Atto Community Update: December and Demo Day 2020 Wrap-Up
On December 16, our female founders wrapped up Atto Accelerator 2020 with a virtual Demo Day.
After a welcome from Atto’s founder Kate Kendall, Adore Beauty’s Kate Morris kicked things off with a 10-minute walk through of her 20-year overnight success, sharing what she referred to as her ‘untraditional startup story’. Kate talked through her journey from garage-based ecommerce business to this year’s record-breaking IPO. She reassured everyone listening that it’s normal to feel disheartened as a business owner/founder but the feeling should be embraced because it’s where all the value lies. Kate wrapped things up with some encouraging words for Atto’s female founders: dream big! Great advice from the woman whose recent IPO went down in the history books as being the largest Australian IPO by a female founder. Check out our interview with Kate here.
We then moved onto pitching with Aprill Allen of Tractor Ventures, Kylie Frazer of Eleanor Venture and Hugh Stephens of Galileo Ventures as our judges.
The entire pitch process was run in four rounds with the judge's giving their feedback in between, Vicki Likoudis got the ball rolling. Vicki presented her advice platform for small businesses, Advice Hero, then Patience Makuwira followed with Beeline Collective, a professional networking platform for women of colour and spoke passionately about her mission to help disenfranchised women of colour. The founder of Binder Books shared how they’re launching a platform for buying, and selling, secondhand books.
With only two minutes allocated for each pitch, Atto’s 18 founders stayed focused and over the course of two hours the judges heard from:
Pam and Jenny from Bubble Tea Club, a business that only started eight months ago (during lockdown) and has already delivered 21,000 DIY bubble tea kits.
Jen Barnes from The Femfit, a wearable pelvic floor trainer.
Leeanna Kohn-Hardy of Finnappster, an online platform for asset managers to assess the sustainability of companies.
Marni Nicole from FitWithHer.com, a three-in-one weight-loss program for women.
Indie and Lingogo’s Lizzie Dunn, who’s been hard at work on the development of an indigenous content platform.
Priya Anand from Jarvis Health, a platform capturing Q&A from patients to doctors.
Donna McInerney of Koore, which offers templates and benchmarks to help ecommerce businesses grow.
Moode’s Jess Rosenberg who pitched her vitamin subscription service for women to cover their fertility lifespan.
Liisa Verma talked about Nudge Me, an online platform connecting women to business and life coaches.
Bronwyn Smith presented Promoloco a company already doing great things with its range of eco-friendly promotional products.
Elizabeth Knight talked about Purposeful, which is set to help school leavers find purpose, direction and work.
Sophia Richie discussed Thero, her app that aims to make teaching music theory easy.
Emma Scoringe shared her personal story to talk about the why behind Trackd, an app to help parents of atypical children manage all their health appointments.
And last but by no means least:
Ayla Toyokawa talked about WedSites, a wedding planning platform that already has over 3,000 couples in 38 countries using it.
The judges followed each round of pitches with words of encouragement, probing questions to help Atto’s founders dive deeper into the stories behind their product and suggestions around what to do next.
Check out the video replay on YouTube below:
Founder Wins
And just when you thought they would’ve been so busy prepping for Demo Day they wouldn’t have time for anything else…
Ayla, WedSites: Bridal Musings named WedSites one of the best live streaming platforms for your virtual wedding.
Lizzie, Lingogo: Lizzie was profiled for Nuku - a podcast about indigenous women doing things differently. And Rotorua Libraries purchased a one-year subscription for Lingogo, Lizzie’s platform for Indigenous stories and languages.
Sophia Ritchie, Thero: Sophia got Thero, a platform teaching music theory, up and running and her first beta tester started signing up their students.
Thanks to everyone involved in Atto 2020
Thanks so very much to all of our female founders for all their hard work, for sharing their amazing ideas and pitching so professionally. You’ve all made Atto Accelerator 2020 such a joy and we hope you continue to inspire each other as much as you do us. Thanks also to our educators for the 2020 program.
From everyone at Atto HQ, have a relaxing festive season and here’s to an even bigger 2021!