Antler Australia held its first virtual Demo Day on June 25, live streamed from Sydney to more than 2,000 people around the world after receiving more than 2,800 registrations.
The global audience is all tuning in to hear from the 12 local tech startups launched within and funded by Antler.
"Turning this into an online event in the wake of Covid-19, has provided us with the reach and diversification of audience that we could not have achieved with a traditional Demo Day," says Bede Moore, Managing Partner of Antler Australia.
"We have been overwhelmed by the level of live engagement on the night, and feedback we have received following the event. The widespread support the community has shown for these startups is highly encouraging, and fills us with confidence that together, with our network, Antler can help chart the path to recovery for the ecosystem and the broader economy following Covid-19."
The event took place in a professional studio in Sydney's CBD, and incorporated a new format which saw the audience able to ask questions to the founders live and express their interest to engage further with each team following the event.
There were also a few surprise announcements from the local Antler team. Firstly, the Reindeer Network, a new program aimed at empowering and inspiring ambitious women to launch and lead their own startup, and the Antler Launch Academy which provides access to Antler's world-class company-building playbook through a 5-week online course.
But the main event, of course, was the reveal of the 12 startups which had formed and launched over the last five months. From FinTech to SaaS, HealthTech, Deep Tech and more, these businesses, while born during the Covid-19 crisis, will go on to create jobs and growth, ultimately recharging the economy.
Here's who they are (in order of appearance):
Intalayer
Michael Wendland, co-founder of Intalayer
Intalayer is a platform for software companies to empower and scale high-performance product teams. By automating and simplifying inefficient processes, Intalayer keeps product teams focused on high-value strategic activities.
Intalayer's target customers are product teams in scaling software companies who can spend 30% of their time stuck in low-value inefficient tasks, instead of focusing on high-value activities to build products customers love, increase revenue and grow the business. Intalayer uses extensive integrations and machine learning technology to automate and simplify inefficient Product team tasks.
With Intalayer, these teams can achieve in minutes what now takes hours, freeing them to stay focused on long-term value. Intalayer is currently in private beta with two customers and five onboarding in July.
Intalayer is the brainchild of three innovative co-founders: Dain Welsman, Dr Ian Glass and Michael Wendland.
The product vision stems from problems that Dain, also CEO of the business, experienced in B2B Product Management experience with well-known Australian tech companies such as Domain and Data Republic.
CTO Dr Ian Glass Ph.D is responsible for building the machine learning and automation technology that powers Intalayer. He holds a Ph.D in Engineering, is a full stack software engineer and has extensive experience in data simulation and processing.
And rounding out the founding team is CCO Michael Wendland who leads Intalayer's commercial strategy and growth with a focus on marketing, sales and customer success. Prior to founding Intalayer, Michael led growth marketing for some of the UK's largest companies, including Capgemini and iProspect, and spent 7 years in enterprise sales.
Path Zero
Current carbon neutrality services are not designed for SMEs. Engaging consultants to attain Carbon Neutral status is expensive and the collection and analysis of emissions data take more time than SMEs have. And if they use an online consumer service, they are left without the ability to make a robust Carbon Neutral claim.
Pathzero uses a novel approach and proprietary technology to combine the ease of use and automation of a consumer service with the transparency and accountability of an enterprise consulting service. The product is now live in an open Beta phase with the first customers.
The co-founding team is made up of Carl Prins and Charbel Ayoub. Carl, also the CEO, is a Sydney-based entrepreneur who is passionate about climate change. Before Pathzero, he co-founded Handled, Australia's first energy comparison and auto-switching service with mobile, and digital fulfilment, and led the company as CEO for the last 3 years. With a 17-year career that has spanned multiple industries and companies such as Macquarie Group, Reinventure Group and Nearmap, Carl has a unique blend of corporate credibility as well as startup hustle.
CTO Charbel Ayoub's journey into entrepreneurship started with Antler. Prior to that, he spent over 10 years perfecting his technical craft as a software engineer and frontend developer with brands such as Oneflare, GoCatch and Pizza Hut. He has a diverse range of experience across many environments including startups, media, agencies and enterprises. Charbel's passion for technical solutions and his environmental conscience places him in a unique position to enable businesses to make a positive impact with Path Zero.
Aurelius
Research tells us that treatment can't take place without the help and experiential knowledge peer support provides. Aurelius connects people fighting addiction to a community of recognition and support.
There are people that are going through an addiction that want to get support from people that have walked in their shoes, and those people that have walked in their shoes want to support those who are seeking help. Aurelius is the first organisation to match those two groups of people together in a scalable way.
Behind this innovative HealthTech business is co-founder and CEO Sally Krebs who, for the last decade, was executing multi-million dollar deals at soon-to-be unicorns Secure Code Warrior and Propeller Aero. Sally also spends time with her mum who is recovering from 40 years of drug addiction.
Sally is paired with co-founder and CTO Benjamin Wirtz a seasoned product leader who has delivered growth for over 50 companies like Atlassian, Google and various startups, including three of his own. Prior to Aurelius, he led the Product, Design and Engineering functions at BlueChilli.
motiveOS
Did you know: $800 billion is spent in the US each year on sales commissions, yet it's still being managed by spreadsheets and legacy software. motiveOS is a real-time commission app that provides accuracy and visibility to the sales, finance and management team, and automates the entire process for the business.
The team is led by CEO Alexander Green who prior to launching motiveOS was the co-founder and CEO for HANDS HQ and successfully grew the business to $2 million ARR.
His co-founder and CTO Linton Ball has worked at some of Sydney's leading tech startups, such as Shootsta and Five2One, as a senior software engineer and also co-founded Seneca, an AI-driven knowledge platform funded by H2 Ventures.
CloudOlive
The adoption of SaaS is accelerating, and businesses are struggling to manage it. By 2025 managing SaaS software will no longer be a challenge for those who leverage the CloudOlive platform. CloudOlive has identified a clear wedge into a large market where we have 10+ years of experience and a global network.
The CloudOlive team consists of co-founders and co-CEOs Adam Ross and Enrico Tam. Adam is a go-to-market sales leader with 10+ years of experience in SaaS and building high-performance hyper-growth sales teams, while Enrico holds an MBA and a Ph.D. in Engineering, and he has 15 years of experience in building and delivering innovative solutions.
Mys Tyler
Mys Tyler is the app for body-relevant fashion inspiration. It matches women to brands via influencers who look like them - so that what looks good on the influencer, will look good on the user (it's like having a body double try on clothes for you). Women can filter by style, budget, and preferences, and then purchase items from posts via links to e-commerce sites. Purchases return an average of 15% affiliate fee back to Mys Tyler, which it shares with the influencer.
This is the brainchild of founder and CEO Sarah Neill, a growth marketing expert, with 15 years of experience developing brands, building products, and scaling startups. Prior to Mys Tyler, Sarah was Chief of Staff at Ultra Mobile (#1 on the Inc.500). She was also the founder/CEO of DOODAD, a travel tech startup.
Meetric
Meeting actions often get lost - hours of meetings and yet only a fraction of things get done. Why? Because it's extra work to keep track of them and make sure they're actioned, especially when teams aren't using the same tools and processes. Meetric removes the extra work by automatically recording and tracking meeting actions in one central place, connected with your favourite tools.
Behind Meetric is co-founders Paul Boudet, Steven Hodgson and Jonathan Lemish. Prior to Meetric, CEO Paul Boudet was a growth consultant for B2B/B2C brands in Australia and the Operation Director at Ometria (9th fastest-growing UK tech company). Meanwhile, CTO Steven Hodgson was an Engagement Manager with McKinsey & Company, and co-founder of Kanopi, an Indonesian micro-finance technology company, and CPO Jonathan Lemish was the former Lead Product Manager at Prospa, where he was responsible for driving 500% growth across 3.5 years.
RightPaw
Getting a pet is one of life's most exciting moments. So why is finding the right one so exhausting? Multiple hours, multiple sites, no quality standards, and no support to help you along the way. RightPaw is taking the pain out of the puppy search. With easy navigation, vet-approved partners, and ongoing support from playdate to purchase, we help find your new best friend and nurture them as they grow. The biggest difference you can make to your pet's life is at the start. We're building a world where every pet and owner starts off on the RightPaw.
The co-founding team behind this business is co-founder and CEO Nathan Olivieri, a seasoned growth marketer and entrepreneur who prior to RightPaw, spent six years in global marketing roles at Unilever in Australia and the UK, and co-founder CTO Adelaine Ho is a marketplace expert. She brings a wealth of experience as one of the earliest engineering employees at hipages. Most recently working at Koala as a front-end engineer, she has been at the forefront of Australian e-commerce best practices.
Elenta
Elenta makes corporate Learning and Development more effective, by helping employees learn on the job. Globally, organisations spend $550bn on Learning and Development (L&D) programs each year. Of this, $54bn is spent on outsourced training and facilitation. But both L&D departments and external consultants struggle to quantify the business impact; and when they do, the story isn't great. McKinsey research shows that only 10% of learning is retained after a month. Elenta makes corporate learning more effective, by helping employees learn on the job
Elenta is the creation of co-founder Anshul Jain and Michael Tan. Anshul is a product leader, with a deep technical background. His experience running technology and product ranges from being CTO at exited early-stage startups such as HomeHello, to being Director of Product at Freelancer.com, and a Senior Product Manager at Amazon. Fellow co-founder Michael Tan is a specialist in growing early-stage B2B startups, having most recently led the marketing team at Expert360 where he built a team and helped grow the business to over 60 people.
Trace
Trace is the climate action club for lifestyle lovers. The platform allows users to offset their carbon footprint through a monthly subscription or at point-of-sale and watch their impact grow.
On a mission to help everyone live a carbon-neutral life, Trace makes it easy and rewarding to offset via a monthly subscription. Trace then handpicks the best projects that reduce carbon pollution and improve biodiversity around the world. Members can also trace exactly where their money goes and see their individual and collective impact grow over time.
The Trace team consists of co-founders Catherine Long and Joanna Auburn. CEO Catherine Long has spent the last eight years delivering strategy and transformation projects across financial services and energy markets under brands such as Macquarie Group and Oliver Wyman, while CPO Joanna Auburn has worked as a Product Manager under brands such as Finder, Pacific Magazines and OVO Energy. This is not the first time; the pair have launched a business together. This team also has proven experience having previously co-founded a premium fashion brand, est. 2026.
Hudled
Companies spend more on SaaS than ever before. It creates a maze of duplicate accounts and low accountability, resulting in 30% unused paid subscriptions. The enterprise solutions are highly human-driven with costly sales and onboarding processes. Usually offering 1-way sync and endless integrations.
Huddled is a single automated dashboard to manage, optimise and purchase your entire SaaS stack. Its proprietary one-click setup and one-way sync automation considerably lower the cost of onboarding and operating for our customers, while its competition is either positioned on low-cost one-way sync tech or on high-cost human-driven services.
Leading the team are co-founders Alexander Millar and Santiago Bravo. Prior to Hudled, Alex was the co-founder and CEO of Littlehubs, a childcare sharing platform, which was recently acquired. Meanwhile, Santiago is a serial entrepreneur having founded numerous businesses from Azonia and MyImpact, some of which he led through seed investment rounds and grew exponentially.
#Yolo ex
Millennials are getting crushed in the financial markets. Today's financial markets platforms are not designed for modern end users' wants and needs. (They were designed for investors like our parents!) Via #Yolo ex's game-like investing platform, this FinTech is on a mission to empower an entire generation to control their financial well-being. #Yolo ex is a platform built by and for Millennial Investors.
#Yolo ex was launched by co-founder and CEO Alan Gibbons, formerly a Senior Trader at various quant derivatives groups, such as Propex Derivatives, Phoenix Trading Group and HiveEX.com, having cut his teeth as a trader at the Bank of New York, and his co-founder and CTO Troy Till, a former Senior Programmer and Technical Lead at leading HFT trading firms & Australia's biggest gaming group.
