2022: Atto’s Year in Review
Working on a startup is more of a marathon than a sprint. And so much can happen in one year.
By the end of 2022, Atto has now supported 115+ female founders to build tech-enabled businesses.
Below, we’ve shared a wrap-up of our biggest wins, some of our best content for founders, and Atto team wins.
Welcoming the fourth batch of Atto Accelerator 🚀
In the second half of the year, we ran the third batch of Atto Accelerator.
More than half of these founders are based in Victoria, Australia while others are based across Australia in regional VIC, Cairns, Sydney and we have founders joining us from Los Angeles this year.
In this batch, we have founders solving problems through technology in relation to health, fashion and sustainability, community, as well as education.
15 founders from 10 startups joined the program and we re-welcomed our world-class startup founders, operations and investors as Atto Educators: Kate Kendall - Atto's Founder, Cheryl Gledhill - Director of Product at Culture Amp, Lana Weal - Atto's Program Manager, Anna Cheng - Growth Lead at HealthMatch, Alan Jones - M8 Ventures & Fishburners, Cheryl Mack - Founder & Investor at Aussie Angels.
A huge thank you to our educators and judges who joined the Accelerator Showcase: Aprill Enright-Allen - Tractor Ventures, Judy Anderson-Firth - Euphemia, Rachael Neumann - Flying Fox Ventures, and Siân Simpson - Public Rally.
Meet the 2022 startups:
Anastasia Bulavina, founder of Soulship
Anita Noller and Jessica Wong-Saunderson, co-founders of MumbleMe
Dr Anushi Rajapaksa, founder of Misti
Athy Giannopoulos, founder of StrataBoss
Bhagya Wijethunga, founder of Global Diet Aids
Debbie Sharp & Fernanda Martin del Campo, co-founders of Stone Tulips
Laura Green, founder of Lipsy Loo Learning
Paz Pisarski, founder of The Community Collective
Vivian Wang, Celeste Yang & Yining Yu, co-founders of My Mind Journey
Yesha Patel & Nehal Jain, co-founders of After
Next year, we’re running even more programs for women creating tech startups. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date.
Meet the 2022 Accelerator startups.
Welcoming the first batch of Aspire Pre-Accelerator 🚀
The 8-week online program kicked off in early March 2022 with the goal of taking founders from idea to MVP. For this program, 20% of our applications came from outside Australia.
We had 18 founders join us from 14 startups and by the end of the program, the founders pitched to share their progress and it was so impressive to see what they had achieved in just two months. Thanks to the cheerleaders who joined the Aspire Showcase: Melissa Ran - Head of Community at AirTree, Julie Trell - Country Lead at SheEO, and Jaynaya Winmar - Founder & Director of Essential Services, SheEO Activator.
Meet the 2022 Aspire Pre-Accelerator startups.
Membership tier updates to the Atto Academy membership 🎓
The Atto Academy membership is a new monthly membership for female founders. It was created as founders were consistently approaching founders looking for support post-accelerator and in-between programs – so we decided to launch another program to support female founders 365 days a year.
Within the Academy, founders get access to all previous Atto program and private community event recordings, valuable startup resources, and they join the Atto community platform.
We ran Masterminds, Coaching Calls, Office Hours with successful female founders, quarterly internal Showcases and more events for female founders.
Learn more about the Academy community here.
Atto Team Wins 🎊
Some of the highlights from Atto’s founder Kate Kendall’s year:
Joined AirTree as an Explorer which aims to empower the next generation of angel investors
Participated in the Wade Institute’s VC Catalyst to learn the best tools and skills to make VC investments
Registered Atto as a school on LinkedIn to better showcase our alumni
Shared an Intro to Tech Startups showcasing what a startup is, different business models, and how Atto uses the Indie Way to build sustainable, scalable and independent businesses
Shared How to Build Your Startup outlining how Atto advocates to founders to work smart, test and learn, and earn revenue early to make more impact
Interviewed by One Roof via IG Live about How to Find Product-Market Fit
Event with General Assembly: The $5,000 Startup - How to Fund Your Startup with Leanne Bats and Pamela Yip discussing the realities of the first stages of testing and building a business with +230 event registrations
Represented Atto as Judge at the Startup Victoria x One Roof HerStartup pitch night
Inspiring and educational content for female founders 🗣
We published a few blogs with the hope of providing inspiration and practical advice to the next generation of founders, including:
10 Neurodiverse Female Founders to Follow featuring 2x Atto female founders
Ultimate Guide to No-Code Tools outling key uses for no-code tools and the best tools to use
Masterclass: How to Find the Right Development Agency for Your Startup with Jane Kou from Stripe
Masterclass: Intro to DAOs for Startup Founders with Kevin Lu from AirTree
Each quarter, we also share our monthly Atto Community Update (Q3’s Community Update here).
And finally…
The Atto team are looking forward to the holiday season, taking a step back from work to reflect a bit more on all these great wins, and come back to 2023 with more fire to support female founders reach success.
If you have any feedback for Atto or would like to get in touch, feel free to send us a message here.