Startmate flew 19 of its ’26 cohort to San Francisco this month for meetings with a16z, Sequoia, Accel, Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst and Google Ventures, and held its first US Demo Day at Stripe HQ.

It is the first cohort trip to San Francisco since 2020, reviving a tradition that ran from 2011 until COVID grounded it.

Across the week, the Startmate founder sat through investor meetings, pitch-deck feedback sessions and conversations with ANZ founders who have already relocated to the US and raised from US firms.

The week closed with Startmate’s first San Francisco Demo Day, hosted at Stripe HQ, where all 19 companies pitched to a room of US investors, founders and operators.

Startmate CEO Phoebe Pincus said the point of the trip was to raise the bar on what ANZ founders think is possible.

“There is a huge difference between hearing that you can build a global company from Australia or New Zealand, and sitting inside the rooms where those companies are funded, challenged and built,” she said.

“This trip was designed to close that gap for our founders.”

Among the alumni founders the cohort spent time with were Melbourne’s Fluency, which raised a US$6 million (A$8.55 million) Seed round led by Accel in February and has since relocated its headquarters to San Francisco.

Head of founders Emma Grife said it helps when Antipodean founders can see what it takes to make it in the heart of Silicon Valley.

“San Francisco still matters because it gives founders a different benchmark,” she said. “It shows them what fast really looks like, what ambitious really sounds like and how the best investors think.

“For ANZ founders, that exposure is powerful because we are already good at building through constraints. What we need more of is access, belief and proximity to global markets.”

Since 2011, the accelerator says it has backed more than 350 startups with a combined valuation north of $4.5 billion.