Scalare Partners launches The Founders Union - Australia’s first AI-powered curation platform uniting 130,000 founders

ASX-listed tech investment and advisory firm Scalare Partners today launched an AI-powered startup community designed to tackle the fragmentation, underfunding of diverse teams, and inefficient industry engagement holding back Australia’s ~130,000 technology startup founders.

“The Founders Union” (TFU) uses an AI-enabled matching engine to provide founders with curated access to education, community, services, perks, and investment based on growth stage and stated need, through a single coordinated “always-on” digital platform.

The matching engine combines structured logic around quantitative metrics of stage, budget, and availability with natural language processing to produce qualitative insights from founder and partner profiles.

By fusing structured assessments with deep qualitative analysis of challenges and working styles, it delivers intelligent matches that would take humans weeks to identify, streamlining access to the tools, mentorship, and resources founders need to scale.

Foundation partners join Scalare’s existing ecosystem of Tech Ready Women, Tankstream Labs, the Australian Technology Competition, and Inhouse Ventures to inject millions of dollars of in-kind and program support backed by world-class expertise and offerings.

Current foundation partners range from household brands like, Westpac, MYOB, Atlassian, and Zoho. Others include; Pinch Payments, Firmable, LoanOptions.ai, Nakatomi, Lighter Capital, Think & Grow, 10x Labs, Tractor Ventures, Tank Stream Labs, and Zed Law to provide founders with a curated “right-sized service at the right time”.

In this way, TFU centralises visibility and reduces duplication so founders can access what they need at pace, combating the inconsistent access to funding and mentorship across the wide network of programs and providers in Australia’s startup ecosystem.

Profits generated by TFU are reinvested back into the startup ecosystem via further investments by Scalare Partners, strengthening Australia’s innovation capacity by funding the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Given Scalare’s commitment to addressing underfunding and structural barriers to participation for women and other under-represented groups, this also aids in creating greater inclusivity in the ecosystem as a whole.

TFU will also use its dataset of female founders – one of the most complete in Australia – to shape targeted programs that boost capital access, mentorship, and visibility for women, externally auditing published data via independent partners to ensure transparency.

This is based on recent data that reveals startups with at least one female founder accounted for only 15 percent of total capital raised in 2024, underscoring the urgent need for focused inclusion initiatives like this.

By uniting Australian founders into one thriving, digital-first community that supports ambition, inclusion, and growth, Scalare Partners is creating support that is accessible regardless of geography, size, or demographics.

Carolyn Breeze (pictured), CEO of Scalare Partners, said, “Founders shouldn’t have to choose between ownership and access to the resources they need to scale – The Founders Union removes that trade-off. We’re giving every founder, no matter where they’re based, the tools, connections and credibility to grow on their own terms.”

“The Founders Union brings together the full power of Australia’s startup ecosystem – founders, investors, corporates and partners, into one coordinated community. By reinvesting profits back into founders, we are also creating a self-sustaining engine for innovation and a stronger, fairer pipeline for Australia’s next generation of entrepreneurs.”

Tamara Bryden Managing Director, Business Lending at Westpac said, “As a Foundation Member of The Founders Union, Westpac is committed to enabling founders with access to capital, financial guidance and strategic networks that turn ambition into commercial success.

“The Founders Union provides a unified platform that accelerates founder progress at every step of their journey; and together, we are helping more Australian entrepreneurs build, scale and thrive.”

Paul Allen, Founder and CEO of Pinch Payments, said, “Pinch is proud to contribute our expertise around payments and scalable revenue infrastructure so founders can spend less time managing payments and more time building the future.

“We’re here because we believe the best ideas shouldn’t fail due to lack of access, to capital, to connections, or to the tools that help a business scale. The Founders Union is a meaningful step towards a more inclusive, efficient, and founder-first ecosystem, and we’re excited to be part of the movement.”