Pause Fest 2020 Day One Lessons
Pause Fest celebrated its 10th year in 2020 and provided attendees in Melbourne with inspiration for their curious minds. With three main stages, workshop areas, and an expo area featuring a daily startup pitch competition, the three-day festival draws a big crowd of innovation, creative and startup lovers.
According to the Pause Fest:
In 2019, we welcomed over 500 startups, 1500 businesses and over 24 media outlets from across Australia. In fact, over the course of nine years, our event has seen 65,000 movers, shakers and creative change-makers come through its doors.
One of the hard things about Pause Fest is because there is so much great content on offer that you have to pick and choose what you definitely want to see. A good problem to have!
Below are 5 top lessons from several of the 40+ sessions that happened on day one!
To enjoy more of the key lessons from others, check out the #PauseFest or #Pause2020 hashtags on your socials. Luckily this year, Pause Fest live-streamed major sessions on their YouTube, Facebook and Twitter pages.
Startup Pitch Competition - share your story!
Day one of the pitch competition featured 10 startups already making a huge impact in their industries. Check out the startups below and a big congrats to the founders of Everty and Medinet for making it into the finals!
On Friday, the selected finalists will pitch in the finals for the chance to win a big prize pack including a ticket to SingularityU!
Aggie Global: We remove the barriers from sourcing local ingredients, by connecting buyers directly to local suppliers from vetted farms.
Big Little Brush: We’re a social enterprise that takes little things, like toothbrushes, and uses them to do great big things, like funding primary health programs in remote Indigenous communities in Australia.
Cookaborough: Cookaborough takes care of all the complicated, time-consuming tasks of running a home cooking business, by providing you with a beautiful software solution designed to help you serve your customers.
Everty: Everty allows you to easily manage, monitor and monetise your Electric Vehicle charging station. We handle all the backend operations so you can focus on what’s important to you. Choose from the following solutions to learn more.
Roomerang: We’ll convert your property into a five star Airbnb and take care of everything from styling and photography through to guest communications.
Lookinglass: Lookinglass is an eternally vigilant smart mirror platform able to detect the symptoms and progression of degenerative health conditions. Using proprietary machine learning and computer vision techniques, our platform identifies ill health in a family member or patient as they go about their normal daily routine.
Medinet Australia: Medinet Australia is a dynamic health tech startup determined to change the face of healthcare. We are a bunch of energetic and driven individuals passionate about making healthcare more convenient and accessible to all living in Australia. Medinet is a 24/7 GP telehealth consultation app, that allows patients to obtain clinical advice from a GP; access prescriptions and have medications delivered; access pathology results and directly email their medical certificate to their employer; and access specialist referrals along with upfront information about specialists such as their fees, waitlist and experience.
Movepal: Movepal is the natural evolution of the short distance, local moving industry: the Uber of moving everything from single furniture deliveries all the way up to moving 3 bedroom homes. In a high demand industry where it’s hard to differentiate the quality movers from the phonies, we help customers connect with vetted, accredited movers in their local area.
Sensity: SensCity is an integrated decision support platform that provides urban climate intelligence, for organizations to assess their climate risk, impacts and monitor the environmental and climatic performance of infrastructure assets, from green to grey. Our software supports users in producing visual evidence for investment decisions, impact assessments, and to share findings for sustainability compliance purposes.
ReVolt: Australia's first 100% renewable power provider, with the lowest prices, and real-time monitoring of appliances. We are a power company that rewards people when they use less energy.
2. Startup yoda, Alan Jones - time, it will take
Alan Jones has been making a regular appearance at startup events for over a decade, and he was a wealth of experience starting businesses, scaling businesses, advising founders and funding startups. Alan is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence to most of the best accelerators in Australia, including the Remarkable, the disability tech accelerator.
3. Businesses can LEAD on addressing the climate crisis
This panel was a clear crowd favourite. Demonstrating what their organisations are doing as well as offering practical and actionable advice for individuals, the panellists walk their talk everyday within their different organisations. A massive thank you to the panellists for sharing how they’ve “overcame the barriers for being in the business of doing good.“
Thanks to moderator: Simon Smallchua, Co-Founder of Harvey, and three panelists: Shannon Bourke, Environmental and Social Initiatives Manager atPatagonia, Ben Jefferys, CEO at ATEC* Biodigesters, and Lily Dempster, CEO of The Neighbourhood Effect (launching in April - Sign up to get their news).
Read this full review of the panel in Smart Company.
4. Zero Latency - give it a shot
Co-founder of the free-roam VR experience company Zero Latency, Tim Ruse, talked about how to design, build and market a product for global domination. Zero Latency has expanded to 20+ countries and has raised millions in venture capital. Tim was candid, honest and shared tips of what to think about when creating a global company.
5. You can rockit! Lucy Thomas of Project Rockit
Lucy Thomas created a youth driven movement to tackle cyber-bullying, hate and prejudice - empowering young people to lead change. Lucy explored how we can integrate more kindness into our social media.
There’s still two more days jam-packed with content to digest. What are you looking forward to on the Pause Fest schedule?