The Minderoo Foundation has established a strategic alliance with startup accelerator Startmate to increase institutional funding for female entrepreneurs in Australia. The foundation has invested 2 million dollars into the Startmate Accelerator Fund and will provide up to 8 million dollars over the next four years. The initiative aims to alter venture capital allocation, as female-only founding teams currently secure only 2 per cent of start-up investment across the nation.
Data from the Boston Consulting Group and the Kaufman Fellows show that businesses established by women generate higher returns on investment. Separate research by First Round and the Female Founders Fund also indicates that companies with female founders outperform all-male teams whilst consuming less capital. Despite these findings, global early-stage resources for women remain limited.
Minderoo Foundation CEO John Hartman said: “Research shows female-founding teams are consistently underfunded and operating with fewer resources, globally. That hasn’t changed, despite strong performance from women-led teams and clear evidence they deliver results, often outperforming their male peers.”
He added: “Minderoo Foundation’s strategic investment with Startmate is about getting more capital to entrepreneurs earlier, strengthening the pipeline for women coming through and backing more women to build and scale high-growth companies.”
Startmate has supported more than 880 women as angel investors, employees and founders since its launch in 2011. Since 2019, 43 per cent of its portfolio firms have included at least one female co-founder, exceeding the wider tech sector average of 24 per cent.
Startmate CEO Phoebe Pincus said: “Last year 51 per cent of the capital we invested from our accelerator funds went to women-led startups (defined as having at least one female co-founder with meaningful equity), and 33 per cent was deployed into companies with only women founders.”
She added: “But these numbers only tell a small part of the story. For years now, Startmate has had a strong focus on building communities that serve women at all levels in the startup space. As a result, we’ve seen a much higher number and proportion of women-led startups apply for the accelerator, from 100 (20 per cent) in 2019 to nearly 600 (43 per cent) in 2025.”
The accelerator has backed more than 300 companies with a combined portfolio value of over 4.5 billion dollars. Notable recent alumni include Julia Reisser of seaweed packaging firm Uluu, Grace Brown of companion robotics company Andromeda and Remy Tucker of On The House.
Ms Tucker, whose firm secured a 1.7 million dollar seed round to deploy free period product dispensers across major Australian cities after finishing the program, said: “Startmate was the best unfair advantage as an early-stage startup. The network, the momentum, the motivation… prior to Startmate, I did not have any experience in the startup ecosystem. They gave me what I needed most at the time.”
The funding follows other gender-focused financial allocations by the Minderoo corpus, including a 100 million dollar investment into Future Generation Women. Minderoo has also supported the Scale Venture Fund 1 and the Impact Investment Exchange’s Women’s Livelihood Bond 7 to assist women across the Asia-Pacific region.
