Government and Startups a Winning Combination

CivVic Labs is Australia’s first GovTech accelerator designed to help startups gain access to government procurement. Our first year has been groundbreaking and it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on what has been achieved and what this means for the future of startup and government collaboration in Australia. 

The CivVic Labs story starts back in April, when we broadcast our first Victorian public sector challenges to the startup ecosystem. Over the course of the year we have broadcast seven challenges across transport, health, safety and cyber security.

A staggering 122 startups responded to our callouts, jumping at the chance to work with government. From this huge response, we selected 21 startups, or three per challenge, to work with each of the government challenge owners as part of a month-long intensive pre-accelerator experimentation phase. From there the challenge owners selected the most promising startups to work with during the more intensive accelerator and development phases. It was incredibly exciting to see some challenge owners opting to fund two startups rather than one because of the strength of the solutions proposed.

In December, CivVic Labs’ first class of graduating startups, Sky Ledge, WeGuide and Envision Systems signed with their challenge owner partners to each secure $150,000 to progress their MVPs and build their businesses.

When CivVic Labs began the idea of a government-funded accelerator program that connected startups to procurement opportunities was basically an untested concept here in Australia. I am excited to report that in just nine short months the strength and value of the relationships being brokered between selected startups and government challenge owners is a step closer to delivering huge value to both. The GovTech era has officially arrived.