Founded in 2019, Atto​ is a new school for female tech entrepreneurship. Our flagship offering is a 12-week remote pre-accelerator program that has been backed by LaunchVic in Australia.

We help female founders launch tech companies in an independent, scalable, and sustainable manner. Our goal is to become the number one educational provider for the world’s most promising female founders.

Atto’s Demo Day will be a startup showcase featuring the founders in the Atto Accelerator 2022 batch.

Each startup will have the chance to pitch their business, share their progress so far and outline their big vision for the future.

Meet the Atto Accelerator 2022 cohort.

About our judges:

We're excited to be joined by three active investors, who understand the full spectrum of startups, as our judges:

• Aprill Allen, Co-founder & COO, Tractor Ventures

• Judy Anderson, Investment Manager, Euphemia

• Rachael Neumann, Founding Partner, Flying Fox Ventures

• Siân Simpson, Founder of Public Rally

Aprill Allen, Co-Founder & COO, Tractor Ventures

Aprill Allen is co-founder and COO of Tractor Ventures. Tractor provides a non-dilutive financing alternative for tech founders wanting something different. Together with her business- and life-partner, Matt Allen, she has an early-stage investment portfolio of more than 50 companies. Aprill deploys her process improvement expertise and get-things-done approach across Tractor Ventures as well as advises portfolio companies on scaling their customer service and support functions.

Judy Anderson, General Manager, Euphemia

Judy is General Manager at Euphemia, the family office for Australian entrepreneur and investor Dom Pym. Together they manage ~$65m in investments globally, focussing on Fintech, ClimateTech, women-led startups and startup infrastructure. Prior to teaming up with Dom, Judy was the CEO of Startup Victoria, Australia’s largest network for entrepreneurs.

Siân Simpson, Founder of Public Rally

Siân is an award winning global businesswoman, community builder and Founder of Public Rally. With extensive ​knowledge and experience in community building, marketing, content, social media, digital, video and innovation.

Prior to launching Public Rally she was the former Director of Community at Kiwi Landing Pad , which has become the bridge between New Zealand and the United States for the innovative Kiwi technologists who dream of exporting their businesses overseas. Sian also established KLP's presence in Australia, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Canada. She founded innovative programmes like the KLP Academy with over 100 webinars from leading world experts talking on topics ranging from investment to sales, marketing, product management and customer success.

These are regular one-hour drop-in sessions featuring leading female founders.

In November, we've got Sarah Abgoola from mtime joining us.

Sarah Agboola

Founder & CEO

Sarah Agboola is founder and CEO of mtime, a business dedicated to giving busy families their time back by matching them with family assistants. As a for purpose business, mtime not only helps busy families manage their home lives, but also helps women new or returning to the workforce gain meaningful employment through their assistant roles.

In addition to mtime, Sarah is an Advisory Board Member of the Australian Government's National Careers Institute (established as part of the National Skills Commission). For her work with mtime, Sarah was included in the Forbes 30 under 30 Asia list for the social impact category in 2022.

Looking to hire someone to develop a technology product or platform? Not sure where to start your search?

Jane Kou is an experienced startup founder and mentor. Going through the process of hiring a development company herself and conducting 50+ interviews with agencies, Jane will share her process to hiring the right development team for your startup.

This Masterclass will take you through how to find a development agency, what to ask them, how to review their previous work, and how to budget the build with your agency.

Join us to learn how to find the right development agency for your startup.

About Jane Kou

These are regular one-hour drop-in sessions featuring leading female founders.

In October, we've got Alex Sinickas from Milkdrop joining us.

Alexis Sinickas

Founder & CEO, Milkdrop

Alex Sinickas is the Founder & CEO at Milkdrop, a company creating breast pump cushions that change the way women feel about pumping.

Milkdrop is a medical product design company, focused on creating beautiful products and experiences for women.

Starting with a stint in investment banking, then working as a civil engineer in Australia and Canada; Alex later specialised in commercialising research before founding Milkdrop in March 2019.

Alex struggled with pumping. In the days, weeks and months that followed the birth of her daughter, Alex began to realise she was not alone. There are many, many women who share her problem.

As many of us unfortunately know from firsthand experience - pumping can cause damage, pain and discomfort, and can make you feel like a cow.

Being an engineer, Alex founded Milkdrop to find ways pumping could be easier, more enjoyable and empowering for women.

The Atto Startup Showcase is a private quarterly event for the Atto community.

During the event, we recap our latest news before hearing from inspiring founders in our community.

Each founder has 5mins to share their business story with us then we'll have a bit of Q&A from the community.

Event attendance policy: Atto is a community for female founders building tech startups. This event is tailored for ambitious and aspiring women in entrepreneurship. If you don't meet these requirements, we expect that you will attend as an observer only.

Event recording: Please note this event will be recorded for the private Atto community to access post-event.

These are regular one-hour drop-in sessions featuring leading female founders.

In September, we've got Gemma Lloyd from WORK180 joining us.

Gemma Lloyd

Co-Founder & CEO, WORK180

Gemma Lloyd spent the first decade of her tech career dealing with regular sexism and discrimination. Meanwhile, Valeria Ignatieva was struggling to find a workplace that would offer the flexibility she needed as a single parent to a son with a disability.

They knew they weren’t the only ones feeling unwelcome in the working world. But they also knew there were employers out there that would value and nurture their talents — they just needed a way to find them! And so, in 2015, they created WORK180.

Today, WORK180 is trusted by millions of women around the world. Our endorsement is synonymous with employers committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and we keep them all accountable. We’ve caught the attention of the likes of Vogue, ABC and the Financial Times. We’re also backed by investors, including Startmate, Skip Capital, Ashpeak Investments, Investible, Giant Leap and Blackbird VC.

Our global team is growing and big brands are on board, but our mission will always remain the same: To raise organizational standards so that all women can choose workplaces where they can thrive.

Wondering what DAOs are and how they can impact your startup? This is a new model which challenges the traditional model of corporations as they allow organisations to be without a hierarchy, decentralised and essentially borderless.

During this Atto Masterclass, AirTree's Investment Manager Kevin Lu will share more about what a DAOs is, the components of a DAOs (contracts, community-led initiatives, tokens), and how they can improve flaws in traditional corporate models.

Join us for an introduction to decentralized autonomous organisations for startup founders.

Launching a startup is more affordable than ever before due to the rise in cloud platforms, no-code tools, and lean prototyping. But how affordable is affordable? Can you launch a startup for under $5000? And once launched, what’s the best way to fund your startup? VC, bootstrapping, equity crowdfunding, grants – or even NFTs? We also know that a tiny percentage of traditional funding goes to women, so how can female founders take control and make things happen their own way?

Join General Assembly and Atto, a startup school and micro fund for women founders, in this deep dive into startup funding pathways and early-stage startup costs.

During this event, Atto alumni and Atto’s founder will share how they started small, rapidly tested, and earned revenue in the first few months of operation by focusing on what’s important. Atto encourages founders to use no-code tools to build lean MVPs and test their ideas – before hiring expensive agencies or looking for a technical co-founder.

Our panelists will share key insights into launching startups, valuable resources, budgeting tips, and the various funding pathways you can take in the early stages. You can expect to leave the event with an understanding of how to fund the launch of your startup leanly and what traditional and alternative options are available once launched.

Takeaways

• Gain access to the best startup resources

• Our best budgeting tips for the first 6 months

• Learn the common mistakes and pitfalls you should look out for

• Discover alternative funding pathways

Speakers

Kate Kendall - Founder, Atto VC

Kate Kendall is a British-Australian entrepreneur, community builder, coach, and advisor. As a startup industry veteran, she’s founded multiple companies including most recently, Atto: a trusted startup school, virtual accelerator program and microfund for female founders. Kate is the founder director of Indie Labs (a startup advisory studio and product firm). She also founded CloudPeeps, The Fetch and IndieConf.

Kate is a pioneer of the ‘indie way’ for startup building and regularly champions alt-funding pathways, having bootstrapped businesses as well as successfully raising traditional investor capital, crowdfunding, and grant funding.

Kate holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Business (Marketing) degrees. She started out as a business journalist and now regularly advises companies on the role of community, low-code tech entrepreneurship, and global startup operations. Her work has been featured in Quartz, BuzzFeed, The Next Web, The Australian, the ABC, Marie Claire, Lifehacker and more.

Over the past decade, she’s lived and worked in Melbourne, New York, San Francisco, Berlin, and Brisbane. She is currently based in regional Victoria, Australia with her husband, two daughters, and two cats. Their next chapter includes moving to a farm in the Macedon Ranges.

Leanne Bats - Co-Founder, Cool Points Club

Leanne Bats is the Co-Founder of Cool Points Club who are in the business of reimagining climate action, including using NFT's to create real world carbon removal. She’s currently advising New Zealand Rugby (the All Blacks) on their approach and strategy to Web3, which includes the use of blockchain technology to increase fan engagement. She is an Atto Accelerator graduate and has worked in startups for just shy of a decade.

Pamela Yip - Co-Founder, Bubble Tea Club

Pam has spent the last decade immersed in marketing & building online communities with experience in agency, corporate & start up environments. She’s founded Bubble Tea Club (Australia's 1st & leading DIY Bubble Tea Kits) and VSNRY Digital where she brings other founder's visions to life.

Her passion for marketing, community & brand universes has been recognised by Meta APAC’s Vice President (Dan Neary), A Current Affair, Insider Retailer, Business Insider, The Australian, Herald Sun & more.

Lana Weal - Marketing Consultant & Program Manager, Atto.vc

Lana is Atto’s Program Manager and Marketing Manager supporting female founders to build tech startups through a range of community driven programs. With a love for storytelling, Lana has worked with some of Australia’s most well known brands, local businesses and early-stage startups. She’s the founder of Market Mindfully and supports purpose-driven businesses to share their story and make more impact by focusing on making SEO and organic partnerships fun and easy. She’s also the podcast host for In Kind Company sharing stories of purpose-driven founders. With a fascination with the power of no-code tools, Lana created Women of Statue to showcase monuments of women around the world.

This is an one hour drop-in session featuring drop-in office hours with investors and leading startup pros.

In June, we've got Heidi Holmes joining us. Heidi is the co-founder & COO of Mentorloop . Heidi is an accountant and marketer by trade and spent the first years of her career in various roles for the financial services giant, KPMG. A founder at heart, Heidi's first startup was a mature age job board called Adage, which was successfully acquired in 2014.

Personally frustrated with trying to find the right connection outside her network, Heidi joined forces with her co-founder Lucy Lloyd to launch Mentorloop in 2016, with a mission to make mentoring more accessible for more people. Today, Mentorloop has over 50,000 life-changing connections happening across 170 countries, supporting companies such as Woolworths, REA Group and Xero. Mentorloop is a proud certified B Corporation.

The Atto Startup Showcase is a private quarterly event for the Atto community.

During the event, we recap our latest news before hearing from inspiring founders in our community. Each founder has 5mins to share their business story with us then we'll have a bit of Q&A from the community.

During our June Startup Showcase, we'll hear from:

• Carly Michael, Photogenie (Atto 2021)

• Leah Kearns, Enlightenly (Atto Aspire 2022)

• Aditi Basu & Krittika Singh, KUL (Atto Aspire 2022)

• Kate Dillion, She Lion (Atto 2021)

Want to join us? Email us at hello@atto.vc to see if you can attend.

This is an one hour drop-in session featuring drop-in office hours with investors and leading startup pros.

In June, we've got Lisa Miller joining us. Lisa Miller has spent the last 15 years working with software development teams and helping them scale into successful customer-focused companies. Her experiences include everything from digital agencies to hyper-growth at Canva, where she founded the product growth team while helping the company grow from 100 to 1,000 employees.

Lisa is now the CEO and Founder of Wedgetail.vc – an organisation devoted to conserving and restoring biodiversity through sustainable investment. This new endeavour weaves together her background in zoology and evolutionary biology, with her years at the forefront of high-growth technology. Using this unique combination she hopes to accelerate the UN’s herculean task of conserving 30% of the world’s biodiversity by 2030.

These are internal events for Atto Academy members only. This is an one hour drop-in session featuring drop-in office hours with investors and leading startup pros.

In May, we've got Shahirah Gardner joining us. Shahirah is cofounder of Finch, a next-gen data intelligence and financial technology company. She is one of Australia’s leading names in fintech and women in tech, recognised as Australia’s “Rising fintech Star” in 2018 after Finch received numerous awards across multiple categories: including “Best Personal Finance app” and “Best Digital Wallet”. Shahirah has presented at several conferences including Money 20/20, Women In Payments & Australian Banking Summit, PauseFest, Yeah Nah, and CeBIT. She's a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion as a board member of Girls in Tech Australia and Inclusion Advisory Panel at Rampersand VC.

Key outcome: each founder has the chance to pitch your startup in 2mins

Description: internal session to showcase and celebrate all founder progress throughout the program

Outcomes: learn different ways to pitch your startup and share your story with potential customers and your community

Description: how to talk about your startup, target your pitch for your audience (e.g customers vs investors vs press vs hiring), different pitch formats, where to pitch, preparing slides (Canva), and more.

Educator: Lana Weal

Bio: Lana Weal is Atto’s Program and Marketing Manager. With a love of storytelling, Lana has worked with some of Australia’s biggest brands, local businesses and early-stage startups. Lana has advised many founders on how to improve their pitches, seen hundreds of founders practice pitching and has been a judge during pitch competitions. She’s the founder of Market Mindfully and supports purpose-driven businesses to share their story and impact.

Companies: Market Mindfully, Atto

Key outcome: creating a plan for your first landing page

Description: key startup metrics (for different business models), north stars, key marketing metrics, goal setting and growth targets, engagement metrics, MRR / ARR, KPIs, how to measure, creating a business dashboard, what to measure and when, different measures for different business models, and more.

Educator: Cheryl Mack

Bio: Cheryl is the CEO of Aussie Angels, and on a mission to democratise angel investing in Australia & NZ. She’s an active angel investor with 20+ investments and a syndicate with over 120 investors. She’s a strategic advisor for several startups, and in her spare time, she’s a mentor for programs including Startmate and Founder Institute. A community-builder at heart, she recently held leadership roles at Stone & Chalk, and the Australian Computer Society. Before that she was the CEO of StartCon for 4 years, and created the APAC-wide Pitch for $1M competition. In case that’s not fun enough for you, Cheryl is also regularly featured on Startup Daily as the Pitch Doctor.

Companies: Aussie Angels

Key outcome: creating a plan for your first landing page

Description: what is an MVP, what should an MVP test, hypothesis and evaluation of results, how to create your first MVP / landing page, no-code and useful free tools, how to use the tools, explain each type of MVP e.g. concierge, wizard of oz, lean product roadmaps,

Educator: Jenn Vargas

Bio: Jenn Vargas has spent the last 10+ years building user-focused products at tiny startups and some larger companies you know and love (Flickr, Etsy, Birchbox). She is currently a Director of Product, for the Agent Experience at Zendesk in San Francisco, CA. Jenn has a passion for building consumer-facing products that focus on providing an amazing experience for users. With both a technical and a design background, Jenn loves getting involved in all aspects of product development.

Companies: Zendesk, Mostly Brilliant

Key outcome: Understand how to use no-code tools to test ideas and build lean MVPs.

Description: an overview of the no-code landscape including popular tools like Webflow, Airtable, Glide, Squarespace, Google Apps, Bubble, etc, screenshots of tools and how they're used, case studies for how startups have been built with and tested with no-code tools, to show how founders can use no-code tools to build an MVP and prototype, long-term impacts of using no-code tools, etc.

Educator: Romy Misra

Bio: Romy is the head of product ops at a Deel, a "unicorn" startup changing the way people work remotely. She has ten years of experience in leading product and operations teams at different startups in San Francisco. She is also a big believer in the no-code movement and empowering more people to create and build things, she showcases tools and how to use them on her Youtube channel, Make something with Romy as well.

Companies: Make Something, Deel

Key outcome: Conduct idea validation and user research.

Description: Why it’s important to talk to customers consistently long-term, how to conduct interviews, questions to ask, tools to use, what to do with data afterwards, unearthing your first customer, user interviews, segmentation, etc.

Educator: Joel Goyette

Bio: Portland-based Joel Goyette is a senior product manager and entrepreneur, with experience at Scott’s Cheap Flights, BetterDoctor, BoxBee, Loverly, OpenTable, and more. Joel is a hands-on product management leader with over 10 years of experience building and growing startups. His happy place is leading cross-functional initiatives to deliver delightful product experiences and accomplish growth goals.

Companies: Scotts Cheap Flights

Key outcome: Finalise your startup’s problem and conduct a market analysis.

Description: how to narrow down your ideas, create a problem statement, assessing your target market (TAM, SAM, SOM), first steps to research your industry, evaluating existing market solutions and competitor analysis, and more.

Educator: Cheryl Gledhill

Bio: Cheryl Gledhill is Director of Product at Zip Co, one of Australia's fastest growing startups. Formerly Head of Product at BlueChilli, she's been working with startups for over 25 years in engineering, product and user experience roles. She's passionate about helping startups find product market fit and scaling product engineering teams.

Key outcome: understand what is a tech startup and how it differs from a small business.

Description: what is a tech startup, how startups are different to small businesses, funding models and venture capital, testing and learning, startup landscape in Aus vs USA and process for launch.

Educator: Kate Kendall

Bio: Kate Kendall is the founder and program director of Atto. She’s the founder of Indie Labs startup advisory studio, which includes The Fetch and IndieConf. She has worked in startups for over a decade and also cofounded freelance marketplace CloudPeeps and Aussie Founders Network.

Companies: Atto, Indie Labs, CloudPeeps, The Fetch

Atto Masterclass: NFTs for Startup Founders with Leanne Bats, co-founder of Cool Points Club.

NFTs or "non-fungible tokens" have quickly become a phenomenon.

NFTs allow people to buy and sell ownership of unique digital items (like drawings, GIFs, or songs) and then keep track of those owners using blockchain.

What does this mean for startups?

In this Masterclass, we're going to break down what NFTs are, how startup founders can use them to raise capital, how to get involved with NFTs, understanding the risks, as well as diving into case studies.

Educating us on all things NFTs is Leanne Bats from Cool Points Club (Atto 2021 & Atto Academy).

Join us to get an intro to NFTs and understand how they've impacting the startup industry.

Leanne Bats

Co-founder of Cool Points Club

Leanne Bats is the Co-Founder of Cool Points Club who are in the business of reimagining climate action, including using NFT's to create real world carbon removal.

She’s currently advising New Zealand Rugby (the All Blacks) on their approach and strategy to Web3, which includes the use of blockchain technology to increase fan engagement.

She is an Atto Accelerator graduate and has worked in startups for just shy of a decade.

Founded in 2019, Atto​ is a new school for female tech entrepreneurship. Our flagship offering is a 12-week remote pre-accelerator program that has been backed by LaunchVic in Australia.

We help female founders launch tech companies in an independent, scalable, and sustainable manner. Our goal is to become the number one educational provider for the world’s most promising female founders.

Please join us for our upcoming startup showcase to wrap-up 2021 including a fireside chat with ModiBodi founder Kristy Chong.

About our judges:

We're excited to be joined by three active investors, who understand the full spectrum of startups, as our judges:

• Aprill Allen, General Partner, Tractor Ventures

• Rachael Neumann, Founding Partner, Flying Fox Ventures

• Emily Rich, Director of Microsoft for Startups, APAC & Partner, M8 Venture

Aprill Allen, General Partner, Tractor Ventures

Aprill Allen is a general partner at Tractor Ventures: a revenue-based investment alternative—and managing director of boutique consultancy, Knowledge Bird.

Aprill specialises in helping founders and enterprises deliver customer support and success at scale.

Emily Rich, Director of Microsoft for Startups, APAC & Partner, M8 Ventures

Emily co-founded Jemsoft, a machine learning and computer vision company. Jemsoft was acquired in 2017 by a publicly listed IoT company, from there Emily took her passion for startups and pursued investment opportunities with a focus on early stage tech. Emily went on to co-found M8 Ventures, a venture capital fund, in 2017 whose concentration is working alongside founders to build out sustained growth strategies. In her current role as Director of Microsoft for Startups, APAC, Emily is driving startups to grow and scale with a specific founder first focus.

We're hosting a new series for Academy members featuring drop-in office hours with investors and leading startup pros.

This is a closed session for female founders in the Atto Academy community.

Chelsea Newall, co-CEO at Scale Investors

Chelsea is the current co-CEO of Scale Investors after joining as the Investment Manager in March 2021. Chelsea has over 10 years experience in the financial services industry and has built a specialist reputation in managing founder and investor relationships.

Chelsea is an active participant in the Australian early-stage ecosystem and regularly presents at industry events.

Prior to Scale, Chelsea worked at JBWere for three years as Business Manager working directly with the GM of Advice and GM of Products and Markets. Chelsea has also spent six years in London in wealth management and brokerage businesses in Corporate Access and Business Manager roles.

We're hosting a new series for Academy members featuring drop-in office hours with investors and leading startup pros.

This is a closed session for female founders in the Atto Academy community.

Rachel Yang, Partner at Giant Leap Fund
Rachel is a Partner at Giant Leap, Australia's first 100% impact venture capital fund. Giant Leap invests in exceptional, rapidly scalable businesses that blend financial returns with deep social and environmental impact. We invest across three impact themes: health and wellbeing, sustainable living and empowering people. Giant Leap has invested in 19 companies to date.

Rachel is also the Co-Chair of Startup Victoria, a non-profit, grassroots organisation supporting startup founders succeed and has been a member of the Victorian State Government’s Innovation Taskforce.

Rachel’s background is in management consulting and corporate finance, and she previously co-founded a non-profit organisation to raise funds and awareness for Motor Neurone Disease.