This Week in Australian Startups #57, 3rd March 2024
A longer than usual deep dive this week and a lot of great news to share here at home in Australia means I’ve decided not do any global news or funding summary for this week.
For the first time in Australia data on the gender pay gap has been made publicly available for nearly 5,000 private companies, where they have over 100 employees. It’s been the top topic of much needed conversation this week.
Whilst closing the gender pay gap is not only the right thing to do, it’s also costing the Australian economy $51.8B (yes billion) every year according to the Minister for Women, Senator Katy Gallagher.
I’m not an expert on this topic but Nikki Tugano is and I was fortunate to sit down with her this week and get her thoughts on the gender pay gap, and what we as a startup ecosystem and individuals can do. Nikki is the founder and CEO of SeenCulture, a decision intelligence platform that helps people leaders with performance and pay reviews, team design and succession planning.
Her immediate thoughts on the report “It’s amazing to have this level of visibility, companies are now not just accountable legally, but also socially.. It’s great to see how much media attention this has received, almost every conversation I’ve had with business leaders this week and the week leading up to the release of the report has been about how they can be doing a better job”.
Looking at some of the high level results Nikki wasn’t so surprised, but when digging deeper into specific organisations there were some surprises.
Natalie Flynn founder and CEO of Equidi, a platform which provides real-time visibility over gender pay gap and workforce representation, originally shared this data below on LinkedIn
Even companies whose main customer is women, and where the overwhelming majority of employees are women have an above average gender pay gap. The target pay gap from the WGEA is -5% to +5%. Whilst the above might highlight an extreme outlier based on representation split, the gap continues across the board with 62% of median employer gender gaps over 5% in favour of men, and 50% of all employers have a gender pay gap of over 9.1%.
There have been some companies like Qantas, that ranked 4th worst out of all companies reported with a median gender pay gap of 39.3%, who have released statements to provide more colour to the situation. Whilst this isn’t a magic wand, it does do a good job explaining why there is a gender pay gap, what initiatives are in place, current results and future targets. In the UK where gender pay gap reporting has been mandatory since 2017-18 it’s common practice for most employers to provide an accompanying statement.
“It’s important to empathise with leaders of businesses in male dominated industries, especially when they are actively looking to make positive change. But fast forwarding 12 months from now to next years report will really show who was serious and who wasn’t”
“Our very first use case for SeenCulture was for a company in the construction industry a heavily male dominated industry, who wanted our help with the composition of their board. Whilst it was a male dominated industry, they wanted a high performing leadership team. They wanted to understand the composition of different profiles, and how they could make the whole greater than its sum. They understood that a greater representation of ideas and perspectives in their workplace was only good not only for their employees but also for their customers. SeenCulture enabled them to make better decisions about who they should be investing in.”
What about startups? Surely where we believe in merit and output things are better? The AFR looked at top tech companies in Australia and the results are below
There’s outliers on both side, companies like Rokt have a huge gap, which is only increased when taking total pay. On the other hand companies like Culture Amp are doing a great job with a gap slightly above the WGEA target pay gap of 5%.
Speaking about Culture Amp Nikki mentioned “We’re really proud to have them on as a customer. There’s a strong alignment in how we value equitable processes.”
Aubrey Blanche-Sarellano said “I'm excited about the work Nikki and the team are doing because it's not just about "empowering" women or inspiring them. It's about opening up doors of opportunity for them to have their unique skills and talent highlighted and rewarded in the workplace.“
This was really piquing my interest, and we starting to go deeper into this theme of making more equitable decisions and how this could contribute positively towards reducing the gender pay gap “We’ve come a long way when it comes to hiring more diverse talent and people are starting to be paid more fairly when joining an organisation. But there’s still a long way to go once employees are in the door, when it comes to promoting more diverse talent into leadership positions. eople from diverse backgrounds get recognised less. The biggest reason is bias, both conscious and unconscious, along with discrimination when it comes to pay and promotions. Many organisations are very diverse at the bottom of the hierarchy, but when you start to look at top leadership levels there’s a big problem and this is often the biggest contributing factor to the gender pay gap” Nikki said.
Michelle Lim shared a post this week which went further into this topic, sharing that a report by Victoria's Commission for Gender Equality in the Public sector found:
Women who come from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are paid 19% less than their male colleagues.
There is a 21% deficit between First Nations women’s paychecks and their non-Indigenous male colleagues.
She also highlighted that the pay gap between white women and women of colour is the fastest wage gap according to the Economic Policy Institute. Looking further into this point Alicia Vrajlal, founder of Draw Your Box, highlighted women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds spend up to 8 years longer in middle management roles compared to women from Anglo or European backgrounds.
All this data highlights the importance of how organisations are promoting and paying employees, the exact issue SeenCulture is tackling.
Next week is International Women’s Day and SeenCulture is putting on what promises to be an incredible event on the topic of “The Ripple Effect of Investing in Women”, including an all star panel. Nikki Tugano (SeenCulture), Aubrey Blanche-Sarellano (Culture Amp & Mathpath), Kirstin Hunter (Techstars & Grapevine) with Rezza Moieni (Diversity Atlas / Cultural Infusion) moderating.
“This years theme for International Women’s Day is ‘Count her In: Invest in women. Accelerate progress’. We wanted to put on an event that really spoke to this, but also beyond just pay and how investing in skills, coaching or even something as simple as providing introductions can make a huge difference. We’re already seeing the ripple effect here in Australia - starting with women like Kirstin Hunter who is investing in female led startups which then enables female founded startups like SeenCulture. I then get to invest in my team so we can help build products to help organisations like Culture Amp build greater diversity in their leadership pipeline and make better decisions about how they are promoting women or underrepresented people within their workplaces. We want people to walk away from this event with actions hearing from industry leaders like Culture Amp who are doing really well at this, and how businesses can use technology like SeenCulture to Invest in women and accelerate progress” said Nikki.
If you’re in Sydney, make sure you register here for this Tuesday’s event kicking off at 6pm at the Hassell Architecture Design Studio in Millers Point.
Australia
Top News
Kogan.com shares jump as half-year results turn from red to black, despite ongoing sales and revenue falls (Startup Daily)
Synthetic biology is a $30B opportunity creating 50,000 jobs according to CSIRO and its VC arm Main Sequence (Startup Daily)
NSW government opens submissions to Innovation Blueprint, seeking to ‘reset its relationship’ (Startup Daily)
Octopus Deploy has acquired a US rival, Codefresh, in a deal worth reportedly worth $42.6M (Startup Daily | AFR)
Prospa is delisting with a $74M takeover bid, five years after hitting the ASX with a $610M market cap (Startup Daily)
Tank Stream Labs launches AI hub with Microsoft (Startup Daily)
Employment Hero founder and CEO Ben Thompson explains Hostplus' Bill of Attainder Against innovation and why they want to permanently ban them from helping Australian employees consider alternative super funds while they are being onboarded into a new job (LinkedIn | Startup Daily)
Startup Speakers launches to amplify diverse voices in the Australian startup ecosystem (SmartCompany)
Atlassian commits to Australian IP retention in landmark $92 million settlement with ATO (SmartCompany)
Xero to deploy generative AI as part of strategy update (ARN)
Superloop rejects Aussie Broadband’s ‘opportunistic’ $467M merger proposal (ARN)
Meta slammed over "dereliction" of commitment to Australian news (BNA)
Staff cuts and sales growth lift earnings at Airtasker (BNA)
Bike Exchange raising $3.1m with plans to delist after an uphill battle on the ASX (BNA)
Former EML Payments CEO Tom Cregan launches digital tipping fintech for hospitality - OnTheMonee (BNA)
Shares double for hearing tech scale-up Audeara on Zildjian contract (BNA)
US funds are trying to woo Australian backers as a large group of local firms scramble for cash (AFR)
Blackbird tours US hunting for Aussie deals abroad (AFR)
Morgan Stanley pressures Seek to unlock VC fund’s $2.3B valuation (AFR)
Appen shares surge 15pc as new chief outlines AI strategy (AFR)
Dubber has suspended its chief executive, Steve McGovern, after $26.6M were “applied for other purposes” (The Australian)
Telstra Ventures cashes out in $2.75bn OpenGov deal with Cox Enterprises (The Australian)
Canva Create tech showcase shifted to US ahead of potential IPO (The Australian)
Build Club launches Australia's first permanent AI co-working residency: a home away from home for our top AI founders (The Age)
Paying later: The inside story of Afterpay’s inevitable decline (Capital Brief)
Startup sector makes its case against 'sophisticated investor' changes — with one big concession (Capital Brief)
CBA in line for $1.7B IPO windfall from Klarna rollercoaster ride (Capital Brief)
AirTree shares it’s new look as launches a rebrand (LinkedIn)
UNSW & Westpac Join Forces to Grow Women-led Startups (UNSW Founders)
LaunchVic announces a $1M MedTech Market Growth Program, which will provide $50K matched funding to up to 20 medtech startups (LinkedIn)
Funding Rounds
Bandicoot Imaging, a 3D fashiontech startup, has raised a $1M pre-Seed round led by Hong Kong VC qonvolv Ventures (Startup Daily)
MyDriveHero, an app for safe driving, has raised a $300K in equity crowdfunding (SmartCompany)
Gravity Drinks, a startup that produces a hard seltzer, has raised a $1M Seed round (BNA)