GlamCorner, Brighte and Employment Hero our next billion-dollar glamour start-ups
From designer fashion clothing hire to buy now pay later for home renos — meet the elite group of tech superstars raising millions for their ventures.
An online platform for renting outfits for special occasions, an AI ‘beauty bot’, a buy now pay later provider for home improvements.
A new round of New South Wales high-growth start-ups are promising to deliver the jobs of the future, and in the process become the next Atlassian or Canva to help Australia achieve tech success.
These innovators and more are featured in The List: 100 Innovators List, The Australian’s guide to the nation’s top up and coming innovators.
Audrey Khaing-Jones – GLAMCORNER
Despite the pandemic hitting many major clothing retailers across the country in 2020 – forcing closures across the board – Audrey Khaing-Jones’ clothing rental business GlamCorner has continued to grow apace.
The startup raised $12m in funding last November and signed major partnerships with local brands including David Jones, Spell and Camilla.
GlamCorner’s specialty is renting outfits for special occasions such as weddings and birthdays, with the company also benefiting from growing consumer awareness around buying habits and sustainability. Khaing-Jones, who launched the company in 2012 with husband Dean Jones, says GlamCorner is on a mission to reduce single wear outfits bought for special occasions.
“I think fashion rental is no longer becoming the norm, it is the norm,” she says.
“Change is so important. It’s actually the whole reason we started the company: to change attitudes regarding access versus ownership and address Australia’s 800,000 tonne per year textile waste problem head on.”
Elaine Yang – ASKBELLA
Elaine Yang has built what she describes as Australia’s first Beauty Bot, which uses artificial intelligence to help customers create their own personalised skincare routine.
The bot – named askbella – is the nation’s first online platform that relies on a skin quiz and AI technology to match your skin to a range of products targeting your individual concerns.
The company’s research has found that 57 per cent of beauty shoppers prefer to be left alone while shopping in-store, while 36 per cent would be open to help from a virtual assistant. “The askbella beauty bot is the first of its kind in Australia, educating shoppers, offering ingredient-first, high-quality product suggestions, and making it easier for shoppers to feel confident about their purchase without overwhelming them with choices or sales pitches,” Yang says.
Ben Thompson, Dave Tong – EMPLOYMENT HERO
Sydney tech outfit Employment Hero is one of a small number of companies racing to be crowned as Australia’s next billion-dollar tech startup, landing a mammoth $140m Series E funding round in July and tripling its valuation to $800m in just six months.
It offers a holistic HR tech platform used by 250,000 employees globally, capitalising on a shift to distributed workforces, with employers globally using its software to manage and pay remote workers. Local investors including SEEK, OneVentures, AirTree Ventures and Salesforce Ventures have also backed the company.
“The scale of what we’re trying to solve is truly global,” CEO Ben Thompson says. “What we’re trying to do is help small and medium-sized businesses feel confident and proud about being employers, and they are constantly struggling to manage employment as a whole, and not just in Australia.”
Manuri Gunawardena – HEALTHMATCH
Her time as a medical student opened Manuri Gunawardena’s eyes to the difficulties faced by patients seeking to access clinical trials, sometimes as a last ditch treatment hope. She co-founded HealthMatch with Dr Arran Schlosberg in 2017 to better match patients and researchers – a boon for both groups – and since then has established a pool of more than 80,000 patients looking for trials across more than 300 conditions.
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, HealthMatch provided patient recruitment services free to all organisations (public and private) for Covid-19 research. Gunawardena recently picked up the Veuve Clicquot Bold Future Award for 2021. She is supported by board members and investors Paul Bassat of Squarepeg Capital and Alister Coleman of Folklore Ventures.
Pieter Danhieux, Matias Madou, Fatemah Beydoun – SECURE CODE WARRIOR
Cyber security education is one of Australia’s most pressing issues, with the nation needing more security awareness to keep its infrastructure safe.
Founded in Australia in 2015 by global cyber security experts Pieter Danhieux, Matias Madou and Fatemah Beydoun, Secure Code Warrior is an innovative secure coding platform that helps developers think and act with a security mindset.
It includes support for nearly 46 programming languages and frameworks, and delivers more than 4500 training modules covering more than 150 different software weaknesses.
In 2019 the startup landed $70m in funding led by Goldman Sachs, ForgePoint Capital and Cisco, along with existing investors from AirTree Ventures and Paladin Group. Local customers include Telstra, Woolworths, Xero and ING Bank.
Katherine McConnell – BRIGHTE
Former Macquarie Group senior manager Katherine McConnell started Brighte in 2015, growing her startup into a buy now, pay later finance provider for energy and home improvements such as solar panels and home batteries.
The company recently closed a $100m Series C funding round, landing money from the likes of Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar and Kim Jackson’s venture fund Skip Capital, AirTree Ventures, and Singaporean outfit Qualgro.
Brighte has approved more than $800m in finance for 100,000 Australian households, and works both with households seeking finance for green home improvements and vendors who install equipment knowing that there is no risk of credit default.
Over the past three years, Brighte has experienced a whopping 912 per cent revenue growth and is showing no signs of slowing down.
George Peppou and Tim Noakesmith – VOW
A real contender in the animal-free food space, Vow, a Blackbird-backed startup that creates real meat from cells, is turning a lot of what we think we knew about meat on its head.
Led by founders George Peppou and Tim Noakesmith, it has attracted multiple investments since 2019 (after being awarded a $25,000 grant from the NSW government for creating the first ever cell-cultured kangaroo meat grown from stem cells), including $7.7m in seed funding from Blackbird, Grok Ventures and Tenacious Ventures.
Vow has also grown its meat cell library to 11 animals, with one of Australia’s best known chefs, Neil Perry, trying out six of them in 2020.
While a commercial product is still some time away (no labgrown meat has made its way to a table as regulations are still being developed) judging by Perry’s enthusiasm it sounds like it could taste as good as the real thing.
Nicole Liu – KIN FERTILITY
Nicole Liu left management consulting to start up Kin Fertility under the aegis of Tim Doyle’s Eucalyptus brand incubator.
Kin is laser focused on women’s health, ultimately aiming to be a resource partner for women through their fertility journey.
Launching with a subscription service for the contraceptive pill, thereby circumventing the inconvenience of frequent GP visits to refill prescriptions, Kin now also offers prenatal vitamins, personalised fertility checklists and video consultations with fertility doctors.
Chris and Cam Grant – UNYOKED
This innovative wilderness experience company is on what it describes as a mission to make escaping to nature as regular a routine as going to the gym.
Unyoked has been operating for five years, and its cabins can be found at remote sites dotted across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and the Byron Hinterland.
Unyoked is growing in popularity all the time, and the fact that its cabins are generally at more than 90 per cent occupancy is a testament to its success.
The company’s tiny houses all feature luxurious amenities, but more importantly, have a deep focus on switching off and getting off the grid.
These innovators and more are featured in The List: 100 Innovators List, The Australian’s guide to the nation’s top up and coming innovators.
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