The tech industry’s unofficial motto for two decades was “move fast and break things”. It was a philosophy that broke more than just taxi monopolies or hotel chains. It also constructed a digital world filled with risks for our most vulnerable. In the 2024–25 financial year alone, the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation received… Read more »
Fishburners is addressing the women founder funding gap with a free program to help them succeed. The pioneering startup coworking space has collaborated with more than 30 organisations, from venture funds to corporates, to launch The Ascent Project, a free, on-demand program to support, inspire and inform women, and tackle structural gaps in clarity and… Read more »
In a week when Victoria’s startup community is reeling, it would be easy to believe the story is only about loss. The Victorian Government has confirmed it will wind down LaunchVic as an independent agency and consolidate its functions with Breakthrough Victoria and Invest Victoria, as part of a public sector overhaul. On paper, this… Read more »
With LaunchVic now dissolved into Breakthrough Victoria, it feels like the right moment to revisit the themes I explored in Melbourne’s innovation crisis is about culture – and what comes next and take a more personal look at what went wrong, what could have been built instead and perhaps what can come next. When LaunchVic… Read more »
In celebration of TechStars Sydney’s ‘Demo the Future’ event, Startup Daily is profiling the 12 startups and their founders in the 2025 cohort. Next up: Our Leg Up – helping Australian homeowners turn their equity into income – while also giving buyers a boost onto the property ladder. Our Leg Up Founder: Michael Ragavan One… Read more »
Venture capital firm Blackbird’s annual startup Coachella, Sunrise Australia, will be held on Thursday, April 30, next year. That shaves a day off the annual “love letter to Aussie startups”, with the VC promising “one massive day + one huge night” instead. Announcing the changes to the 2026 event, Blackbird said the revamping the event… Read more »
The Victorian government will wind down startup support agency LaunchVic and rework technology investment fund Breakthrough Victoria as part of broader public sector reforms set to save the state $4 billion. The decision has rattled the state’s startup sector, and spells an uncertain future for state-backed accelerators, grants, and investment funds tailored to local talent.… Read more »
When Jim Cooper, CEO of Blue-X, a California-based innovation services company for startups, moved to the US three decades ago, he had some trepidations. Now he loves it, but the former Sydneysider is back “home” for Christmas and in his shorts, to share his experiences on the final Startup 360 episode for 2025. Jim, who… Read more »
Remember when Twitter used to be good? I reckon it peaked somewhere around the first COVID lockdowns. In those days, there was a running gag on the site where everyone would refer to it as a “hellscape”. And it did invite some of the worst that humanity has to offer. Opinions, as the old joke… Read more »
If the $467 million Airwallex raise and secondary share sale told us anything, it is that Australian venture capitalists are increasingly less venture and a lot more capital with a spreadsheet. When Blackbird and Airtree, two of the country’s flagship VC firms, finally joined a Series F round for a company they had previously passed… Read more »
Leigh Jasper, the serial founder who built construction software platform Aconex into one of Australia’s first tech unicorns, will deliver the keynote opening address at the Growth Summit in Melbourne in February 2026. Presented by SmartCompany and Startup Daily, in partnership with Xero, the Growth Summit is Australia’s premier event for ambitious startup and SME founders and leaders.… Read more »
Back in 2016, around the time LaunchVic was kicking off in Melbourne, Dave McManus left the city for Silicon Valley, determined to become a startup founder. Now he’s back in Victorian capital and the founder of Lightning Ventures has plenty of stories to tell and advice to share on episode 40 of Startup 360. Explaining… Read more »
In the eyes of big AI companies such as OpenAI, the troves of data on the internet are highly valuable. They scrape photos, videos, books, blog posts, albums, painting, photographs and much more to train their products such as ChatGPT – usually without any compensation to or consent from the creators. In fact, OpenAI and… Read more »
Here we go again. Private school fee letters for 2026 are arriving, and for many families the numbers are confronting. Many schools appear to be lifting fees by something between 5 – 7%. For financial advisers, these costs have shifted from being background noise to a central conversation in financial planning. As fees rise faster… Read more »
Ochre Ventures, the first Australian VC solely focused on First Nations entrepreneurship, has reached a $30 million first close on the $100m target for its first fund. The VC has already made its first five investments, including veteran First Nations-owned construction and facilities management business PSG Holdings; video games maker MicroProse, which generated $5m in… Read more »
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