LaunchVic is hunting for startup founders to be part of its final blessing of future unicorns

Victoria startup agencyLaunchVic has once again opened expressions of interest for a third cohort of its pioneering 30X30 program to support potential tech unicorns scale up the operational side of their startups.

It has assisted some of Victoria’s fastest-growing scaleups, including JET Charge, HammerTech and Nutromics, with executive education for their HR, operations, and finance leads.

The fully subsidised four-month program will see key staff involved talent paired with mentors from existing unicorn ventures such as Atlassian, Canva, Culture Amp, Judo Bank and SEEK to address common bottlenecks for scaling companies.

Selected scaleups will also receive $6,000 in funding from LaunchVic for additional mentoring sessions or international travel.

HammerTech CEO Ben Leach said one of the key things he took away from 30X30 was the importance of creating a dedicated operations stream.

“We have since made some adjustments to our organisational design, appointing a VP Operations, which has been transformational for us in terms of business operations and efficiency, which has had an immediate impact on our performance,” he said.

LaunchVic CEO Dr Kate Cornick said 30X30 had gained a solid reputation for its practical, hands-on approach to helping scaleups with their pain points – which are often all very similar.

“Growing pains due to rapid growth is a common problem for many scaleups, often experienced the most in the day-to-day running of the business or the back-office functions,” she said.

“Learning from leaders that have already travelled this well-worn path has proven invaluable to our 30X30 alumni, with many of the participating scaleups still engaged with their mentors.”

30X30 has already run two successful cohorts, and this will be the final cohort, taking the total number of startup supported to 30 in total after it kicked off 18 months ago.

Victorian scaleup founders can apply and learn more at launchvic.org/30×30

• The collective noun for unicorns is a blessing.