Four Australian startups just won $1 million from Google: Here are the secrets to their pitching success

Google has awarded four Australian startups $1 million in grant funding each to scale-up their offerings and help people in need across the country and the globe.

The four winning startups were announced in Sydney earlier this month as part of the Google Impact Challenge. Now in its third year, the challenge offers $5.5 million in prize money to support not-for-profit startups leveraging technology to solve complex social challenges.

Ten finalists were invited to pitch to a panel of judges that included Australia’s chief scientist Dr Alan Finkel, vice president of product at Google Anil Sabharwal and Google vice president and Google.org global president Jacquelline Fuller. From these finalists, the judging panel chose three winners, while Google also allowed the public to vote and determine the winner of a $1 million people’s choice prize.

The winning four pitches on the day came from:

• Xceptional — a Sydney-based startup that has developed an anxiety-reducing app to empower autistic employees;
• Hireup — a platform that helps people with disabilities find and manage support workers;
• Humanitix — an event ticketing platform that redistributes booking fees to social causes across the world; and
• Orange Sky Laundry (people’s choice winner) — a web-based solution that helps not-for-profit organisations track and manage their volunteers and social impact. Read more
• Angela Castles - SmartCompany - 7 November 2018