “The cohort experience is powerful. Sharing wins, pressure-testing ideas, and opening doors for each other accelerates our progress in ways no single company could achieve alone.”

“Second, that we had to go beyond product, and beyond distribution. The best companies in the world go further and create a movement. For us co-creation isn’t a feature, it’s the future behavior of how consumers engage, buy, and belong.”

What’s the long-term ambition?

“How long do you have?” Reeves laughs.

“Today, our product helps brands turn imagination into data through co-creation. But we’re only at the very, very beginning of all retail becoming participatory commerce. Eventually, consumers and brands will create everything together. Zipline is the operating system that powers that for everyone.”

See Zipline AI and the Techstars startups in action at Demo the Future, Monday December 8, 5-8pm. Details here.