Throughout the year, Incubator startups have worked hard to turn their breakthrough ideas into businesses through various education workshops and mentoring programs specifically designed t help startups grow and scale their businesses. The pitch program involved 3 pitch-to-panel and 2-pitch-to-peers presentations, 6 startups were selected to participate in the finals:

  1. Benevolence Financial Group: a social enterprise finance booking firm that offers high-quality financial supporting social impact projects and fighting inequality in Australia and globally.
  2. Bundlfresh: a marketplace that connects local food businesses with customers who can choose whatever they want from whoever they want in one ‘bundl’d’ order.
  3. Crewmojo: a collaborative performance management platform that encourages team members to share feedback, achieve goals, be values driven, and own their performance.
  4. Invicta Prospects Group: an intelligence software to support critical decision making across operational, administrative, and business domains while using AI to protect human life.
  5. Proxima Capital: a social enterprise that enables financial inclusion to improve lives by bridging the liquidity between traditional, larger financial markets with smaller, regional markets.
  6. Unchained Business Services: a professional service firm that inspires Australian companies to address modern slavery and develop a culture change around ethical sourcing goods and services.

For the first time, the Pitch Final was held as a hybrid virtual event, where the startups and the operating team were face to face, but the judging panel and the guests were online. Thanks to the collaborative and creative team effort, MC extraordinaire Alistair Booth (alumni of MQ), plus a little help from technology gods, the event was a great success with over 110 people tuning in.

You can watch the finalists’ pitches here. You can also rewatch the entire event here to see our founders answering Q&A live.

2020 Judging Panel

This year’s judging panel was made up of an incredible group of business experts and innovators, who provided insight to the startups and picked the winners for this year’s competition:

  1. Fred Schebesta: co-Founder of Finder and Finder app, author, media commentator and
    mentor.
  2. Anna Grocholsky: Director of Commercialisation and Innovation at Macquarie
    University.
  3. Hamish Hawthorn: COO of UpGuard, Co-founder of Sydney Angels, Former CEO of
    ATP Innovations (now Cicada) and Founder of Ignition Labs.
  4. Jill McKnight: practice leader at LegalVision Australia, with a strong focus on technology startups
  5. Natasha Rawlings: investment manager at Uniseed, startup mentor, founder, and non-
    executive Director.
  6. And last but not least, the audience, who chose the winner of the Audience Choice
    Award.

Congratulations to our 2020 winners

Best Pitch: Invicta Prospects Group
Most Appealing investment: Crewmojo
Audience Choice Award: Benevolence Financial Group

The year 2020 has brought unprecedented change into our lives, but it has also brought many opportunities. It has shown us that limitations can become possibilities and that physical boundaries can no longer limit what we do and how we communicate and connect with others.

The Macquarie Incubator Pitch Final is proof that such a task is possible. If anything, this year has taught us the importance of resilience, creativity, and adaptation, an important lesson we want to convey to our community of startups as, moving forward, these will be key elements to become successful change-makers and visionaries that will continue to inspire the world.