How to get the best ROI from startup events - with HEX’s Jeanette Cheah
Small Steps Vol. 99: The power of fostering genuine community 🤝; artificial organs and 3D-printed blood vessels 🫀; and how the right sports bra could save your ACL 🏃🏻♀️.
Kick start
❤️🗑️ Startup events - love ‘em or loathe ‘em? Running a major event may not be the first thing on a founder’s mind as you're focused on growing your business, and we know it can be overwhelming choosing from the dozens of ecosystem events that are on each week. There’s a real time and resource cost to events – so how can you make sure you’re putting your energy to work in the best way possible?
We couldn’t think of a better person to ask than Jeanette Chea, CEO and co-founder of HEX, and one of the most charismatic speakers we know.
Jeanette shares her thoughts on the top three things every successful event needs, the worst mistakes to avoid, and the power of inspiring genuine community in our latest Q&A – check it out below 👇
🌅 Speaking of events… the entire Giant Leap team will be at Sunrise today, so be sure to say hi if you’re around 👋
What we’re thinking about
🎾 Serena Williams is still playing to win. In 2014, the 23-time Grand Slam winner founded Serena Ventures, a VC fund dedicated to championing women and underrepresented founders. How’s it going? Between the fund and her personal portfolio, Serena has invested in over 85 companies – 14 of which have reached unicorn status. The fund’s portfolio consists of 79% underrepresented founders, 54% women founders, 47% Black founders, and 11% Latino founders, which tracks with existing strong evidence that founders with greater ethnic and gender diversity achieve 30% higher returns for investors on exit than their counterparts.
🫀 Artificial organs. Tens of thousands of people with type 1 diabetes may soon be offered access to an ‘artificial pancreas’ in a new trial in the UK. The tech, which is actually a glucose sensor that sits under the skin, automatically calculates how much insulin needs to be delivered via a pump. In trials, this tech showed great results in improving quality of life and reducing the risk of longer-term health complications in patients.
While that tech doesn’t involve any real human tissue, researchers in the US are making progress on the lab-grown organ front too – by helping create the networks of blood vessels needed to keep them alive. Scientists face the key problem of organ material dying off if it is more than 200 micrometres away from a blood vessel (twice the width of a strand of hair). The solution? “3D printing a mould of veins, arteries and capillaries in ice, casting that in organic material and then allowing the ice to melt away, resulting in a delicate, hollow network. This leaves a space for the intricate artificial blood vessels that are required to develop lab-grown internal organs.” That’s pretty cool (pun intended).
Source: New Scientist.
🏃🏻♀️ The power of the right sports bra. Women and people with breasts are more likely to tear their anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) than men, and it turns out that your sports bra may be the culprit. A global study of peak athletes found that jumping with the wrong level of bra support can put extra strain on the knees, increasing chances for an ACL tear. Ouch. Researchers say the finding is also a prompt reminder for women to find the right bra for them, and get out of the habit of sticking to one size bra their whole lives despite changes in their body.
New paths
🎓 HEX is looking for two Academic Advisory Board Members (Remote).
🩺 MoreGoodDays is hiring a GP & Health Advisor (Australia).
🔋 Amber Electric is hiring a number of roles including a Senior Performance Marketing Manager (Melbourne), Battery Channel Manager (Melbourne/Remote), Software Engineering Manager (Melbourne/Remote) and a Senior Software Engineer (Melbourne/Remote).
🔥 Want to work for an impact company? Fill out our expression of interest form for roles across our portfolio. There’s even more jobs at ethical companies on the global B-Work job board.
Giant leaps
🧠 Mindset Health has launched its new app Claria, a hypnosis-based, 5-week program for managing anxiety, depression and stress. If you’re keen to equip yourself with 12 core skills to build and sustain good mental health, we couldn’t recommend it more highly.
🎤 HEX’s very own pop icon (and CEO) Jeanette Cheah has lightened the mood with a tribute to all the tortured poets (and founders) out there. Swifties, this one’s for you.
For the road
📣 Woodside’s climate plan has been rejected by shareholders. In a huge and globally unprecedented win for shareholder activism, the oil and gas giant’s climate plan received a record 58% protest vote by shareholders at last week’s AGM. Protesting shareholders said the plan relied on offsets and did not seriously consider the emissions generated by its gas operations, and the company was slammed for pursuing new gas fields instead of decarbonising. We hope this is just the first of many more instances of big polluters being held to account.
👩🚀 Australia announces its first qualified astronaut. Katherine Bennell-Pegg has achieved her childhood dream – after 13 months of training with the European Space Agency, she is now qualified for missions to the International Space Station. Pretty cool.
🚗 Are flying cars finally here? There are over 400 startups around the world aiming to create the first aircraft that can be flown without a pilot licence. As test flights commerce, The New Yorker looks at the state of this sci-fi dream that’s fast becoming a reality.
🍏 The startup calling out Apple for stealing its idea. AliveCor won’t let the world’s richest company get away with taking its electrocardiogram (ECG) tech for smartwatches. As Apple continues to advertise the function as a key selling point for its latest watches, AliveCor’s founder Priya Abani is speaking out. The tech giant is now lobbying to change the law – yes, you read that right – to get around its patent infringement.
💸 More deals, less funds in digital health. Deals are still happening, but cheque sizes are down in Q1 2024, according to Rock Health’s analysis of the sector. The first three months of 2024 marked the lowest first-quarter funding since 2019. There’s also a stronger expectation from funders on healthy balance sheets over lofty growth projections. We’re hoping to see this turn around in the coming months.
😊 Why you need intergenerational friendships at work. Research shows that we’re most likely to befriend age-group peers in the workplace – however, a workplace full of peer-group friendships can create friction around career progression. By promoting mingling across generational gaps, workplaces can create a more cohesive environment. That starts with dismantling stereotypes and promoting the benefits of relationships spanning the generational divide.
💰 The price is right for carbon. Australia’s peak energy body, the Australian Energy Markets Commission (AEMC), has set a “shadow” $70 per tonne price tag for carbon in 2024, and says that it should rise to $420 by 2050. What’s a “shadow” price, you ask? This is effectively what the AEMC thinks a carbon price should be set as, were a “polluter pays” carbon pricing model to be introduced. While there’s no political appetite to re-introduce an an economy-wide carbon price in Australia at the moment, the AEMC has said that emissions reduction must “no longer considered only as part of the external context for our decision-making, but as one of the central considerations in determining if changes are in the long-term interest of consumers.”
✊🏽 Ecuador's first-women are leading the fight against environmental destruction. With their home under threat, María José Andrade Cerda and Yuturi Warmi are mobilising the community to fight back against illegal mining destroying the environment and providing low-paying token jobs to the community in exchange. One of the group’s younger leaders, María José Andrade Cerda speaks out on how they defied the patriarchal structure of their society to lead action against the miners.
Save the date
📅 May 16: Join Climate 100 founder Simon Holmes à Court and Tesla’s Head of Policy Sam McLean for a discussion on the transition to a renewable energy. Moderated by Vidit Agarwal, Host of The High Flyers Podcast, the chat will delve into the cutting-edge technologies, policy changes, and grassroots initiatives that will shape our Net Zero future. The event is free to attend but those interested must register online ahead of time.
📅 May 7-8: The Digital Health Festival, Melbourne. Learn about the latest trends and issues in the digital health sector at this massive event held at the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre. Discounted tickets finish sale at the end of this week. You can read more here.
📅 May 22: Final deadline to apply for Techstars Tech Central Sydney! We couldn’t recommend this accelerator more highly for startups focused on emerging technologies across industries including climate tech, AI, advanced manufacturing, blockchain, fintech, cloud computing, cybersecurity, quantum computing, and creative tech. Diverse founders particularly encouraged to apply! Check out more info here.