Latest 30X30 Cohort Unveiled  

Last Updated: Thursday 14 March

School management software Compass Education, virtual medical clinic Telecare and Y Combinator alum Mindset Health are among ten startups tipped to reach unicorn status in the latest round of LaunchVic’s 30X30 program.

Now in its third year, 30X30 is an executive education program helping back-office talent at Victoria’s fastest-growing scaleups grapple with the challenges of massive growth.

Research from the Tech Council of Australia reveals just 1% of people working in Australia’s tech sector have experience scaling up a firm. Singapore, by comparison, had around 17%.

LaunchVic CEO Dr Kate Cornick said the latest recruitment drive had attracted more than 50 expressions of interest from Victorian scaleups, with many coming up against similar bottlenecks.

“We know that many of the biggest challenges for scaleups actually arise in the HR, Operations and Finance functions,” she said.

“That’s why we’ve spent the last six months recruiting top tech talent from existing unicorn ventures like Culture Amp, Canva and Atlassian to share their experiences and war stories with the cohort.”

Scaleups who have been through the program since its launch in 2021 have raised more than $98.7 million funding and successfully scaled to international markets.

One example is construction scaleup HammerTech, which opened offices in the UK and Ireland last year with support from 30X30 and its links with Global Victoria.

“The 30X30 program helped HammerTech speed up the velocity of our entry into the market, via access to the greater Global Victoria network of contacts in Melbourne and London,” said HammerTech’s VP of Operations Nick Peters.

“It’s a program that is built to identify the next unicorns and it showed us what we needed to do right now in order to get to that unicorn status with the billion-dollar valuation.”

Omar de Silva, Co-Founder of EdTech FourthRev echoed the need for that “just in time” support for scaling companies.

“Building a business from zero to seven or eight million is a different kettle of fish to building one from eight to $20 million dollars,” he said.

“We needed the expertise and experience that the 30X30 program provided to help us make decisions in the best way possible for that phase of growth.”

This year’s selected startups include:

• Acusensus – Pioneers intelligent solutions that can be rapidly deployed to address road safety challenges.
• Compass Education – Simplifying complex school processes in one connected platform.
• Edrolo – Giving teachers time and more joy with quality resources that positively impact student learning.
• EstimateOne – Connecting the commercial construction industry.
• Equiem – Integrating ops tools, flexible spaces, and communities in one unified workplace experience platform.
• InvestorHub – Investor marketing software that gives public companies the tools and data they need to own investor relationships.
• Mindset Health – Digital hypnotherapy to empower people to manage their health with their mind.
• Telecare – Telehealth services online for rural Australians.
• Tasman Environmental Markets (TEM)– Australia’s largest voluntary carbon offset provider.
• Tixel – The leading marketplace for Aussie fans to buy and sell tickets, with scale-up operations in the UK and US.

For more information about 30X30, visit launchvic.org/30X30