Today you’re going to hear the story of Startmate featuring the head of operations at Startmate, Michael Batko.
Startmate is the leading tech accelerator in Australia and they take 10 to 15 companies and new stage founders in each cohort and help them from three to four months to get them to the next stage of their business.
They look for just the most ambitious founders and then work with that talent. Startmate doesn’t necessarily specialise in a certain area or industry. Startmate just focuses on the most ambitious founders and work with them to create immense value.
Let’s go back to day one, to a pub in Surry Hills where this story begins…
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Adam Spencer: You're listening to a DayOne.fm show.
Michael Batko: What drives you to make bold moves, to build something that didn't exist before, to live, lead, and choose life with intention? Welcome to Perspective X. I'm Pauline Fatowi, and this is not your typical business podcast. Each episode, I get to speak to extraordinary entrepreneurs and leading innovators to unpack what truly fuels their journey. Not just the wins, but the inner work, the overlooked decisions, the mindset shifts, and the personal moments that sparked something bigger. This show is about the ripple effect of choice, the kind of deep accountability that lets us respond to life rather than react to it. Because when you realize everything is temporary, and you are the creator of your own experience, you start to play the game differently. So if you're curious about how people build meaning alongside success, how they evolve through challenges and shape the world with intention, this is your invitation to listen in. Perspective X, where we go beyond the highlight reel and into the moments that changed everything. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker C: It's more about just highlighting like the ethos of Startmate or the reason it exists is actually people helping people out.
Adam Spencer: Hi, I'm Adam Spencer and welcome to Day One, the podcast for regional startups and the organizations that support them. Today's episode was made in part by the support of New Economy Media, publisher of The New Economy News, innovation news without the jargon. Read more at neweconomy.media. Today, you're going to hear the story of Startmate, featuring—
Speaker C: So I'm Michael Batker, the head of operations at Startmate. So Startmate is the leading tech accelerator in Australia. We take 10 to 15 companies, early-stage founders, and help them throughout 3 to 4 months to get them to the next stage, whatever that stage is. For us, it's— we look for just the most ambitious founders, and whatever those are, we can add lots of value to them. And we don't necessarily specialize in a certain area in industry. We just want the most ambitious founders, and we can work with that talent.
Adam Spencer: Let's go back to day 1, to a pub in Surry Hills, where this story begins.
Speaker C: So lots of people don't know that part of history as well. They always— StudMed still— people still see StudMed as it came out of Blackburn, which is actually— it was interesting because it happened the other way around. In 2010, 2011, Nicky came back from Silicon Valley. There was not much of a venture capital industry here in Australia. So this was literally before all of the VC funds as they are now today. And the VC industry being very, very new here in Australia still, it's only what, 5 years? Yeah. Back then he met up with a couple of his buddies, our original mentors in a pub here in Surry Hills. And they all said, let's put in $10,000 each to fund the next generation of founders, which happened to be Mike and Scott from Atlassian as part of that. So it was a great start, as a start, great starting a mentor community.
Adam Spencer: Yeah.
Speaker C: And they funded the first 5 teams back then. And actually, the initial mission of Startmate is still exactly the same one, which is founders helping founders.
Adam Spencer: Starting back in 2010, when there wasn't a lot of VCs around in Australia, as Michael said, after Nicky got back from Silicon Valley, Nicky met up with a bunch of people at a pub in Surry Hills, and Startmate was born. Some of those people include the investor and startup mentor Alan Jones, Mike Cannon-Brookes, Bill Barty, Phil Moore, Scott Farquhar, Mick Liaminskas, Dean McAvoy, Alfred Lowe, Peter Huhn, David Jones, Geoff McQueen, Ian Gardiner, Faidon Stowe, Richard Horton, Mike Casey, Ryan Juney, Badia Houseman, and Bart Yelimer. If I missed any names or got any names really wrong, please get in touch with me on the website and I'll update the list. Thank you to Alan Jones and Michael Batko for helping me with this list.
Speaker C: And ever since then, and the community of Startmate got bigger and bigger, and we've expanded from taking 5 teams into 10 to 15 teams. We run across Sydney and Melbourne now.
Adam Spencer: Michael has been with Startmate for about 2 years at the time of this story being published, but before Michael was the head of operations at Startmate, he worked for a startup called Expert360 as an analyst operations manager.
Speaker C: When I left Expert360, I didn't really know what I was doing. I actually moved out of Australia then, went traveling, went soul searching. I was in Colombia, Brazil, like traveling all over the place trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And as part of that, I then started to narrow down what industries I wanted to work in and started to broadcast that on all my different channels. And then people started introducing me to other people. And one of those introductions back then happened from Bridget, who was, well, who is the Expert Physics CEO, to Nicky Ševák, the managing partner at Blackbird. But it was actually for the head of operations role at Blackbird, which I interviewed for, and then I called up Nicky the next day being like, "Hey, this isn't quite the right role for me," 'cause it was just too compliance and legal heavy, and this just wasn't quite what I want to do, and I was like, I actually do wanna join an accelerator. And then he told me about a new role coming up in a couple of months' time, which wasn't online yet, for Startmate's head of operations. And then kind of like, fast forward a couple of months, the role came online, fast forward a couple more months, I got the role.
Adam Spencer: In a few minutes, we're going to hear from Michael on the types of people Startmate looks for to take through their programs. We've heard how Startmate got started, but I really wanted to know why. Why did it start and why does it exist?
Speaker C: For us, it's literally just about the most ambitious founders. Wherever, whatever stage they are, wherever they are, whatever field they are in, it's all about the people. It's basically the best founders and investors in Australia helping the next generation of founders, which is like our cohorts. But the beauty of it is that this community then comes together as one Startmate family and they just pull all together on all the same strings.
Adam Spencer: Startmate exists to build a strong community of founders helping founders. Michael told me Australia Australia now has quite a few angels and seed funding, and also quite a few VC funds doing million-dollar rounds.
Speaker C: And where Startmed fits into the picture is exactly between those two stages, or even before the seed stage. So in that early one. So either bridging people from like a seed to a VC stage, or actually even before the seed stage. So that's kind of the area which Startmed is covering. So it's anything from like, we value our startups in the million-dollar valuation. And then getting them to basically like a $2 to $4 million valuation.
Adam Spencer: About 3/4 of the companies Startmate accepts into their program already have revenue and have customers, with the remaining portion only having an MVP with no customers. However—
Speaker C: For us, it's, we look for just the most ambitious founders, and whatever those are, we can add lots of value to them, and we don't necessarily specialize in a certain area in industry.
Adam Spencer: Stuntmate was founded on the foundation of the individual, the team, the people that make up the companies. People helping people, founders helping founders. So it makes a lot of sense that they have such a strong focus on the type of people that they look for.
Speaker C: In terms of what people do we look for, that's a good one. It's the person who is is 100% passionate about what they do. Well, we call it, it's their life's mission to solve that problem. It's somebody who's a learner at all. They want to learn every single detail about the customers, about the people who have the problem, about that problem space they can possibly imagine. It's just somebody who just won't stop doing what they're doing even though a billion people are gonna tell them it's a bad idea. Yeah. We want our founders to be learn-it-alls. And when I say I want them to be learn-it-alls is we want them to know everything about the space. And how do they know everything about the space? Because they talk to as many people as possible. So that's customers, this is people who have been in the space, etc., mentors. What does that mean is that they actually collect so much feedback from people, so many data points. So that's the data-driven part. And they are able to actually consolidate all of that and make sense out of it. And the best founders have the backbone then to say, half of those people are right, half of those people are wrong, or whatever that split is, I'm just gonna pursue that path. The worst thing that can happen is you have so much data and you are just paralyzed by it all. Yeah. Worst thing is to not make a decision. Advice is talk to as many people in the space, your customers, potential customers, people who have been there before, collect all those pieces of information. But I guess the real piece of advice is just pick a direction, like whatever it is, like come up with a couple of hypotheses and run after one, validate it as quickly as possible and tick it off the list and go after another one or just actually double down on that one. It's just actually making decisions rather than being paralyzed and pursuing all different paths at the same time.
Adam Spencer: It's no accident why Startmate, its founder, and the people involved have a focus on people. They have a focus on people because of something that they call the magnetic force.
Speaker C: It's something that we call, well, that's our name for it anyway, we call it magnetic force, is that if you put the best people into a room, they're gonna attract other great people.
Adam Spencer: And that's why they've never had any trouble looking for startups or for mentors because those people are attracted to them.
Speaker C: We've got two sides, right? We've got the founders and the mentors. On the founder side, we get more applications every single cohort. Interestingly enough, on the mentor side, we're actually overrun by mentors in itself. Like, mentors just email us out of the blue being like, "I want to be a mentor at StartMe," because it has a reputation. Actually, that's what I meant with we don't have trouble raising a fund because people actually just want to. Yeah.
Adam Spencer: And as Michael just said, because of the magnetic force, as they call it, they don't have any trouble with funding either. And you'll hear more about that in just a minute. Speaking about funding, Welcome to Day One has just relaunched our Patreon after a couple of people supported us on our old tiers out of the blue. Thank you for your support. If you would like to support our mission of creating a platform for regional startups, you can do that by becoming a patron of the podcast. There is a link in the show notes, or you can find out more at welcometodayone.com/patreon, and you can show your support from as little as the price of a coffee.
Speaker C: We've never struggled with that. Mentors love the community, so they always want to come back. And the way it works is that each one of them puts in $10,000 into the fund, every single cohort. We've had mentors doing that since 2011, every single cohort. And it's not hard because people want to be part of the community. They see the value behind Startmate.
Adam Spencer: That's all for this episode of Welcome to Day One featuring Startmate. Before I wrap up though, here is Michael Batko's advice for founders.
Speaker C: The best founders are the ones who have this absolute passion for things and want to learn it all. So today, advice is Talk to as many people in the space, your customers, potential customers, people who have been there before, collect all those pieces of information. But I guess the real piece of advice is just pick a direction, like whatever it is, like come up with a couple of hypotheses and run after one, validate it as quickly as possible and just tick it off the list and go after another one or just actually double down on that one.
Adam Spencer: Yeah.
Speaker C: Just actually making decisions rather than being paralyzed and pursuing all different paths at the same time.
Adam Spencer: Thank you for listening to this episode of Welcome to Day One. I hope you enjoyed it. Everything that was mentioned in the episode today is on the show notes page on welcometodayone.com/startmate. If you enjoyed this story, please consider subscribing to the podcast and rating the show at ratedayone.com. And if you really love the show, then I invite you to help us continue to tell these stories and supporting Australian startups by pledging your support at Patreon. You can do that by going to patreon.com/welcometodayone. And thank you for giving this episode of Welcome to Day One your attention. That means the world to me and is more important than anything else. Thank you very much. This story was created by me, Adam Spencer, interviews conducted by me, Adam Spencer, and a big thank you to Michael Batko for taking the time to be involved. And credit goes to Alan Jones for helping with parts of the episode and providing his insight into the early days of Starmate. There was a bunch of other people I wanted to speak to for this episode that I wasn't able to do this time around, so I'm leaving it open that I may come back and do a revised edition of this episode when I have more time. Okay. The script was written by me, Adam Spencer. Music by Lee Rosevear. Full credits on our website at welcometodayone.com. This episode was produced and edited by me, Adam Spencer. Thank you and see you next time. If you enjoyed this story, please consider res— uh, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm.
