Qld’s 32 hottest new start-ups revealed

The Sunshine State is bursting with entrepreneurs who are solving problems in healthcare, cyber security, sustainability and more. Here are 32 of Queensland’s hottest new startups.

Innovation and entrepreneurship is booming across Queensland, with exciting start-ups popping up everyday.

We look at some of the newest businesses coming out of the Sunshine state that are exploring and solving problems in healthcare, cyber security, FinTech, AI, AgTech and more.

From insulin delivered to your door to a one-stop platform for all of your health service needs, these are the 32 start-ups born out of Queensland making a difference locally, nationally and internationally.

Read on for Qld's hottest start-ups of 2023

Angela Young, the director of startups and financial education at accounting and advisory firm BDO in Brisbane, is always on the lookout for potential success stories.

“There are two schools of thought - one is it’s not a good time to do a startup in this economic climate,” Ms Young said.

“The other school of thought, and what I believe, is that if you can do it now, you can build the resilience and toughness that you will actually need when times are good.

“It’s all about doing something new, something that doesn’t exist and with the right ideas there is no reason not to flourish.”

BIO-TECH, MED-TECH AND HEALTHCARE

Midnight Health

Midnight Health founder and chief executive Nic Blair.

Brisbane-based Midnight Health is building a digital, patient-led healthcare ecosystem of their brands including Youly, Stagger, Hub Health and Vidality with the goal to democratise healthcare.

Through their telehealth technology, doctors, pharmacy network and other partners, Midnight Health aims to create an easy patient experience with the belief that digital technology is going to influence the healthcare industry more and more in the future.

ASX-listed insurer nib backed the start-up in a $12m funding round in 2022, following on from their initial $4m investment in November 2021.

Founder Nic Blair also won in the startup category at the Business News Australia Australian Young Entrepreneur Awards in 2022.

Microbio

Microbio's co-founder, executive director and chief scientific officer Flavia Huygens (right) with a Microbio collaborator Dr Hector Zambrano.

Founded in 2018 in Brisbane, Microbio is a biotechnology startup aimed at changing pathogen detection with their faster and more specific pathogen identification test.

The test determines if there are toxins, parasites, genetic susceptibility or resistance, and infections in the body.

In 2004, founder Dr Flavia Huygens developed a pathogen identification approach using DNA ‘fingerprints,’ or the process of using Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms which are a DNA sequence variation and the most common type of genetic variation in people.

This was a faster, inexpensive and sensitive type of testing unavailable in the market – a world first.

By 2018, Microbio was launched to take the pathogen identification test, named InfectID, to market.

In November 2022, Microbio closed its latest investment round, surpassing its $3.5m target, which would go towards expanding the company’s regulatory approval into international markets, having already received clearance for distribution and use in the UK and throughout Europe, as well as helping with market entry into the jurisdictions.

Cogniom

Cogniom's founder and chief executive Robert Buehrig.

By working with organisations, Cogniom aims to empower businesses to improve through the collection and analysis of its data, especially time-sensitive data.

With Cogniom’s TANDM Suite, organisations can meld their understanding of their business from an executive level to its front-line staff to ensure decisions made lead to the best outcome for all stakeholders.

Cogniom helps to identify and eliminate inefficiencies as well as empower front-line teams for the best result. Headquartered in Brisbane and launched in 2019, Cogniom already has Johnson & Johnson, Epworth Health, Bentleys and many more on its client list.

Chief executive Robert Buehrig had a 12 year career at US health IT solutions company Cerner that led to automations which saved the company $30m, and has taken that experience into his business to revolutionise healthcare.

Stripped Supply

Stripped Supply's founder Ashley Hanger.

When founder Ashley Hanger saw her partner struggling with diabetes burnout, the frustration and distress caused by dealing with the chronic disease, she founded a startup in 2021 centred around her belief that the responsibility of improving diabetes management shouldn’t rest completely on those living with the disease.

Founded in Brisbane, Stripped Supply is a company that offers Australia’s first diabetes subscription box, automatically delivering custom-order boxes directly to the door of diabetics with supplies like insulin, before they even run out.

The company recently co-won the ‘Best of the Best’ award in 2022’s Something Tech conference in the River Rival pitch competition in Brisbane.

Vaxxas

Vaxxas is a biotechnology company that develops a new needle-free vaccination technology.

The company uses proprietary dry-coating technology that can eliminate or significantly reduce the need for vaccine refrigeration during storage and transportation - easing the resource and logistics burden of maintaining the vaccine “cold chain”.

CRYPTO, DATA AND FINTECH

Emesent

Emesent co-founders Dr Stefan Hrabar (CEO) (left) and Dr Farid Kendoul (CTO).

Already considered a world leader in drone autonomy, LiDAR mapping and data analytics, Emesent has been providing quality data capture in the mining, survey, infrastructure and mapping industries since 2018.

Its first product, Hovermap, is a smart mobile scanning unit helping map hazardous and inaccessible areas with the combination of autonomous flight and collision avoidance technologies.

In November 2022, Emesent expanded its reach, announcing two new partnerships with US-based large-scale technology companies Frontier Precision and MFE Inspection Solutions.

Frontier Precision has more than 34 years experience in the geospatial industry, specifically in surveying, mapping, engineering and more, while MFE Inspection Solutions is a leading solutions provider in the oil and gas industry.

Xiippy

Launched in Brisbane in 2020, Xiippy is the world’s first payments provider that transfers data with end-to-end encryption between merchants and payers and creates a private data pathway between merchants and their customers without exchanging unnecessary personal information. This means that customers can keep their purchase history private and retailers don’t share their itemised sales data, even with Xiippy.

Founder and chief executive Hamish Sadler’s company encourages retailers to avoid collecting information about their customers, like with paperless receipts and loyalty rewards programs.

In November 2022, the company won the ‘Best in Product Innovation’ award as part of the 2022 Something Tech event at Queensland’s Digital, Innovation and Technology Festival.

PowerPlay

PowerPlay team.

As a way to incentivise people to use renewable energy, PowerPlay enables anyone with a power bill to be rewarded with cryptocurrency. By gamifying energy usage, users are rewarded with the cryptocurrency token $REMI when they use energy when wholesale prices are low.

Contrastingly, when energy is used when wholesale prices are high, tokens are lost.

The data that dictates the game is individual home energy usage, wholesale prices and wholesale futures prices.

The highest rewards go to those that use the highest percentage of renewable energy.

PowerPlay creates a connection between energy used and the national energy market (NEM) who sets the market-based spot price of energy every five minutes.

Alongside customer metering data, this shows a representation of customer energy use.

Founder Aaron Hilton has taken his 11 years of experience in the renewable energy sector into PowerPlay, aligning residential consumer energy, rewards and when cheap renewable energy is abundant.

PowerPlay partnered with Australian multi-asset class crowd-funding platform, VentureCrowd in September 2022 to offer investment opportunities and shares in the company which led to the startup surpassing their target by 12 per cent.

Barburly

Launching in 2021, Barburly aims to build a connection between barbers and their clients through their smart software systems, mobile app and web app.

Its technology provides direct communication with barbers and their clients and suppliers, allowing barbers to manage their own bookings, personally tailor a clients experience with instant booking and messaging to a store, and manage transactions and payments in one place.

The Barburly app allows barber owners to manage everything from the one platform with its innovative digital booking system

FloodMapp

FloodMapp co-founders Ryan Prosser and Juliette Murphy.

Launched in 2018 FloodMapp, founded by Juliette Murphy and Ryan Prosser, has developed real-time flood prediction technology that provides up-to-date data as the event unfolds as opposed to standard scenario industry models.

Its system combines big data analytics, automation and machine learning techniques with new hydrology and hydraulic models to achieve large scale, rapid flood modelling designed to give emergency managers rapid and localised flood data they can depend on for decision making.

Paypa Plane

Paypa Plane founder Simone Joyce.

Paypa Plane provides infrastructure to support the real-time financial world.

They connect banks, enterprises, and payers with PayTo (enables pre-authorised payments from bank accounts) to elevate existing payment experiences.

Last year the CBA invested into the company to provide solid foundations for rapid growth across Australia and the US.

Founder Simone Joyce is chairperson of industry lobby group FinTech Australia.

Disputify

Disputify founder Jack Bloomfield.

Disputify’s Instant Refunds product enables merchants to reward trusted customers with a refund within minutes at no risk to the merchant.

Founder Jack Bloomfield, now in his early 20s, launched his first business, selling greeting and gift cards, aged 12.

Early success paved the way for Bloomfield to expand and launch multiple e-commerce stores under his Bloomfield Group. “It took six months to make the first sale but it was the most exciting thing to ever happen to me,” he says.

However, Bloomfield dealt with customers who would falsely claim a product “never arrived or it was faulty”. That prompted the young entrepreneur to launch Disputify – which pre-emptively identifies likely fraudulent transactions before they occur.

ROBOTICS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Octant AI

Octant AI's co-founders David Porter (left) and Cuong Quang

Brisbane-based artificial intelligence startup Octant AI uses predictive analysis to reduce uncertainty in projects and manage costs.

It’s an open source web interface for Kubernetes which is software that manages a number of server computers and runs many programs across those computers, separated into isolated containers.

Octant helps construction and engineering firms solve issues by collecting data from these Kubernetes to improve product knowledge with AI.

The startup allows users to inspect a Kubernetes cluster on its visual interface, adding information to a cluster view through its plug-in system.

Queensland construction conglomerate BMD invested around $1m in the company in 2021 for a 10 per cent stake after finding success with the startup in their own business.

Smart EV Solutions

Smart EV Solutions co-founder, board chair and director Dale Cook

Established in Brisbane in 2020, Smart EV Solutions offers electric vehicle charging solutions throughout Australia and New Zealand.

For example, the startup provides help with the design of applications, project management, the supply of charging stations, installation, support services, commissioning and more – all customised to each company.

Smart EV Solutions help with the merge of EV charging station solutions in renewable networks and electrical grids.

Smart EV Solutions partnered with Planet Ark Power, a leading provider of solar, battery and microgrid solutions, in July 2022 to work on their Foodlands Pasadena project in Adelaide, contributing to the delivery of fourteen electric vehicle chargers to the shopping centre.

RAMMP

RAMMP founder and chief executive Anna Harrison

RAMMP is a Brisbane-based startup founded by Anna Harrison and Steve White that uses its own proprietary formula to help decrease a company’s acquisition costs while improving digital trust between its brands and buyers.

With its patented ADORE PROCESSTM formula, RAAMP can distinguish a company’s websites’ conversion power, or improve the chances of users completing what they are targeting on their website.

The startup has improved the conversion rates of companies like VMG Digital, Henry, Pocketsmith, Writer’s Toolbox and more.

LYRO Robotics

LYRO Robotics team.

Robotics and AI startup LYRO Robotics launched in Brisbane in 2019 by founders Norton Kelly-Boxall and Juxi Leitner with the goal to help deter food wastage and labour shortages in the food supply chain.

The company is designing, creating and deploying next-generation robots to help pick and pack fresh produce for farmers and packing operators, attempting to phase out repetitive and laborious tasks in the industry.

With their LYRO Machine Intelligence software, the robots are able to pick and pack anything, even if it has not seen it before, and then learn and make decisions based on an object’s colour, weight, size and other factors.

In April 2022, LYRO collaborated with US-based IMI Precision Engineering to work on delivering a robotic solution to the rising demand for automated bin picking across a number of industries.

SwarmFarm

Jocie and Andrew Bate from SwarmFarm.

SwarmFarm, started by Andrew and Jocie Bate, is delivering autonomous agriculture, creating tailored solutions for efficient and sustainable agriculture. They are changing the way the world farms by using robots developed and built on their property near Emerald.

Originally a bootstrap operation the business teamed up with ag-tech venture capital firm Tenacious Ventures and its ag-bots are used in a wide variety of sectors from orchards to cotton and grain properties.

CYBER

Docuvett

Docuvett's founder Siegfried Perez (left) and co-founders.

Store, share and vet digital documents with verified users and companies through Docuvett, a startup launched in 2020 in Arundel by founder Siegfried Perez.

With his 15 years’ experience working as an emergency doctor, Dr Perez understands how important it is to protect medical information about their patients.

The platform allows users to share documents to verified entities while it retains access control and recordings of interactions of others within the document.

Users can scan or take a photo of a document, then control access and ensure the document is stored in a way that’s only accessible to you.

Some of Docuvett’s clients include Australia Post, Elliot Law, WilliamBuck Accountants and more.

Cyber Sense

Born out of Townsville in 2022, cyber risk governance organisation Cyber Sense educates companies about cyber risks and information security management systems, helping build resistance to bad cyber actors internally.

Founder and chair Miranda Mears uses her 20 years experience in digital transformation, cyber security and governance to Cyber Sense, bringing regionally focused cyber risk management specifically to Northern Australia and the Asia Pacific.

Cyber Sense offers advisory services, workshops and training in cyber security to companies. Training courses are centred around creating a ‘Cyber Fit Culture,’ learning about risks and threats, building a risk assessment skillset, and more.

Assetnote

Brisbane-based Cyber Security firm Assetnote, founded by Michael Gianarakis and Shubham Shah, automatically maps your external assets and monitors them for changes and security issues to help prevent serious breaches. Founded in 2018 its provides a leading Continuous Attack Surface Management Platform and its clients include Fortune 500, FTSE 100 and ASX 200 businesses.

COMMUNITY AND COST OF LIVING

TaxTank

TaxTank's founder Nicole Kelly.

Tax specialist Nicole Kelly set out in 2019 to help taxpayers plan, make informed decisions and minimise their tax.

Launching in 2021 in Southport on the Gold Coast, TaxTank is a cloud-based platform that provides detailed, interactive tax reports, live bank feeds, secure document storage, automated tax benefits with its smart depreciation tool, and much more.

Users can know their tax position year round thanks to TaxTank’s automated tax tools and ability to calculate your estimated tax position in real-time.

In late 2022, Ms Kelly was named a finalist in the Women in Finance Awards for the Innovator and Entrepreneur of the year categories.

Rent Rabbit

Developed to give power back to residential renters, Rent Rabbit is a platform headquartered in Herston where renters can write reviews on properties, store their files associated with a rental and learn more about how to avoid running into trouble when renting.

Founders and brothers Ben and James Pretty come from backgrounds in entrepreneurship who have worked to make Rent Rabbit Australia’s number one property review website to tackle the “broken” rental market.

Since its inception, more than two million properties have been listed on the platform.

Splink

Splink's founder and chief executive Dr Sue Robson.

After noticing the gap in research and applied knowledge on how menstrual cycle hormones impact performance, Dr Sue Robson, founder and chief executive of Splink, completed her PhD on precisely that.

Founded in 2022 and based in Brisbane, Splink is a platform aimed at improving the health and performance of women, sharing Dr Robson’s in-depth knowledge of female physiology from more than 40 years working in elite sport.

Through eBooks, its Women’s Health and Performance Library, and female performance cycle app, anyone can learn what dictates the health and performance of a woman’s body.

In August 2022, Splink became part of the Queensland University of Technology-led sports data science and AI consortium, which meant Splink users would benefit from the data science and AI used to generate insight into menstrual cycles, life stages, and more as well as personalised advice.

Appreci

Founded in 2019 in Brisbane, Appreci is an application that promotes gratitude with quick and easy messages to others that contain a redeemable gift.

Whether that’s via SMS or email, individuals and businesses can send redeemable gifts with companies partnered with the app.

Currently, Little Cocoa, Malt Shovel, The Hidden Sea and Skip can offer chocolate, beer, wine and coffee vouchers, respectively.

In 2020, Lakeba Group, who commercialise digital businesses, acquired a 35 per cent stake in the company to help it succeed past Australia’s borders.

ENVIRONMENT AND CLEAN TECHNOLOGY

Uuvipak

Uuvipak's co-founders Dr. Shafali Gupta and Andy Epifani.

In a bid to help eliminate single-use plastic pollution, founders Dr Shafali Gupta and Andy Epifani developed a range of edible, home-compostable and organic products including cups, bowls, and plates, all designed so you can live a zero-waste lifestyle.

Uuvipak products are 100 per cent natural and don’t contain any harmful chemicals or additives that may be toxic to you or the environment.

Once used, the company’s products naturally biodegrade within three to four weeks.

In June 2022, Ocean Impact Organisation selected the Brisbane-based company and five other startups for its seven month accelerator program, receiving around a $100,000 investment.

Envirometrics.io

Environmental management software company, envirometrics.io aims to simplify the complex issues in the natural resources industry.

Launched in January 2021 out of Brisbane, founders Roger Tang and Imam Purwadi were both completing their PhDs at the University of Queensland’s Sustainable Minerals Institute when they decided to launch envirometrics.io.

One of its products, Mine-R is a personalised dashboard for the mining sector which analyses satellite imagery to monitor an organisation’s impact on the environment and ensure targets are being achieved.

Behind the scenes, the company uses geospatial analysis and machine learning alongside their astute environmental knowledge to create simple tools for environmental managers.

In late 2022, envirometrics.io was a finalist in the Australian Technologies Competition which recognises the country’s best technology scaleups.

GreenKPI

GreenKPI's founder Johanna Kloot.

Launched in Cairns, sustainability software startup GreenKPI helps companies recognise and measure change as well as automate sustainability reports.

Founder Johanna Kloot has developed a growing, global ecosystem and platform of sustainable suppliers and buyers, all supporting one another in acting sustainably while trading within the circular economy.

For example, the companies that subscribe to the platform contribute to supply chain transparency with GreenKPI’s automated sustainability reports.

The company assigns sustainability actions to companies and staff can accept and suggest actions from all across the globe.

GreenKPI also records the resource use and emissions of a company, displaying this on a live-feed dashboard where companies can share their achievements and complete sustainability actions.

Ms Kloot spoke at Impact X’s ‘Scaling Climate and Nature Solutions in Energy’ in Sydney discussion in November 2022 about GreenKPI and accelerating action towards a net zero future.

AGTECH

Fresh Supply Co

FSCO, founded by David Inderias and Ben Lyons, is a Brisbane-based supply chain digitalisation company which goes beyond traditional funding methods by leveraging operational data and empowering lenders to make more informed decisions.

The company, founded in 2017, works with leading banks and non-bank lenders to help agribusinesses obtain better access to capital.

DataFarming

DataFarming founder Tim Neale.

DataFarming is a precision agriculture company that delivers leading digital solutions to farmers.

Based in Toowoomba, the company’s digital solutions for farmers are primarily driven by satellite imagery to unlock the value of farm data for agronomists and producers.

The company, founded by Tim Neale, services 120,000 paddocks across 28,000 farming enterprises in Australia and overseas markets including the UK, South America, Africa and Europe.

Education and Sport

Jumph

Founder John Hosking developed the platform, Jumph, alongside Ashish, for people to turn their hobbies into potential careers.

By connecting talented, driven individuals, Jumph aims to become the number one platform people go to share their passions and teach others something new.

Since it launched in September 2022 from the Gold Coast, the platform now hosts 500 coaches across a variety of fields including classes in yoga, surfing, beach tennis and more.

Already, Jumph has created a community of more than 10,000 members, with members mainly coming from the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, Gold Coast and Byron Bay.

Critterpedia

As a way to encourage people to get outside and learn about nature while using their devices, Critterpedia was created in 2019 in the Gold Coast as a way to identify animals with your camera.

The startup partnered with CSIRO and their Data61 team to develop its proprietary critter identification technology with an AI algorithm to identify the species, alongside animal experts to help train the AI algorithm.

The startup received CSIRO kickstart funding for the project.

The startup was a finalist of XTC Sydney’s 2021 Extreme Tech Challenge as well as Startup of the Year 2022 winner of the iAwards Queensland.

Stadius

Stadius, founded by Dave Heavyside and Rik Conti, is a Gold Coast-based software developer that has developed a rewards platform that makes it fast and easy for brands to create, distribute and manage token-based, hyper-targeted promotional campaigns.

By leveraging blockchain technology, tokenised rewards are easily and efficiently created, distributed, transferred and redeemed.

This gives higher levels of control, visibility and insights across the lifetime of a campaign.