Skalata’s Post

Melburnian? 🚋 Passionate about sustainability? 💚 Free tomorrow evening? 🍻 Join us for must-hear panel discussion on building circular economy products. We've gathered some super impressive leaders in the space: Tina Funder, CEO & Founder of Alt. Leather Max Moolman , Co-Founder of Wonki Ben Chamberlain, CEO & Co-Founder of Authentified Hosted by Melissa Mack, a seasoned PR expert and director of Silkie Communications. This is your chance to network with fellow sustainability champions (founders and investors), enjoy sustainable sips, and gain insights to transform your approach to product development and startup growth. 📍 Location: Shadowboxer Office, Richmond, VIC 📅  Date & Time: 6pm, 22nd August. Last chance to RSVP: https://lu.ma/lstxm7p7 Fantastic to be hosting with our friends at Shadowboxer and Overnight Success 💛

Early childhood educators are losing heart. 💔 Stressed, burnt out, slogging through hours of paperwork a week - and in many cases, falling out of love with the profession entirely.  The laundry list of compliance reporting is prying them away from actual teaching - for up to an hour each day. It’s especially damaging in early-years education, where children need highly reciprocal learning to develop their brains. 👶 Turning educators' observations into learning stories, lesson plans, and reports, LoveHeart is giving educators the space to actually make the observations in the first place! It’s reducing hours of weekly reporting to minutes, and acting as an in-the-pocket teaching aide, translator, and coach. More on why we invested, and how founder Himal Randeniya is teaching us a thing or two about teaching, via the link in comments 👇 Stoked to be backing LoveHeart alongside Andrew Yeo and Adam Goldschmidt at OIF Ventures 🙌

Composting is ripe for disruption. 🍌 But it’s not your typical Silicon Valley glamour... The industry is literally - in Monty Compost Co founder Ashley Baxter's words - a “big stinking pile of food waste”. It’s also set to be a big stinking problem for humanity in future decades. Nutrients and carbon are extracted from natural systems to feed the world. And they’re not being restored. Recycling all organic waste back into our food systems would cut over 14% of global emissions. ♻️ But it’s cheaper and easier to ship it to landfill - and bury our heads in the sand along with it. Monty is solving the huge problem by monitoring and analysing composting conditions and quality - starting in gardens, and scaling to industrial plants - to help restore natural systems and return precious nutrients to the earth. Ash is joined by the formidable Junior Joyce, Kellie Walters, and Andy Hill 🙌 More on why we invested via the link in comments 👇

Congrats to Lochie Burke and Afonso Firmo from NetNada (Best Sustainability Startup 🌏) and Sean Law from Doohly (Best New Founder ✨) for your nominations in Startup Daily's Best in Tech Awards  🏆 We may have also made the Startup Investor of the Year shortlist... 🫣

Hats off to Jeanette Cheah 💁🏻♀️, Jodie Imam, and Rachel Yang who clinched top honours at LaunchVic's Governor of Victoria Startup Awards this week! 🍾 You are all incredible ambassadors for our ecosystem. From everyone at Skalata, thank you for everything you do to support the next generation of Victorian founders 🙏🫡

It's official. Skalata is the most active investor in Australia this year. 🏃♀️🏆 Investing at the pace we do, while prioritising portfolio support is no mean feat... A special thank you to Claire Bristow, Rob Greco, Tuong Cat Tran 🐱, Tom Smalley and Shahirah Gardner who put in the hard yards every day to make sure our value prop is more than just words on a website. We may not scream it from the rooftops, but we're quietly proud to have the highest support-to-cheque size ratio in Australia. We’re anti-hype, anti-insane pressure - instead giving pre-seed startups what they need at the time… which it turns out is time. With more people on hand and more hands-on support, we're helping founders build the capabilities for long-term success. Keep your eyes out for another investment shortly... 👀 Read the full article (link in comments) 👇