As the 2010s come to an end, it’s hard to comprehend the meteoric rise of startups, both in Australia and abroad. This time 10 years ago, Uber, AirBnB and Instagram were all in their infancy. Now, they are global powerhouses shaping our societies.

There hasn’t been a better time to jump start your own venture. At Academy Xi together with our partners YBF Ventures and Melbourne Silicon Beach, we’re on a mission to help connect, motivate, and grow startups. As we enter the new decade, we invite you to join us at Pitch X! Selected applicants will be given the opportunity to pitch for a co-founder, investor, mentor or support.

Bringing experts from across the startup landscape, our amazing judges will provide entrepreneurs and the startup community with the perfect pitching platform.

For your chance to pitch you’ll need to answer the following key questions:

• What problem are you tackling?

• What solution are you creating to address this problem?

• What positive impact will your startup have? (social, environmental or other)

The pitch

Pitch how you want, however, we encourage you to include the following;

• Intro yourself and/or your team

• Talk about the problem you’re solving

• Reveal your solution

• Tell the judges what stage your startup is at and what traction you’ve received

• Outline what you’re pitching for: support, funding, resources etc

The night

Round one:

A number of selected pitches will be asked to prepare a 90-second pitch. Our judges will choose the top three pitches to progress to the 2nd round.

If you’ve been selected to pitch on the night, you’ll receive notification from our team before-hand, so look out for us in your emails!

Round two:

For the second round, finalists will have five minutes to pitch and will be able to use a slide deck. The judges will then pick the best in this round to win! We’re lining up some awesome prizes, so stay tuned!

Register to pitch or attend:

Keen to pitch your idea? Unfortunately, the pplication for this Pitch X Night are closed.

If you’re just interested in attending,simply RSVP to this event.

Prizes:

Judges

Rory Manchee

FinTech | Market Data | Crypto | Strategy | Business Development | Product Management | Digital Assets

Rory is a widely experienced corporate executive, having held senior management, leadership and board roles with a a number of global and national businesses. Lawyer by education, publisher by training and consultant by experience, he specializes in helping clients design and grow their businesses by consulting on strategy, business development, stakeholder management and product commercialisation.

Michelle Bourke

Founder and CEO of Foresight

Michelle is the Founder and CEO of Foresight - a plug and play growth team for innovative companies who need to scale fast or go global. With a 15 year career in marketing and leadership spanning corporate, national and multinational brands, Michelle is also a former board director of Startup Victoria and founder of the Female Founders Committee. Michelle has dedicated her career to understanding consumer psychology and leveraging her client-side background, fusing commercial acumen and business model mechanics with growth marketing to create sustainable scaling pathways for brands of the future.

Abena Ofori

Business | Technology | Social impact

Abena oversees social impact initiatives across the organisation. Exploring the importance diversity, inclusion and collaboration initiatives play in entrepreneurship, Abena also oversees the Female Founder and Alumni Programs at MAP.

Abena draws on best practice to design challenging programs for our founders who leave with the tools and network to unlock positive social impact in their startups. She has worked with hundreds of startups on their business and impact strategy and involved them in our programs’ continued evaluation and improvement.

With deep international experience in social enterprises and not-for-profits, Abena developed operational and program design expertise to bring about social change after working with organisations like aidha, Earth Hour and YGAP