Meet the women entrepreneurs who completed Australia’s first Springboard boot camp

Georgia Beattie of Single Serve Packaging is one of the inaugural Springboard Australia participants. Arsineh Houspian

Renowned entrepreneurs share one thing in common: they always add a zero. What else do they have in common? How do they overcome huge setbacks? Where do they get their nerve? “Add a Zero” seeks to uncover the hidden traits, motivations, tricks and tips that turns small business owners into entrepreneurs and millionaires into billionaires. Kay Koplovitz knows how to add a zero. As the founder of USA Network she eventually sold the business for $US4.6 billion. Koplovitz, is also founder and chairman of Springboard Enterprises, a leading business accelerator for high-growth, women-led businesses.

Caitlin Fitzsimmons

The Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, has announced the names of the eight businesswomen selected for the inaugural Australian Springboard program for female entrepreneurs.

Moore hosted an event in Sydney on Tuesday evening to honour Springboard and reveal the identity of the entrepreneurs involved.

As reported in BRW on Monday, the entrepreneurs come from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and their start-ups have a strong technological flavour.

The final eight were selected from 56 formal applications and put through two rounds of telephone panel interviews.

They are:

Samantha Cobb, founder of biotech company AdAlta

Melanie Perkins of consumer technology company Canva

Tessa Court, founder of cloud computing company IntelligenceBank

Georgia Beattie, founder of wine product company Single Serve Packaging

Natasha Rawlings of mobile marketing company StreetHawk

Deb Noller, founder of Switch Automation

Vanessa Wilson, founder of cloud computing company Triplebackup

Fiona Waterhouse from clean tech company Utilitas

On Tuesday, before the mayoral function, the businesswomen spent the day in “boot camp”, meeting visiting US venture capitalists and angel investors.

While some might seal funding as a result of the networking, all of them received coaching and left the day with a “personal advisory board”.

Springboard has operated in the US since 1999 and came to Australia at the instigation of Wendy Simpson, now chairman of Springboard Enterprises Australia.

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