Impact Report | Gold Coast Demo Day

During my tenure at Bond University I ran seven annual Gold Coast Demo Day events, championing the City of Gold Coast entrepreneurial ecosystem, and the entrepreneurs, startups, and support programs within it. The #impact of such events is often varied and delayed and so, four years on from my final #GCDD, I am sharing an update on "where they are now?"!

Let's start with the most recent cohort:

2020 Gold Coast Demo Day

~ see the live stream here ~

Michael Spencer pitched the Burleigh Heads-based Stacked Farm®, an end-to-end integrated vertical farming startup focused on innovation in food security. In the four years since, Stacked Farm has grown to 30+ employees and moved its HQ slightly north to Arundel, having raised more than A$98m in several rounds from investors like Tayside Investments and Magnetor Capital. It's 6,500m2 City of Gold Coast facility hit full production this year and will yield 450 tonnes of leafy greens and herbs each year.

Husband and wife team Kate Morgan, PhD and Kirk Reynoldson pitched their #lifetech solution Eggy, "the all-in-one life organiser for busy families to manage the big, scrambled mess of life admin." More than 60 iterations later, several capital raises from mostly HNWs but also Blackbird, a US Road Trip for the ages, and an expansion into Eggy for Business, the future is looking bright for one of the most resilient founding teams I have come across!

Paul McCarty opened our eyes to the intricacies of cyber security and DevSecOps with his startup SecureStack. They went on to progress through the CyRise accelerator and received funding from Tidal Ventures and Upswell Ventures, amongst others. Paul has now moved on to GitLab and is an internationally-recognised expert in software supply chain security.

Having first toyed with the idea at a Techstars Startup Weekend Gold Coast, Emma Patterson pitched her retail tech startup Indirectory which connects retailers with brands they may love. Emma has become a regular contributor to the GC startup ecosystem and her impact stretches far and wide. In 2023 Indirectory was selected as one of ten Gold Coast tech organisations sponsored by the City of Gold Coast to attend London Tech Week in a delegation led by Tribe Global Ventures.

By far my favourite parts of GC Demo Day are the students who pitch:

Vipin Dhunnoo was an early mover in the VR/AR/XR space with his visual climate change activism platform Aftermath VR. Vipin had progressed through the Bond University Transformer program.

St Andrews Lutheran College student Ella Foster addressed food security with Essential Bees, at-home kits for bee support making it easy for backyard activists to take action. Ella progressed through the Innovate&Create program at St Andrews, highlighting the importance of school-based opportunities for developing entrepreneurial capability.

2019 Gold Coast Demo Day

St Andrews Lutheran College student Laila Hackett, another Innovate&Create graduate, kicked the evening off with her ethical skincare brand Pink Lemonade.

She was followed by Evan Barker pitching Synnch, a reg-tech startup innovating R&D Tax Advisory. Synnch has become a leading voice and service provider in the space, adopting new technologies and innovating the user experience.

Meryl Johnston, founder of Bean Ninjas highlighted the benefits of niche accounting and bookkeeping services. The business has grown into a multi-national, specialised e-commerce growth accountancy firm with 20+ staff around the world. It has received numerous awards and been through a number of mergers and acquisitions, to become a "full-niche" provider of choice for innumerable e-commerce brands and organisations.

Cake cofounder Jason Atkins pitched their platform to manage all things equity-related for startups and scaleups: raising capital, ESOP, managing cap tables, etc. Cake has grown to 25+ people and raised $7m+ in several equity funding rounds, from investors like Jason Calacanis, Rampersand, and Tribe Global Ventures. The platform is now used in 50+ countries.

Representing the "everyday entrepreneur", Louise Duggan presented her firm Cake 2 The Rescue, a service allowing any human to become an expert cake baker through specialised cake kits delivered to your door! COVID-19 proved to be a boon for her business, and more than 50,000 families have benefited from a helping hand from C2TR for their celebration.

Representing the sports-tech industry on the Gold Coast, Ben Tattersfield, inventor of the smart cricket ball and founder of Sportcor | At the Heart of Smarter Play blew us away with the implications of his technology-enabled cricket balls. Since Demo Day, the firm has partnered with Kookaburra Sport to launch the Kookaburra SmartBall, the world's first microchipped cricket ball. It is now used in domestic and international leagues world-wide.

Capping the evening off was profit-for purpose company Nice Coffee Co. and its social impact founder Jim Chapman. Having progressed through the Bond University Business Accelerator, Jim has continued to amplify the reach and impact of his coffee business to help break the cycle of poverty in Kenya through education. The video below provides further insight:

2018 Gold Coast Demo Day

One of my most favourite pitches came from Diana Scott and her profit-for-purpose business Frontier Pets. Driven to end factory farming and fresh off a stint on Shark Tank Australia, Diana sold her vision of changing consumer trends to achieve her ultimate goal. The business has gone from strength to strength with over 35,000 customers, becoming Australia's highest-rated pet food, and spending over $8m on sustainably farmed produce supporting ethical farming practices.

Long-time GC startup champion Eden Shirley was next, pitching AutoGuru, at the time one of Australia's 10 most innovative companies. AutoGuru has continued to innovate and in 2023 launched FleetGuru, a SaaS platform which allows Fleet Management Organisations and corporate fleets to fully digitise and automate service and repair management. The FleetGuru product now manages 190k+ vehicles with over 9,000 approved repairers around Australia.

Emma Sam pitched Kynd, highlighting the pathways of university students into the City of Gold Coast's technology sector. Kynd is a classic disruptive technology business matching NDIS participants needing care with those who can provide it. For more info on Kynd see the section on Michael Metcalfe pitching Kynd at the 2017 GC Demo Day below!

Bond University Transformer student Lukas Wiesner, MBA pitched Planberry, a family meal planner focused on balanced nutrition and healthy eating, while Somerset College was represented by two teams who had competed in the pitch competition at the Celebration of Entrepreneurship: Jaime, Marcus and Cawin with Minima focused on more effective research capabilities for High School Students; and Anna, Sarah, Ashleigh and Eva pitching RAW (Rejuvenated Active Wear) addressing the negative aspects of fast fashion.

Gold Coast Demo Day 2017

2017 was the year that Advance Queensland's Hot DesQ program was in full swing and UK-founded Skin Analytics was housed at Bond University's Commercialisation Centre and Tim Daly pitched at GCDD'17! The company has gone on to launch its AI medical device DERM across 13 NHS providers, used with over 81,000 patients and identifying more than 8,500 cancers.

Continuing the common theme of purpose-driven organisations, Judes Yang pitched her social venture Sahaja - Yoga Mats That Give Back. A graduate of the Bond Business Accelerator, Judes employed the Buy 1 - Gift 1 business model to provide a solar powered light to needy humans in Mozambique for every yoga mat she sold. The venture enabled her to establish the Sahaja brand and launch into her own yoga studio, developing teacher training programs and sharing the light far and wide.

Michael Metcalfe, founder of Kynd, graced the Demo Day stage and delivered an engaging pitch of the need to disrupt the NDIS care provision industry. The Kynd platform connects NDIS participants with the carers they need, driving significant efficiency and service improvement through the care provision network. Kynd proceeded through a number of equity funding rounds, received Ignite Ideas and Accelerating Commercialisation grant funding, and successfully exited to nib Group in 2023. The company remains headquartered in beautiful Burleigh Heads.

Travelshoot had been through the QANTAS AVRO accelerator and brother and sister cofounders Sarah Pearce and Tim Jones pitched their tourism photography platform to the GCDD audience. They received equity funding from Steve Baxter's Transition Level Investments and QUT Creative Enterprise Australia, and were acquired in 2021 by Luxury Escapes.

The student entrepreneurs for 2017 came from Somerset College's Celebration of Entrepreneurship festival and consisted on Katisha, Montana and Lilly. They pitch School Run, an "Uber for school drop offs and pick ups" to much acclaim from the audience!

Perhaps the most awesome part of GCDD'17 was the networking event following the pitches. The Bond University campus had seldom appeared so magical as that night, and numerous connections were made and reinforced amongst the audience. Rumour has it that Crockd cofounder Andrew Ford met Michael Metcalfe at this event, later becoming an early investor and employee at Kynd before moving on to found Crockd with his wife Rosa-Clare Willis. Who knows how many other connections and relationships were birthed or reinforced at Demo Day events over the years.....

2016 Gold Coast Demo Day

Bond Business Accelerator graduate Alisha Geary pitched her first-nations focused activewear brand Faebella, licensing indigenous artists' creative works to drive economic value through wholesale and retail fashion. She has since founded Provvypay and is cofounder of Thirsty Turtl, a cosmetics brand that combines Indigenous knowledge, cosmetic science, and sustainable agriculture.

Housed at River City Labs, and also a graduate of the Bond Business Accelerator, SiteSee creates digital twins of telco infrastructure assets to improve efficiency and efficacy of asset management. Cofounder Lachlan Crane wowed the audience with the technical capability of his service, and the firm went on to proceed through the River City Labs/muru-D accelerator. Today it holds multi-year contracts with large telco infrastructure firms around the world.

Having launched their idea for an AR gaming brand at a Techstars Startup Weekend long before Pokemon GO was a twinkle in Niantic, Inc.'s eye , Genesis AR founders Ryan Neale and Long Roos blew us away with an insight into the next generation of gaming. Long and Ryan have both continued to push the boundaries of the tech world, with Ryan's latest passion having him as Head of Support at ProcurePro.

Student entrepreneurs pitching on the night included graduates of the Startup Apprentice suite of programs Reese, Yuto, James and Dom pitching Attitude for Gratitude, an app spreading messages of gratitude and acts of kindness amongst communities.

Gold Coast Demo Day 2015

The 2015 event focused specifically on programs supporting entrepreneurs, and kicked off with Club Kidpreneur Foundation graduates Lexi and Liam Jack. Lexi and Liam are primary school students who turned their garden into a commercial operation by propagating and packaging coffee bean plants (with a little help from Dad, hey Fraser Jack!).

Entrepreneurs who had experienced the Startup Apprentice program and the City of Gold Coast Mayor's Technology awards pitched their solutions for using horses for mental health therapy and automating the take-away purchase process (a few years before Mr Yum!) respectively.

Bond Business Accelerator graduate Navdeep Pasricha pitched his iYouth Global concept, addressing mental health concerns amongst teens. He received the 2019 University of Queensland Create Change Award (learn more here) and is now a keynote speaker and Director at Highly Paid Speakers.

The founders of Puntaa went through the River City Labs Accelerator. Nicholas Heaney, Damon Oudejans, Jordan Oudejans and Ryan Knell created the world's first peer-to-peer social betting platform, and Nicholas went on to cofound Picklebet.

The night wrapped up by celebrating the Gold Coast Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards run by Business News Australia Pty Ltd. SMARTPRINT founder Jason Ganis showed the younger people in the room what was possible with an entrepreneurial mindset and the passage of time!

Gold Coast Demo Day 2014

The inaugural event: run in collaboration with the SURF Accelerator (Start Up Really Fast), a collaboration between Aaron Birkby's Silicon Lakes and the City of Gold Coast. Rick McElhinney proclaimed this event "the very best money spent on startups in the City" (or something very similar to that!).

~ watch the summary vid here.

Startups from the Bond Business Accelerator and SURF accelerator had shared resources throughout their programs, and presented together at the very first Gold Coast Demo Day, an official event of Global Entrepreneurship Network's Global Entrepreneurship Week initiative.

Battlefit ( Denym Harawira, Clayton Low, Marce Broek) took out the SURF prize of 12 months membership at WOTSO Varsity Lakes, while Service.com.au ( Dan Kerr, Jacob Banks, Ed Horwood) won $5,000 seed funding from Bond University Business School. From it's inception as a URL back in 2014, Service.com.au has connected over 500,000 customers and supported over 36,000 businesses. They continue to be headquartered in the central City of Gold Coast and are active supporters of the GC startup ecosystem.

Tania Devoti pitched Obzervr • Premier Work Management Software for Asset-Intensive Industries and has since predominantly self-funded through operations, however they did raise $1m in an equity round in 2018, matched by the Business Development Fund managed by QIC. Obzervr has focused on maintenance in the resources sector, and boasts tier 1 mining giant Anglo American along with mid-tier miners Evolution Mining, Agnico Eagle Mines Limited and Norton Gold Fields Pty Ltd (to name a few) as clients. They added manufacturing maintenance to their product suite in the early 2000s, securing BlueScope as a customer, and recently won a Queensland Rail contract to roll out their services to 3,000+ field workers.

Jackson Johnston was a crowd favourite with his camel export business Global Agricultural Exports, with his business partner Sukai Farrell. A national move away from live exports led to Jackson pursuing a corporate career in quantity surveying and project management where he has excelled around the world, utilising his entrepreneurial mindset in a traditional industry. Sky went on to cofound ABI Interiors with his siblings, forging a niche in the kitchen and bathroom fixtures industry. ABI received the Australian Export Award (E-Commerce) in 2022 and now exports to more than 45 countries with showrooms in Gold Coast, Auckland, and London's prestigious Chelsea Harbour design district.

Patrick McCallum pitched Kuuvo, his tech capability ultimately obvious. After a short stint with Guvera, he became the technical cofounder at Service.com.au (see the network effect in action!), then on to Aussie startup icon Clipchamp as a senior software engineer. In May of this year Patrick joined the Atlassian team as Principal Software Engineer.

I love Patrick and Jackson's stories, as they highlight the flow-on effects of startup/entrepreneurial experience into the corporate sector.

Samantha Bradbury pitched her business Asha the Label, and extended this experience into her current venture By Samantha Melbourne. Lachlan Crane and David Crane pitched DealDriver, which levereged them into working on the SiteSee startup the following year.

Throughout its existence, Gold Coast Demo Day has championed not only the startups and their founders, but also the programs that support their entrepreneurial journey. An ecosystem comprises numerous components, all necessary for the community to thrive. We were proud to showcase the following programs and organisations throughout the seven years:

Club Kidpreneur Foundation

River City Labs (ACS (Australian Computer Society)) Accelerator and River Pitch

muru-D

Cohort Innovation Space

City of Gold Coast-supported SURF Accelerator and London Tech Week sponsor

Tribe Global Ventures

Bond University Transformer

Startup Apprentice

Techstars Startup Weekend

Global Entrepreneurship Network and Global Entrepreneurship Network Australia

Fuckup Nights

Qantas AVRO Accelerator

Advance Queensland's Hot DesQ program

StartUp Creative

Business News Australia Pty Ltd's Young Entrepreneur Awards

Somerset College's Celebration of Entrepreneurship

St Andrews Lutheran College's Innovate&Create

Finally, a massive thank you to Bond University for believing in the vision and championing the tech ecosystem / startup ecosystem in the City of Gold Coast. Universities hold a privileged place in the ecosystem, and can act as neutral champions alongside government to activate and empower economic and social development. I hold such fond memories of the Gold Coast Demo Day event, and treasure the connections and friendships it spawned over the years. These days we have events like the LuminaX Accelerator Demo Day on July 25 and the GC Tech Ecosystem event this Thursday (over 400 registered: waitlist!). I look forward to the ecosystem continuing to expand and develop, and will happily say hi to anyone who wants to join in and advance the ecosystem on the Gold Coast.