PushStart launched it’s innaugural Accelerator at Fishburners Darlinghurst this week. PushStart has been running mentoring programs and other events for about a year now and has facilitated hundreds of mentoring sessions for budding entrepreneurs.

The new accelerator program offers $20k of cash to succesful applicants, along with around $100k of extra free services from Ninefold, DLA Piper, and more, and of course 3 months of office space in the new FIshburners Darlinghurst. The startups also sacrifice 8% of equity to PushStart, but in return they have an amazing group of successful mentors and investors who become champions for their businesses and take a keen interest in setting them up for success.

The PushStart Accelerator received well over 100 applications from startup teams and whittled that down to 8 successful applicants:

• Bleeply – social media for the enterprise, without the bloopers
• GimmeQuotes – service quotes done right. Better leads for business – better quotes for customers
• Rezon8 – digital advertising solutions using cutting-edge technology
• Matewire – real time activities around you. Matewire is an activity-based mobile social network for like-minded people.
• Make Tonight Count – an iPhone app that allows users to share and discover plans for their night.
• Werdsmith – an iPhone app to help writers organise, share and collaborate on their projects while on the go. Think GitHub for writers.
• Quiverizer – the world’s first surfboard-swapping site
• Tinybeans – The online baby journal for busy parents.

All the teams moved into the office on Monday, which has compeltely filled up our Darlinghurst space, and the office has been buzzing with activity ever since.

Amazing people like Dean McEvoy from Spreets and Alec Lynch from DesignCrowd have been constantly in and out of the space to mentor teams, and there are anywhere from 2-6 brainstorming huddles happening at any one time.

We’re excited to have the teams in the space, and look forward to seeing them develop and grow throughout the program.

The teams hard at work

Brainstorming

Words of wisdom