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Venture capital (VC) investors from around Australia and the world will gather in Brisbane next week for the inaugural UQ Ventures ScaleUP Showcase, reflecting a rapid rise to prominence for Queensland founders who were once much more overlooked for funding in one of the world's most capital-efficient ecosystems.
The summit on Tuesday, 21 October will culminate in a highly-anticipated Pitch Night combining cohorts from UQ Ventures' early-stage iLab and later-stage Momentum accelerators, following a 2025 financial year when the Sunshine State attracted a record 109 funding deals.
The state's startup exuberance has been bolstered by the $130 million Queensland Venture Capital Development Fund (QVCDF) that has now been rolling out for more than 18 months, and is administered by the Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC) which is backing the combined accelerator alongside Uniquest.
"The QVCDF has attracted more VCs into Queensland with eyes on Queensland startups. I think it definitely has helped raise the profile of Queensland startups, although that can't be attributed to the fund alone," says QIC's venture relations manager Nicola Wightman.
"We're looking forward to being involved in the event's investor showcase that will put on display all of the UQ Ventures cohort from more than 30 founder-led ventures to investors who are across different thematics and investing at different stages," she says.
"UQ Ventures are such an experienced program team that hold these sessions. They always create a fantastic experience for those that join the programs – they’re well connected in the investment community and the R&D community, providing cohort participants with the best connections."
The ScaleUP Showcase offers a platform featuring live founder showcases across sectors such as biotech, AI, health and medtech, cleantech, SaaS, enterprise solutions, creative tech, and more.
In parallel, the event will feature a full day of curated content designed to spark ideas, foster connections and accelerate growth across a main stage and breakout rooms. This will include a spotlight on inspiring journey stories such as ViceBio’s record-breaking $1.6 billion university-led biotech exit - Australia's largest to date.
One panel to look out for will be the discussion From Clicks to Bricks to Bots - What Investors Will Back Next, with international set of experts Jo Chaturvedi-Durant from VU Venture Partners and Golden Gate Ventures founding partner Vinnie Lauria, as well as Michael Cotton, the chief product officer of Australia-headquartered blockchain and crypto-focused investment firm Optio Capital.
Chaturvedi-Durant, who splits her time between San Francisco, Singapore and South Australia, says Australian startups overall have a reputation for being quite capital-efficient, so when they reach out to global investors "they tend to be way further along versus the amount of capital they've raised".
"They just build in a really capital-efficient way, and from a valuation perspective that makes Australian startups really attractive to global investors," she says.
Homing in on Queensland, the venture partner says Queensland's startup ecosystem has grown organically and quickly, reaching an "extremely impressive" scale in a short amount of time.
"I'm extremely impressed with how the overall strategy of allocating assets to early stage has panned out in Queensland," she says.
"This compares to other parts of the of the country where allocation to early stage is still not a table-stakes conversation. Elsewhere you still have to convince people to get over the line of allocating within the asset pool.
"I think Queensland's ecosystem has put their put their finger on the pulse, understanding how important speed is, getting to that density and scale really quickly."
Chaturvedi-Durant looks forward to hearing new insights at the summit, and expects some key topics might include the end of the "nuclear winter" on biotech and the next frontier of AI that is now much more focused on value-add use cases.
When asked for her observations on the Queensland startup scene, she notes that historically the approach has been to succeed domestically first and then take the product global.
"If you compare that to a founder in a market like Singapore, they understand that their market is outside right from day one, so they are global from day one," she says.
"I think that thought process is now starting to change really quickly within the Queensland ecosystem. You see a lot of day-one global businesses now."
Chaturvedi-Durant recommends that founders adopt this global-first mindset from the outset, and that they gain an understanding of the cultural differences between Australia and the US when pitching to investing, especially around the kind of communication that is expected.
The understated and self-deprecating style that is more likely to be seen in Australia may not get the cut-through that a typical American founder with a similar business model would achieve, whereby communication is underpinned by the entrepreneur being very sold into their own vision with a significant amount of outward projection of their idea and plans.
"That’s really important because we don’t realise how much of that plays into building conviction within the investment process," she says.
"For markets like Singapore they are obviously a lot more relationship driven, but from an investment process perspective they are quite similar to the US because they know that’s where their big market is."
The ScaleUP Showcase is supported by QIC Venture Capital Development Fund, UniQuest, UniQuest Extension Fund, Everest Engineering, Pitcher Partners, Google Cloud, The Product Bus, and Dare Capital Australia, and Business News Australia is its media partner.
"ScaleUP Showcase creates a fantastic new platform for founders across the entire accelerator journey to come together, learn from each other, and showcase their incredible progress," says Tyson Jennings, iLab Accelerator manager at UQ Ventures.
"Pitch Night has long been a highlight of the calendar, and it’s thrilling that this year it will be the grand finale of our first combined cohort, signalling the strength and unity in our ecosystem," adds Yasharth Krishna, Momentum Accelerator manager.
Business News Australia readers can secure discounted tickets using code BNAust-Ventures15 via the following link, and visit here for more details on the event including a full list of the founder-led ventures taking part in the Pitch Night.
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