Meet our new founders! – The Final Touchdown
The Final Touchdown
Cohort 4, 2023
November 1 marked a monumental occasion for our 21 newest founders, celebrating their recent completion of our Ignition Startup Accelerator Program.
Over the past three months, our final 2023 cohort have flourished in their ideation of their startup idea, reaping the rewards of their hard work and long hours.
Last Friday, their efforts finally came to fruition at Ignition Touchdown, where they presented their refined startup pitch to other founders as well as members of the Western Sydney community.
Founders arrived early for a 10am start to prepare themselves, finalise their pitch presentations and seek support from members of their cohort. Notably, high-school students from Our Lady of Mercy College Parramatta (OLMC) were in attendance to learn from and support the founders in the final step of the program’s completion.
One by one, founders were given a two-minute slot to encapsulate what they have worked on for the past 12 weeks and communicate their innovative ideas to the audience. Each presentation expressed unique learnings from the program and how it helped move forward their startup’s journey.
A notable presentation was from Louisa Chan (Louisa Chan Creative) who focused her startup on encouraging everyday Australians to live life with purpose, utilising the power of the subconscious mind. As Lousia explained with commendable problem validation and sentiment from her target segment, this could be achieved via technological advancements such as neuro-energetic encoding.
Images sourced from Jed Mesa
After all of the pitches, members in the audience voted for their three favourite pitches to identify the ‘People’s Choice Award’. This award ended up going to Andrew Boyle for his startup; The Library. The Library as Andrew describes is a stoic gym aimed the strengthen and sharpen the minds of men through building character, resilience and brotherhood.
Andrew’s pitch was unique. The utilisation of descriptive imagery helped guide the audience and helped relate his startup’s purpose to his journey throughout the program.
Next on the agenda was a ‘Ask-Me-Anything’ segment. Hosted and facilitated by Launch Pad’s Entrepreneurs in Residence (Ian Mason and Jonathon Wolfe), founders were able to ask any burning questions in relation to the program or their startup.
After sitting in on the session, there were many valuable takeaways. Some include;
- The purpose of a business is to not create a business for money but rather one which solves a problem (and then makes money)
- Many successful businesses have multiple modes of revenue
- Understanding the key drivers of your business and repeating them is crucial for success
- Good sellers spend only 20% of the talking and 80% of the listening from their customers
Once the session was complete, all founders gathered to have a nice lunch together, reflecting on their past couple of weeks and further networking with their new connections. The staff at Launch Pad would like to once again congratulate and commend all of our graduating founders from both cohorts in 2023!
Ignition is a 10-week program supporting people in the community and Western Sydney University students interested in gaining skills, developing or growing their innovative ideas into a potential startup.
To find out more about the startup accelerator programs available at Launch Pad, Click here.
