Spend enough time around startups and you quickly see that innovation, at its core, is a story about people.
When two founders bump into each other and discover they’re solving different parts of the same problem. Or when an engineer shares a line of code they’ve wrestled with for hours, and gets advice that saves them many hours more.
Across our Stone & Chalk hubs in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, this was a year defined by connection. How when we bring the right people together, extraordinary things unfold. This is what that looked like in 2025.
Ten years of Stone & Chalk
This year, Stone & Chalk turned ten. A decade gives you perspective; it’s long enough to see the full arc of a startup community.
You see early ideas turn into real products. You see founders arrive with little more than a laptop and leave with global customers, teams of dozens, and a few scars earned the hard way.
To mark our 10-year anniversary, more than 350 people came together in Sydney – with another hundred or so in Melbourne and Adelaide. Many of these people were building their first company; others, making a welcome return to the community that helped support them all those years ago.
There were plenty of stories and memories, but there was also a clear question hanging in the air - what comes next?
Our answer is to help power 10,000 Australian startup success stories by 2035.
That goal now guides three national initiatives. An expanded Stone & Chalk Alumni Program to serve our extended community and turn lived founder experience into practical support. A Startup Success Index to make the founder journey easier to see, measure and achieve. And the Founders Pact – a call to those who have done it all before to help those now getting their start.
These speak to the truth that our greatest strength has never been the walls around us, but the people who grew from within them.
Going further, faster across the country
In 2025, success stories came from every corner of the Stone & Chalk network.
Sydney
Sydney’s startup ecosystem reached a turning point as the NSW Government doubled down on Tech Central as the heart of innovation.
This precinct now has the highest concentration of technology businesses in Australia, as companies like Atlassian, Canva, and SafetyCulture sit alongside 150 research institutes and two world-leading universities.
What this offers startups is proximity. Meetings that once took weeks to organise can happen over lunch, opening doors to new partnerships and opportunities.
More than 250,000 people passed through the building this year – with visits from Groq, Canva, Microsoft, Uber, ING, Acciona, Dior, Pernod Ricard, CSIRO, the French Embassy and Climate Salad.
And our startups delivered! Heatseeker stood on the global stage, winning the L’Oréal Big Bang Beauty Innovation Program against more than 50,000 applicants worldwide.
At the same time, Quantum Women ran a pilot program to lift the visibility of women working in quantum technology, Build Club laid out plans to take AI education global, and OpenSolar rolled out a new solar platform and raised $30 million to make it happen.
Other founders focused on growth and scale. MyGig raised $1 million to push their payroll and compliance platform forward. Quantum Brilliance secured $30 million to develop quantum diamond technology. Block Earner raised $8m to offer bitcoin-backed home loans, and Human Health raised $8.5 million to fix broken healthcare systems.
Melbourne
Melbourne’s community was busy with events, workshops, and programs week after week.
Artificial intelligence was a major focus, with more than 20 AI events alone; the space a regular meeting point for some of Australia’s most active AI founders. Investor Month brought hundreds of entrepreneurs into seven focused sessions with fifteen investors, building the startup pipeline to funding.
The growth was clearly visible. Pathfinder went from idea to exit in under 18 months; and i2i Logic partnered with Wells Fargo, opening the door to massive global clients. Rosterfy expanded from a small shared office into a 60 person custom space, before graduating into their own building where they power the workforce at the Super Bowl.
Our Victorian startups also featured strongly in Australia’s Top 250 Young Entrepreneurs list, with the list including Elbaite, PHNXX, SentiVue, Rosterfy, FrankiOne, Brightspace, Everlab, Build Club, and Andromeda.
And speaking of Andromeda, one of the year’s most talked-about stories was how 25-year-old founder Grace Brown led them to a $100 million valuation, showing what focused execution can achieve at speed.
Adelaide
In South Australia, Stone & Chalk has become a critical center of gravity for the state’s innovators.
Since July, we’ve had over 1,000 people visit the hub every month – with November setting a new record of 1,409 visitors across 38 events, the busiest month in the hub’s history.
This opens doors to collaboration, and we’ve seen these connections play out.
Henry from PromoSync (who met his co-founder at Stone & Chalk) took to the stage in front of more than a thousand people at the Startmate Demo Day, while Space Protocol partnered with the US-based MITRE Corporation to help make space information safer and more reliable. We also saw Clevertar launch Australia’s first GenAI agent with the Federal Government, marking a national milestone for applied AI.
There were also important leadership and growth moments, with Optigrid tripling its team and moving into their own new space, and 11 Stone & Chalk startups presenting at the Innovation Leaders Network Showcase, in a majority share of the event. The year also saw MyVenue win the national Technologies Exporter Award, with its founder Tim Stollznow also named South Australia’s Entrepreneur of the Year.
Collaboration is a superpower
Progress happens when people work together. That’s why partnerships are so important to us. They are the mechanism to connect our founders to opportunities that no single organisation could achieve alone.
This year, some of our partnerships put founders right in front of real problems. The KPMG Future Tech Program paired startups with deep industry expertise to tackle modern business challenges; the CA ANZ Innovation Challenge gave founders the chance to address complex tax issues with industry leaders.
Other partnerships were about bringing the right people into the same room. With CSIRO, the ON Accelerate 10 Bootcamp soirée connected 20 startups with investors, mentors and ecosystem leaders.
A Night with Techstars opened new international pathways to the USA for Australian founders. The French Treasury-led Women in AI event brought policy, industry and founders together, while KPMG’s Trust in AI created space for conversations on responsible AI, based on global research across 47 countries.
These collaborations played out at both the national level and in our local precincts. In Sydney, working with the NSW Government and Fishburners helped more founders access the Tech Central Innovation Hub community. We also welcomed senior leaders from organisations like ANZ to connect directly with founders and the wider ecosystem.
In Adelaide, our DeepWork collaboration with Renewal SA helped integrate remote workers from some of Australia’s most successful tech companies such as Atlassian, HEX, RevoLab and Wrkr. Partnerships with SA Water and the South Australian Space Industry Centre also created new opportunities to build skills and share perspectives, along with four Space Town Halls and the AgriTech meet-up to bring the sector together.
In Melbourne, we also worked closely with the Community Collective, Aussie Founders Club, Press Play and FinTech Australia to deliver events and opportunities for the community.
One of the most significant partnerships this year was with HEC Paris. This collaboration strengthens our global ecosystem and opens new pathways for deeper engagement with corporates serious about innovation and change.
Across all our partners, one pattern was clear. When we bring together the right people and build the right relationships, we create the best opportunities for growth.
The road forward into 2026
Australia doesn’t lack smart people, big ideas or ambition. These are already here. What makes the difference is having places where these can combine in meaningful ways.
That’s why there’s one result from the 2025 Startup Muster Report that matters so much to us. For the second year running the Australian startup community named Stone & Chalk the most recommended startup support organisation in Australia.
This only happens because people choose, every day, to show up and help make this the place to be.
As we move into the new year, our work stays centred on building relationships and creating opportunities that make the founder journey a little easier, and a little less lonely.
The future of Australian innovation will be built with community. And we’re proud to be the place where that happens. Here’s to another year of bringing people together, and seeing what you build next.
What would you build if you knew someone had your back? We’re here to help innovators go further, faster. Join us at Stone & Chalk.
