TechSydney partners with various startups and businesses to create Envirotech Alliance
Athina Mallis 2020-01-28
Technology advocacy body TechSydney has partnered with a number of startups and environmental businesses to form the Envirotech Alliance, an association focusing on creating businesses that aim to have a positive environmental impact. The startups involved in the Envirotech Alliance include SparkClub, Fishburners, Launch Group and Girl Geek Academy. TechSydney said it is focusing on creating more vertical market events and meet-ups with Envirotech leading the event series. The Envirotech Alliance will exchange ideas, tips, tricks and survival techniques and provide a support network to those in the envirotech industry trying to carve a way forward. Fleur Brown, director at TechSydney said the initiative was an obvious step to support the growing shift into climate impact specific work as the world confronts the challenges of the climate crisis. She said, “Technology has a crucial role to play in addressing the climate crisis effects and solutions – and our community is in a unique position to be able to accelerate the impact of those solutions. “There are so many enthusiastic founders working in this space and our aim is to generate community support for their efforts whilst encouraging more founders and investors into the space. “If we can demonstrate by scale how big the market really is in Australia that is great for brand Australia, good for tech and will reap dividends for all Australians,” said Brown. The Envirotech Alliance will host regular meetups, create focused forums and a community platform for government advocacy around support for Australian-grown environmental technology solutions. Spark Club founder Grant McDowell said energy tech is a fast-growing market in Australia, particularly as the renewables uptake gathers scale. “We established Spark Club in 2017 to bring the leading minds in the future energy sector together. We began with 100 members and the intention of building an energy tech ecosystem to harness Australia’s natural advantages in renewable energy and become the Silicon Valley of energy. “Australia’s high electricity prices, great solar and wind resources, world renowned university engineering departments and broken energy policy creates the perfect petri dish for leading energy tech to emerge. Our growing community of over 400 energy startup founders and industry leaders is working on groundbreaking solutions developed here in Australia to be exported to a global market. “No matter what the political climate, these solutions are world class and Australia has the opportunity to capture the financial and carbon saving success in the global energy transition we’re embarking on,” he said. Fishburners has committed to hosting the Envirotech Alliance for their regular meetups at it’s Sydney CBD premises as the non-profit organisation steps-up its commitment to supporting impact entrepreneurs. Fishburners, which supports more than 350 founders nationally, estimates that as many as 15 per cent of their current startups are focused on environmental and sustainability solutions. Dr Katherine Woodthorpe, chair at Fishburners said the startup hub is on board to provide as much support as they can to the entrepreneurs coming up with solutions. “Technology and innovation is key to finding our way out of this global environmental crisis and as Australia’s largest startup community we have a significant role to play in that. “I have no doubt that with our ingenuity and collectivity, we can come out of this with a stronger, healthier and safer world,” Woodthorpe said. Sarah Moran co-founder and CEO of Girl Geek Academy, said “Women and girls have a huge role to play in confronting the current challenges confronting us as a nation, as a world. As the technology frontier creates a powerful impact, we plan to heed global advice and research and shake up the “people power” within the engine room of startup solution providers.” 
The first meetup scheduled for March 17 at Fishburners, Sydney.

TechSydney partners with various startups and businesses to create Envirotech Alliance

First meet-up 17 March 2020, Fishburners, Sydney Startup Hub
28 January 2020: Technology advocacy body TechSydney has partnered with leading startup and environmental champions to create the Envirotech Alliance, bringing together hundreds of professionals and founders focusing on building businesses with positive environmental impact. The Envirotech Alliance includes SparkClub – with a membership of 400 EnergyTech professionals and founders, Fishburners – Australia’s largest startup community, Launch Group – a leading startup communications agency and women’s technology movement Girl Geek Academy . TechSydney Director Fleur Brown said the initiative was an obvious step to support the growing shift into climate impact specific work as the world confronts the challenges of the climate crisis. _“Technology has a crucial role to play in addressing the climate crisis effects and solutions – and our community is in a unique position to be able to accelerate the impact of those solutions. There are so many enthusiastic founders working in this space and our aim is to generate community support for their efforts whilst encouraging more founders and investors into the space,” Brown said. “If we can demonstrate by scale how big the market really is in Australia that is great for brand Australia, good for tech and will reap dividends for all Australians,” _said Brown. The Envirotech Alliance will host regular meetups, create focused forums and a community platform for government advocacy around support for Australian-grown environmental technology solutions. Spark Club founder Grant McDowell said energy tech is a fast-growing market in Australia, particularly as the renewables uptake gathers scale. “We established Spark Club in 2017 to bring the leading minds in the future energy sector together. We began with 100 members and the intention of building an energy tech ecosystem to harness Australia’s natural advantages in renewable energy and become the Silicon Valley of energy. Australia’s high electricity prices, great solar and wind resources, world renowned university engineering departments and broken energy policy creates the perfect petri dish for leading energy tech to emerge. Our growing community of over 400 energy startup founders and industry leaders is working on groundbreaking solutions developed here in Australia to be exported to a global market. No matter what the political climate, these solutions are world class and Australia has the opportunity to capture the financial and carbon saving success in the global energy transition we’re embarking on” he said. Fishburners  has committed to  hosting  the Envirotech Alliance for their regular meetups at it’s Sydney CBD premises as the non-profit organisation steps-up its commitment to supporting impact entrepreneurs. Fishburners, which supports more than 350 founders nationally, estimates that as many as 15%  of their current startups are focused on environmental and sustainability solutions. Fishburners Chair, Dr Katherine Woodthorpe, AO  says they are on board ‘to provide as much support as we can to the entrepreneurs coming up solutions and providing hope for our children and our children’s children. “Tech and innovation is key to finding our way out of this global environmental crisis and as Australia’s largest startup community we have a significant role to play in that. I have no doubt that with our ingenuity and collectivity, we can come out of this with a stronger, healthier and safer world,” Woodthorpe said. Sarah Moran co founder and CEO of Girl Geek Academy, said ‘Women and girls have a huge role to play in confronting the current challenges confronting us as a nation, as a world. As the technology frontier creates powerful impact, we plan to heed global advice and research and shake up the “people power” within the engine room of startup solution providers.” 
The move comes as TechSydney focuses on creating more vertical market events and meet-ups with Envirotech leading the event series with its first meetup scheduled for 17 March at Fishburners, Sydney with more details to be announced shortly. “Fintech has been well supported for a number of years and we recognise the growth of many other startup verticals in that time that also need to find community and a sense of strength in numbers – including areas such as EdTech, HRTech, AgTech, MedTech, HealthTech and AI,” said Brown. The Envirotech Alliance will focus on exchanging ideas, tips, tricks and survival techniques and provide a support network to those in the Envirotech  industry trying to carve a way forward and bring an energy business to life. Further details: Matisse +61 424 014 045

New Startup Alliance unites hundreds of Envirotech founders and professionals

STEM LEADER SARAH MORAN JOINS TECHSYDNEY BOARD
TechSydney has appointed technology leader and STEM advocate Sarah Moran to its board. The high profile Co-Founder and CEO of the global movement Girl Geek Academy, will help lead initiatives focused around growing the pipeline of women entrepreneurs. Sarah has been immersed in tech and STEM for most of her career, establishing Girl Geek Academy alongside four co-founders in 2014 as a social enterprise on a mission to help inspire one million women into technology by 2025. The Girl Geek Academy programs are for girls from the age of five right through to 95 and have helped train more than 10,000 girls and women. She has also worked across Australia and Silicon Valley, where she witnessed first-hand the challenges faced by women in the industry. Ms Moran said,“There is no better time to be supporting women in Australia to launch and grow their own startups. The world is heading into uncharted territory with unprecedented opportunities for technology leaders to create breakthroughs in the health, education, finance and environmental fields to name a few. We need to heed the advice of global research and moving quickly towards a much more diverse and gender equal distribution of power, especially in the tech and innovation space. Established in 2017, TechSydney is an entrepreneur-led industry group that connects and promotes Sydney’s tech industry. TechSydney is committed to making Sydney one of the most desirable places in the world to have a high-growth tech company. TechSydney Director, Fleur Brown said Sarah’s appointment is part of a board refresh and will help build on TechSydney’s commitment to gender equality, problem-solving and community building. “Sarah is a super-achiever in the community and an incredible voice and role model for women in technology. Under Sarah’s leadership, Girl Geek Academy has kicked some big goals nationally and within the Victorian ecosystem in particular. Talent is the leading constraint for Sydney startup founders, and growing the pipeline of women founders is a high priority. We are thrilled to have the benefit of Sarah’s expertise and network as Sydney grows its local and global startup brand,” she said. An active community contributor, Sarah works with the Leonardo group and Science Gallery Melbourne, is a member of the Victorian Minister’s Advisory Council for Gender Equality, an ambassador for Brisbane City Council’s youth program, Visible Ink, and sits on the Standards Australia Cloud Board. She also sits on the VicHealth Youth Taskforce and is a VicHealth champion. In 2019 Sarah and Girl Geek Academy published a best-selling young adult fiction series with Penguin Books to help inspire the next generation of Hipsters, Hackers and Hustlers. ENDS
About TechSydney: Established in 2017, TechSydney is an entrepreneur-led industry group that connects and promotes Sydney’s tech industry. The NFP is committed to making Sydney one of the most desirable places in the world to have a high-growth tech company. Great ecosystems support everyone in them and provide the right conditions to succeed. We understand the power of technology to create change and we’re working with founders, industry and governments to ensure everyone sees the benefits of our industry. Key initiatives include Sydney founder forums, the Visiting Entrepreneurs Program, advocacy and consultation for the Technology precinct at Central Station and the TechSydney digital platform with a growing membership of 3,000, in partnership with Ramen Life and the City of Sydney. The TechSydney leadership team consists of Board Directors Fleur Brown, Bede Moore, Dean McEvoy and Sarah Moran with further board appointments to be announced in 2020. TechSydney’s volunteer team also includes: Joe Allen, Ramen Life (Digital Platform) and Paul Towers (Newsletter) along with Founder Forum facilitators Rod Power and Dwin Tucker and Carolyne Gowen.

STEM Leader Sarah Moran Joins TechSydney Board

Startup Daily
Tech Ready Women and TechSydney awarded $80,000 in City of Sydney grants to foster city’s startup ecosystem
TechSydney and Tech Ready Women have shared in $80,000 in knowledge exchange grants from the City of Sydney aimed at helping the two organisations further develop the city’s startup community. Tech Ready Women, a Sydney-based incubator looking to help women without a tech background bring their startup ideas to life, has received $25,000 to run a program called ‘From idea to startup’, a series of three events to help up to 450 women develop their business ideas by connecting them to experts and mentors. Christie Whitehill, who founded the organisation last year, said, “We can provide access to world class mentors to help current and future female founders develop their startup idea and make connections within startup communities to enable them to create the businesses of the future.”
The fund will be distributed over 12 months, giving successful applicants access to courses and workshops offered by Academy Xi and Tech Ready Women, with the organisations to work with applicants to develop a tailored program
Meanwhile, industry group TechSydney will receive $40,000 to develop a website that will be a “central resource and information hub” for the city’s startup community, along with a $15,000 grant to run a four-part event series looking at the Southeast Asian tech landscape. Bede Moore, director of TechSydney, said, “These grants will help us provide access to information and skills that will make it easier for international companies looking to establish a base or invest in Sydney, and also for Sydney-based companies to go abroad, particularly to Southeast Asia.”
The grants come after Sydney was last week identified as one of the top 10 ecosystems globally for local connectedness by the Startup Genome report ; the idea of ‘local connectedness’ takes into account factors including sense of community, or people willing to help other people; local relationships; collisions, or “serendipitously running into others from the startup community”; and density of the community. While acknowledging the growth of the local ecosystem, helped in large part by the opening of the Sydney Startup Hub, TechSydney has been lobbying the NSW Government to develop TechCentral, a technology precinct around Central station, on land that the NSW Department of Transport is looking to hand off. The development of a tech precinct in the city has been a topic of much debate for several years, with a group led by Atlassian in late 2015 losing a bid to buy and redevelop the Australian Technology Park site at Redfern in a tech hub. The NSW Government soon after announced its plans for ‘Silicon Harbour’, a tech precinct to be based at White Bay with Google as a potential anchor tenant. Google however withdrew from negotiations last year , with concerns around lack of public transport to the area ahead of the development of the new metro line cited. Google then shifted its attention to Redfern, working with developer Mirvac on a proposal to turn a site neighbouring the Australian Technology Park into a tech precinct; however,  the Sydney Morning Herald reported last week that the NSW Government had rejected the proposal. Image: Christie Whitehill. Source: Supplied.

Tech Ready Women and TechSydney awarded $80,000 in City of Sydney grants to foster city’s startup ecosystem

3 MIN READ
TechSydney partners with ELEVACAO Foundation to improve diversity and inclusion efforts
After a rocky start last year, when it was criticised for its launch announcement being accompanied by a picture of a male-heavy team, startup community group TechSydney has today announced a partnership with the Elevacao Foundation aimed at boosting women in startups. The organisation has also begun compiling resources around diversity and inclusion , highlighting best practice and programs to help community members with their own efforts to improve. Dean McEvoy, CEO of TechSydney, said the organisation hopes to help startups and VCs create inclusive businesses and in turn make Sydney a welcoming place to work in tech. “If we want to make Sydney the most desirable place to run a high growth tech company, we need to make it a great place for talent regardless of gender, race or socioeconomic background,” he said. By giving people easy access to resources, McEvoy said TechSydney wants to remove the excuses often made for inaction; here, he copped to the “mistakes” the organisation itself has made. “Our founding group was evenly balanced between male and female entrepreneurs but we put out a media release with a photo that showed only one woman,” he said. “We have done a lot of learning since then and we think the tech community would benefit from hearing how it can change from people that have been there.”
There was also concern over the organisation’s exclusive invitation-only launch dinner, given its core aim is to facilitate collaboration within the startup community. The partnership with the Elevacao Foundation will see the TechSydney team join Elevacao’s network of founders, investors, and corporates to assist women in starting and growing tech companies. Launched in mid-2015 to help women in and get into tech, Elevacao is active in New York City, Melbourne, and Sydney, running a range of pitch workshops and events, while its ‘Tech Ready’ workshop aims to help women tech founders without a tech background understand the fundamentals. Aubrey Blanche, head of diversity and inclusion at Atlassian, which has been vocal about its efforts to boost diversity internally , said the resources compiled by TechSydney will help current founders build inclusivity into their cultures from the beginning. “Sydney’s diverse population has always been its strength, and it’s a hugely important part of the future tech workforce,” she said. “Making early investments to ensure we create diverse and inclusive environments will be key to driving Australian innovation, and to making Sydney as a global tech leader.”
The push to build inclusivity into a company’s culture from day dot comes as more examples continue to arise of how bad it can get for women and minorities in tech. Looking at startups around Australia, the latest Startup Muster report found that 23.5 percent of founders surveyed were women, up from 17.4 percent in 2015. However, the number of women employed by startups is low, with 47.5 percent of startups not employing any women at all (though of course, many early stage startups are run by solo founders). Looking at the corporate sphere, also launching an initiative to help build an inclusive culture this week was National Australia Bank (NAB), which yesterday appointed Girl Geek Academy cofounder and CEO Sarah Moran as its first ‘girl geek in residence’. Moran will work with NAB’s technology team through December to implement Girl Geek Academy’s main programs, such as its SheHacks and SheMakes hackathons, within the bank, the aim to get more women into senior tech roles. Dayle Stevens, founder of NAB’s Connecting Women in Technology program and divisional CIO of technology support services Dayle Stevens, explained Moran is bringing an outsider’s perspective that will help ensure the bank’s Women in Technology program has maximum impact. “Sarah and the Girl Geek Academy pitched the Girl Geek in Residence idea as an opportunity to come together, use our knowledge and our networks to tackle the issues facing women in technology together,” she said. “As a major employer in the technology industry, this partnership is helping us deliver on our commitment to supporting gender diversity and the push to see more women in technology.

TechSydney partners with ELEVACAO Foundation to improve diversity and inclusion efforts

ELEVACAO is a global pre-accelerator empowering women founders to launch and grow successful tech businesses. It is based in Hermosa Beach, California.

ELEVACAO

The partnership with the Elevacao Foundation will see the TechSydney team join Elevacao Foundation 's network of founders , investors , and corporates to assist women in starting and growing tech companies .

Atlassian

Fairfax Media

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Woolworths Group

Grant

TechSydney is an independent, non-profit industry group led by a team of experienced proven entrepreneurs who are determined to make Sydney one of the top ten ecosystems for High Growth Technology Companies.

Date	Round	Amount	Investors	Valuation Valuations are submitted by companies, mined from state filings or news, provided by VentureSource, or based on a comparables valuation model.	Revenue	Sources
4/23/2018	Grant	$0.05M	City of Sydney		0 FY undefined	1
8/12/2016	Crowdfunding	$99M	Subscribe to see more		0 FY undefined	10

Date	4/23/2018	8/12/2016
Round	Grant	Crowdfunding
Amount	$0.05M	$99M
Investors	City of Sydney	Subscribe to see more
Valuation
Revenue	0 FY undefined	0 FY undefined
Sources	1	10

First funding	Last Funding	Investor	Rounds	Board Seats	Type	Location
4/23/2018	4/23/2018	City of Sydney	1 Grant		Government	Australia
00/00/0000	00/00/0000	Pozible	Subscribe to see more		Corporation	Australia

First funding	4/23/2018	00/00/0000
Last Funding	4/23/2018	00/00/0000
Investor	City of Sydney	Pozible
Rounds	1 Grant	Subscribe to see more
Board Seats
Type	Government	Corporation
Location	Australia	Australia

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