Six hopeful startups pitched their business ideas at the Business Centre’s Pitch Night held in the newly renovated Newcastle train station – The Station – last week as part of the Spark Festival.
In front of more than 60 industry leaders, investors and members of the business community, startups including Augr, Jazoodle, Corethics, Voakltyme, MGA Thermal and CMGi Build AR all vied for the next big break moving forward with their ventures.
With globally scalable ideas in the areas of social enterprise, wind energy, augmented reality and business analytics, these startups, powered by the Business Centre, together demonstrated that the pool of innovators is deep in the Hunter.
This cohort is the third in 18 months curated by the Business Centre and runs parallel to equity-based accelerators across the Hunter.
Chief Executive Officer of the Business Centre, Pierre Malou has been working with startups in biotech and big data for more than 15 years and has observed the special components of the Hunter’s unique innovation ecosystem.
As a Director of the not-for-profit, The Hunter iF Project, along with Gunilla Burrowes, Grant Sefton and Tim Cotter, Pierre commented that the Hunter has come a long way.
“Since the early 2000s, the Hunter has redefined itself and diversified its sectors in an impressive way,” Pierre said.
“Today we see a rich ecosystem of support organisations, co-working spaces and targeted services in our region. They are working well together to support a broad market of high value startups and innovative SMEs.”
The Hunter has seen businesses like Camplify, the Crave App and Social Pinpoint make great waves internationally after launching with local roots, and the Business Centre expects more to come.
This pitch night is a demonstration of the Business Centre’s commitment to supporting high value businesses in the Hunter and not only supporting new ventures, but also offering high value corporate services to large existing organisations.
IMAGE | Startups pitched at the Business Centre’s Pitch Night as part of the Spark Festival.
