Cohort 2 opens for registration and application on Monday September 2. Early applications close on September 22, 2024 for innovators who wish to interview with the Venture Studio team. Full applications close on September 29 at 9pm Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT).

Cohort 2 Phase 1 will start November 18 2024 to February 21 2025. The top 8 innovators will be selected for the final, which will be held between February 24 and 28 2025.

In Phase 1, the innovators are expected to commit a minimum of 1 day per week to participate. This would include cohort-based sessions and 1:1 working sessions that spread across a minimum 3 days per week.

Cohort 2 Phase 2 will start March 31 2025 to February 28 2026.

In Phase 2, the founders are expected to commit full time to participate. The innovators are not expected to commit to Beanstalk Venture Studio.

We have a very broad interpretation of what constitutes “drought resilience”. We have broken the broad theme of the venture studio into 10 challenge areas, with examples of technologies that could fit within the broad definition we apply.

• Water: This includes water management and storage; Irrigation and water use, water sources.

• Financial Resilience: This includes alternate revenue streams, insurance and access to capital, new markets, employment, and risk.

• Crops, Horticulture and Planting: This covers crop practices, crop choices, crop information availability, ground cover, animal feed crops and more.

• Livestock: Including animal production, animal health and welfare, animal reproduction, grazing, carrying and stocking rates, and livestock biosecurity.

• Soil: This includes land management, soil health and quality, soil moisture and more.

• Pests and Weeds: This covers anything to do with pest management, weed prevention, and fertilisers.

• Environment: Including environmental ecosystems, environmental sustainability, natural resource management, bushfires and back burning, forecasting and more.

• Community Resilience and Wellbeing: This includes personal and familial wellbeing and mental health, cost of living, community resilience, and social connection.

• Information and Knowledge Sharing: This covers things like drought-specific information, knowledge sharing, decision-making, planning tools and software.

• Supply Chain Management: Including crop yield and quality, cost and price volatility, supply chain and logistic disruptions, market access, waste management, and more.

These areas cover a very wide spectrum of potential innovations across things as diverse as biology, hardware, biotech, data and algorithms, IoT and sensors, software applications, and much much more. We encourage you to apply to the EOI even if you’re not 100% sure your innovation qualifies, and we can respond to you with any more information you might need to include.

The Venture Studio is free, although only selected innovators can participate following a competitive selection process.

We are interested in research that helps build drought resilience in agriculture technology. This includes research in water, financial resilience, soil, crops & horticulture, livestock, pests & weeds, the environment, community resilience and wellbeing, information and knowledge sharing, and supply chain management. The proposed solution/innovation could be a data model, software, hardware or more.

Good question! In our first ever cohort, we intentionally took a broad view of who might qualify for the drought studio. This included researchers, entrepreneurs, farmers and also startups. For the second cohort, we have slightly narrowed our campaign to focus more on the research innovators who are developing deep IP in drought resilience. Based on dozens of conversations with this segment, we came to understand that most pathways to commercialisation required them to leave their research fields, which wasn’t necessarily their preference.

Beanstalk’s venture studio is a great fit for these people given we bring a range of services and options such as a program people can fit into their current schedule, as well as finding a potential co-founder, which makes it feasible they can keep their “day jobs” while they explore commercial viability, and then instead of becoming a fulltime founder, potentially take the role as scientific advisor as the venture grew.

Of course, if you are a researcher who does want to leave their day job to launch a venture, we’re right here for you as well!

And we will indeed still consider innovators who do not work in research institutions - the selection criteria is agnostic on what you do or where you work, although it is crucial that there is some novel IP that is protectable and defensible. If you’re an entrepreneur from another field, or a farmer who’s been tinkering with some great tech, or an industry/agribusiness expert with some tangible and novel technology, we’d love to hear from you!

We have a broad view of what constitutes innovation in drought resilience. We consider a range of technologies (such as software, hardware, and biologicals) with a focus on things that are novel and defensible. So it is not essential that you have taken formal steps around protecting your intellectual property - and it is not essential that you have (or will one day need) a patent. It might be just as likely that your innovation revolves around trade secrets (which can be the foundation of a venture’s intellectual property). The bottom line is that if you have an emerging technology that is novel and defensible (and originates in Australia), it will certainly qualify as the type of innovation we can support you with.

None. For the next two years, the Drought Venture Studio is funded by the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund. Due to the nature of this partnership, the Drought Venture Studio is not currently taking equity in new ventures. The investments made into new ventures are all non-dilutive.

We have been recruiting a pool of potential co-founders for the past several months.

We have received over 300 applications (and counting!), all of which went through a thorough screening process conducted by two Venture Builders. This was followed by a first-round screening interview and a second-round interview with two additional Venture Builders. The potential co-founders who made it through this process also submitted a detailed questionnaire, providing further information about their background, expertise, motivations, and agricultural interests.

We are absolutely delighted with the extremely high quality of this pool of co-founders. They possess extensive experience across various related industries and have expert capabilities in areas such as strategy, sales, marketing, product/technology, fundraising, and building and scaling new ventures.

We have developed an extensive process for matching co-founders with innovators. This involves meeting over several weeks, followed by opportunities for closer collaboration, allowing both parties to make a more informed decision about the potential fit.

Allied services are startup support services like brand design and strategy, legal support, product development advisory, or related services that support early-stage venture creation.

Yes. Beanstalk Venture Studio will support research teams within research institutions to commercialise your innovation into a startup.

Over the 3 months of Phase 1, we will work with you to understand the university or research institution requirements on spin out criteria, timelines, and processes. We will work with you to create a commercialisation plan which will be shared with your tech transfer team, and also have further discussions with the institution/university team to align on methods, timeframes, and aspects of the plan.

Our aim is to get commercialisation alignment on timeframes and methods prior to the end of Phase 1. This means we can ensure you are eligible for consideration for our Phase 2 program. If selected for Phase 2 we will work with you, your university and co-founder to facilitate the venture formation process and implement the agreed commercialisation plan. Note we can also work alongside the university to help access co-funding such as AEA Innovate and Industry Growth Program.

If you have any questions about how we can support you to work with your university or research institution, please get in touch.

During Phase One of the program existing IP ownership will not be affected. For example, the IP associated with your innovation may be owned by a university or other research institute. If your innovation forms one of the new ventures in Phase Two of the program, we will work with the existing IP owner(s) to negotiate an IP licensing agreement to enable commercialisation of your innovation.

Ventures that are formed and selected for Phase 2 of the program will receive support and investment for the entire duration of that phase, irrespective of when they achieve early commercial success. Each venture will have a commercial plan that defines success, and that plan will be executed with support and investment from the Studio over the course of Phase 2. If a venture achieves commercial success earlier than planned, this will be viewed positively and the Studio will continue to support the venture to push to their next milestone or success metric.

We aim to have a diversity of quality innovators from various states and regions, so we won't be implementing a weighting or quota but encouraging those with a passion to making a difference to apply.

You must be an Australian citizen, permanent resident, or have your IP housed within an incorporated company entity to be eligible to apply. Please note that this requires at least an ACN (not just an ABN). You will need to do your own research to understand the difference.

There is a narrow exemption to this eligibility in cases where the main criteria are not satisfied but there is an international innovator or innovation with novel IP and demonstrable intent to bring the innovation to Australian farmers. Please contact us if you believe this exemption may apply to you.

No, innovators that have participated in other accelerator programs can still be considered for the Drought Venture Studio. However, if innovators have already commercialised their research or IP through these programs, and are already onboarding customers or securing investment, they are not a relevant fit for this program.

The bad news is that the answer is yes—you will need to re-submit your application for Cohort 2 if you had already applied for Cohort 1.

The good news is that we have substantially improved and streamlined the application process.

We received feedback that the online survey was difficult to complete, as you couldn’t save your answers or get a copy of them. The new process involves downloading a Two-Page Application Summary template, which you can complete in your own time. You also have more flexibility regarding what and how much to include in different sections. Additionally, you can share more supporting documents (e.g. CV) and useful links (e.g. websites, papers). Finally, you’ll have the opportunity to introduce yourself and your innovation in your own words with a very short video. We’ve already received feedback that this process is not only easier but also allows people to showcase their work in richer ways.

If you have any specific questions about the process or your application, please email the team at ventures@beanstalkagtech.com.

Here is some more detail on the selection criteria for the innovators.

N.B. Don’t forget that to b eligible to apply, you must be an Australian citizen, permanent resident, or have your IP housed in an incorporated company entity. Some exemptions do exist if you want to read the other FAQ on that topic.

We have included high-level statements on what would constitute best fit for each criteria (and in the brackets below we have also added context for what might still be a potential fit).

1. Team/Co-Founder: “Looking for co-founder(s) and wants ongoing involvement as co-founder or scientific advisor” (still a potential fit if has “some early team/founder and/or only interested in low level of ongoing involvement”).

2. Market & Customers: “Early signs of customer demand & evidence of large accessible market) (still a potential fit if “Limited customer demand data and/or insight on market size”).

3. IP: “IP is novel, defensible and extractable. TRL 3-6.” (still a potential fit if “IP is somewhat novel/defensible and/or extraction unclear. TRL 7-8.”)

4. Product: “Proof of concept / prototype exists” (still a potential fit if “Product quite well defined or looking to pivot)”.

5. Challenge Alignment: “Direct drought resilience impact” (still a potential fit if “Secondary impact on drought’).

6. Funding/Business Model: “Business model partially defined & no or little funding secured” (still a potential fit if “Business model partially defined & some funding secured”).

7. Studio Impact: “Clearly relevant complementary studio expertise & partnerships” (still a potential fit if “Somewhat relevant studio expertise & partnerships”).

No one innovator or venture neatly ticks every box so our selection is always done on a holistic basis considering where someone is at on the spectrum across each criteria.

If in doubt, submit your Expression of Interest well before the application deadline, and we can discuss things with you in more detail.

Please refer to our detailed selection criteria that we apply to all innovations across all fields. In regards to the aquaculture industry, potentially the most relevant criteria is whether there is a direct drought-resilience impact for Australian farmers. If this, and the other criteria match up, we will consider that innovation on its merits.

That’s great news you’ve already made progress on building your team! There is an explicit section in the Two Page Application Summary where you can share details about any members of your existing team.

The other good news is that if you are selected to join the program, we can also accommodate the participation of one other person involved in your venture. While you would still be the so-called “primary innovator” and our main point of call, you are also able to request one “extra innovator” to participate in the program. That person needs to be a committed team member, have complementary skills to yours, and would also need to sign the same innovator participation agreement. It would then be up to you and your assigned Venture Builder to work out which sessions this “extra innovator” would join.

The short answer is yes. We are proud to be part of a growing ecosystem of organisations that helps advance agtech ventures in Australia. We will judge applicants purely on our selection criteria. Our focus is on finding and building IP-backed, investment-ready ventures that have an impact on drought resilience. If your innovation also qualifies for other programs’ selection criteria, terrific!