Two Atto startups awarded Boosting Female Founder Grant
With over 2,500 expressions of interest in the second round of the government Boosting Female Founder Initiative, two Atto alumni startups have managed to secure hundreds of thousands of dollars in further funding for their expansion plans.
There were 38 recipients for the second round of the grant who shared in the $11.6 million.
The companies received between $25,000 and $480,000 in funding, with both AirRobe and Bubble Tea Club at the top end of the funding pool which will cover 50% of their new project costs.
After the announcement of the grant funding, the startups were featured in Women’s Agenda and Smart Company.
AirRobe
Founder: Hannon Comazzetto (Atto 2019)
$396,050
"Atto was a massive perspective change for us and what we could achieve."
— Pamela Yip / Co-founder of Bubble Tea Club (Atto 2020)
“Atto is a terrific opportunity for any founder. You will be guided by the best and you will learn to think about your opportunities and your alternate paths to success in a way you haven't before.”
— Hannon Comazzetto / founder of AirRobe (Atto 2019)
AirRobe
AirRobe (Atto 2019) is a circular economy fashion marketplace where shoppers can buy, sell and rent high-end secondhand clothing and accessories.
They’re building a network of designers, retailers and consumers who are transitioning e-commerce into re-commerce. The AirRobe platform allows shoppers to re-sell or rent fashion items purchased online and with partners like THE ICONIC, shoppers can choose to link their items and pre-load reselling details to their AirRobe account at the time of purchase.
Founder Hannon Comazzetto participated in Atto’s first Accelerator and joined when AirRobe with just an idea.
“During the program I built an MVP, grew my customer base to 200+ customers and made my first $10k in transactions.”
- Hannon Comazzetto
After the Atto program in 2020, Hannon went onto to raise over $1.28 million in seed funding from tech investors.
With this latest round of funding, AirRobe is focused on creating a Circular Wardrobe which will enable consumers to return to the application at any time and re-sell, recycle or upcycle their used-fashion in one-click.
Bubble Tea Club
Bubble Tea Club (Atto 2020) is a DIY bubble tea kit e-commerce business. Bubble tea lovers can purchase at home kits where serves start at $1.75 far cheaper in comparison to the $7-9 drinks from bubble tea stores. They’ve experienced rapid growth since they started the company during Melbourne’s lockdowns in 2020 when both of their jobs were impacted by COVID.
The co-founders Jenny Le and Pamela Yip joined the Atto Accelerator a few months into building the business.
Since then, they’ve gone on to offer thousands of combinations of tea, have over 30,000 customers, served over one million bubble teas, and have raised over AUD$1.6 million in a record breaking Birchal equity crowdfunding campaign.
With this latest round of funding, the founders will be focused on expanding to North American and UK markets. At Atto, we love their alternative path to fundraising and their approach to business which includes moving fast, failing and having fun.
Watch our Q&A with Bubble Tea Club founder Pamela Yip
During the Q&A, Pamela shared some advice for other early-stage founders:
“Failure is guaranteed. And it’s more about getting used to it. I think if you’re failing you’re doing something right as you’re making progress. Even when you’ve made as many plans as you could - things never go to plan.”
“We’ve always been fast to make decisions. We’re not afraid to make mistakes. That’s how we launched so quickly. We launched with minimal products and we relied on our customers to tell us what they wanted.”