Fond reflections on the MAP Velocity Program
Lessons, friends and lots of fun! These are just some of the things I walked away with from my memorable time at the MAP Velocity Program in 2021. With the support of LaunchVic and the University of Melbourne, the Velocity program has been both an intellectually stimulating and enjoyable experience, providing me with amazing opportunities and support for my startup.
The increasingly popular pre-accelerator program ran over 10 weeks, with a series of workshops centred around customer discovery, business models, building an MVP and fundraising, tailored largely to earlier stage founders. We took part in evening workshops that featured expert speakers such as Isaac Jeffries, Elena Kelareva and Jordan Green, and participated in group activities that both challenged and inspired us. Connecting with these speakers, the MAP mentors and wider MAP team has contributed greatly to my personal development and their shrewd insights have helped productively inform my startup’s journey.
Velocity offered not only content that was both incredibly engaging and valuable, but it also cultivated a 21-strong startup community of friendly and passionate founders. We had the opportunity to meet in person at the newly built Melbourne Connect (pre-lockdown), exchange ideas and motivate each other to succeed in business and in impact. I cherish the relationships I’ve formed with fellow founders in the program and look forward to seeing them transform their awesome ideas into a commercial reality.
A big thank you goes to Adelide Mutinda for managing such a successful program. The diligence and care she showed in coordinating this program virtually and providing guidance to the participating founders is a true testament to her decade of experience in innovation. I’d like to also take this opportunity to recognise Laxmi Pun (MAP Accelerator Manager), Andrew Loh (MAP Associate) and Bonnie Zhang (Program Coordinator at TRAM), who also helped make this a fun and educational experience for me.
A massive thank you goes to the whole MAP organisation for believing in my work with Linkmate and giving us this chance to learn and form meaningful relationships throughout the program. Since starting Velocity, we’ve developed a deeper understanding of who our customers are, refined our business model, launched our MVP and garnered important insights for our upcoming research project at RMIT. If you’re interested in finding out more about Velocity and applying for the next cohort intake, click here.
Meet the first 2021 MAP Velocity cohort
3 Steps Away — Luke Panaccio and Fadi Elbarbar
Three Steps Away (3SA) is developing a new online platform that is part online course and part online community that provides a 3-step thought process to help students tackle solving the world’s most pressing problems.
AIBUILD — Huijun Lao, Yifei Wang and Taicheng Zhou
AIBUILD has developed an innovative machine-learning fall prevention system which can be used to effectively predict, detect and reduce patient falls in both aged-care facilities and hospitals. The invented fall prevention system allows the system to extract human body skeleton data to track human movements in the camera’s field of vision. With the extracted real-time data, the developed machine learning method is able to successfully detect patient falls with an accuracy of at least 90%.
Collabor8 ThinkSpace — Anna McDonald and Max Dumais
Collabor8 ThinkSpace is creating a facilitation app that uses structured design thinking frameworks to increase the productivity of virtual meetings.
Disruptive Publications — Brendan Joseph Grabau and Stephen Robson
Disruptive Publications enables rapid publishing of the latest research, reviews and opinions across a variety of academic areas by providing genuine peer-review through its online journal Research Reviews and Opinion.
Fan Tipper is a digital gratuity service that allows people to leave a digital tip, a message of support, and share their positive experience via social media. It facilitates a return to the customer-led initiative of leaving a gratuity.
GirlsTrade — Dominic D’Andrea, Clara Momesso and Angus Cronin-Guss
GirlsTrade is revolutionising the fashion industry by building a marketplace and community for women to trade clothing. This platform enables women to hire, buy or sell pre-loved fashion at a fraction of the retail price by tapping into the community’s existing wardrobes. This sharing economy breaks down the barriers of access, cost and fast fashion whilst reducing the effects of fast fashion.
Infestation Tracking Systems — Brad Wynter and Arron Vilinskis
Giving you early warning of active termite activity near your home so you can proactively protect it.
InTouch — Taissa Maciburko and Stephen Burgen Santos
Keeping patients and families connected during hospital procedures through integrated, automated messaging solutions, freeing up doctors and nurses for improved patient care, improving CX and reducing operational cost for hospitals.
LERERO — Aurel Brudan, Cosmin Chindris and Oana Calin
A SaaS-based learning and development system enhancement solution centred on driving long term knowledge retention through learning behavioural change and assessment backed by extensive research on memory and brain science.
A social enterprise devoted to mental wellness by connecting people with peers and community services for empathetic and personalised support.
Mindful Milk — George Mcfarlane and Tom Morrison
Tap out of plastic waste and into the circular economy.
Bespoke maternity concierge founded to empower women to nurture themselves first in their pregnancy journey and transition to motherhood. We deliver evidence-based workshops, virtual assistant support to book appointments, recommend holistic health specialists, cleaners, babysitting services they require, deliver their baby shopping they require, plan their baby shopping and meal planning. We recognise that no two pregnancies and babies are alike, so our service will always be one-on-one.
Nextround is the digital prepaid voucher platform that connects customers’ corporate and personal budget to local hospitality businesses — you can now send a thank you with a coffee from a local cafe.
Book live performers for your next get-together, celebration or functions through NGAGED. Whether it’s a baby’s baptism, a 21st birthday, an engagement party or even a backyard BBQ with close friends, add a spark to your get-togethers! Musicians, dancers, mime, stand-up comedy and much more. Create special memories! Be NGAGED.
Our Pantry — Shriya Gupta
An online platform for selling homemade food products to the community.
Ruby — Joshua Mapperson, Frank Mapperson and Daks Gunaratne
A browser extension that connects consumers with online stores and the best product prices across Australia.
talkingbirth — Karen McNeil and Marie Gentile-Andrit
An accessible maternity tool supporting women to partner with primary care providers for shared decision making throughout pregnancy, birth and early parenting.
toto — Jasun Li, Christian Gashi and Indiana Cooper
toto aims to raise the standard of concussion management by providing amateur football clubs with a SaaS solution that is intuitive, affordable, and implements best-practice guidelines to support the wellbeing of players from match-day, to return-to-play, and beyond.
Vleet — Harold Kim, Wayne Nyamana and Takura Chindove
Pioneering simple, no wait, self-service car rental.
World Doctors United — Kylie El-Sheikh
Providing online/offline preventative healthcare services and education to Developing Countries via telehealth.
Yabi Medical — Dylan Andrews
An innovative, accurate and automated method for monitoring and escalating surgical drain output.
