INCUBATE announces its eight new startups

Jay Boolkin, founder of Promise or Pay, is on a mission to keep people true to their word and get them to deliver on a commitment they keep making and breaking – or pay up to charity.

He has an active user base who are accountable for meeting goals they have set themselves: anything from ‘drink a litre of water a day’, to ‘complete a half marathon’ to ‘switch off my smart phone every night’.

His startup is one of eight selected to take part in the University of Sydney Union’s startup accelerator program, INCUBATE.

Other startups include Meerkat, designing a solution to prevent “flat-head syndrome” in children.

Meerkat are a collaborative team of talented medical practitioners, public health officials and industrial engineers developing the first-ever stroller designed with the combined safety, health and development of the child as its top priority.

They are working with the University of Sydney’s Commercial Development and Industry Partnerships team.

“The dynamic energy of working alongside fellow startups in INCUBATE, as well as the focused direction of the program provided by the mentors, creates an atmosphere directed towards success on a myriad of levels for our budding ideas to take flight” says Michelle Lee, product development coordinator for Meerkat.

PicPac, also taking part in INCUBATE, is the highest-rated stop motion animation app for Android.

It has packed more than five million pictures into 60,000+ videos so far, and has more than a thousand daily active users says Founder, Ron Genliang Guan.

“A successful startup comes from a good idea plus a good team plus INCUBATE, where I’m finding the help from mentors and other entrepreneurs is tremendous.”

Mahesh Muralidhar, founder of UReferJobs, also made it into the program and aims to shake up the recruitment market.

Using individuals’ networks and rewarding them for referring is what UReferJobs is all about.

“We have 10+ companies using our recruitment solution. On average we have saved organisations 80% on their costs, delivering top quality candidates,” Muralidhar says.

“Our platform will be a free, easy to setup, internal referral system. We have beta customers on board and are looking for others – this is an opportunity for organisations to significantly reduce their recruitment costs. We are also in conversations with investors.”

James Alexander, INCUBATE’s program manager, says they considered 40 applications for this intake.

“It is always a competitive process, we look for diversity and early-stage companies with scalable innovations that are able to offer real solutions to acute problems,” Alexander says.

In a snapshot:

• More women: 50% of the startups have women co-founders
• More entrepreneurial researchers: two of the eight startups involve researchers – bringing their solutions to the real world
• More traction: three of the eight startups have revenue and first customers, and PicPac has had over 20,000 downloads on the Android store

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