A message from our CEO.
I cannot believe two years has already passed us by! In some ways it has felt incredibly short, while in others, much, much longer. As was the case for most, the past 12 months had its fair share of challenges, but overall so much was accomplished by our team. From day one, we have been lucky to have amazing partners including the Gold Coast University Hospital, IntelliHQ, the Institute of Glycomics, Southport Sharks, KJR and Griffith University to name a few.
As I write this, we are in week 7 of delivering LuminaX HealthTech accelerator. LuminaX has connected 11 Queensland healthtech startups with over 40 mentors and coaches, delivered around 250hours of 1:1 mentoring and 15 highly educational growth workshops. We look forward to celebrating in July with a demo day presentation to over 250 invited guests – our biggest event this year.
Last year we ran our first Founders Club, an initiative which featured 15 prominent local tech founders, who operate businesses ranging from 5-50 staff and work in sectors such as health, education, fintech, SaaS, IoT and e-commerce. We also launched the Startup Grind Gold Coast chapter, our Industry Insights Series and and partnered with community-led organisations such as the Global Shapers Gold Coast, SheEO and Young Women in AI.
Alongside other programs and delivering over 150 events, we began the process to fulfil our long-term goal of becoming B-Corp certified. Sustainable changes implemented this far have included changing suppliers to impact driven companies, installation of a worm farm on site to reduce organic waste and partnering with Cluster BioTech to implement an overall waste reduction strategy.
All of the above would not be possible with the tireless work from our passionate community team, the loyal support of our members, partners and the vision, investment and support from the Queensland Government, Deputy Premier Dr Steven Miles and Economic Development Queensland.
On behalf of the Cohort team, thank you! We truly appreciate the support we have received since our launch in May 2019, and look forward to growing our support programs, events and community into the future. On a personal note, thank you to Sarah, Ariana, Dren and Janine, who inspire me daily with their passion, intelligence and talent.
– Ben Howe, CEO