Showcasing Women Led Businesses
23 June, 2026
For close to a decade, UNSW Founders has made a deliberate bet on women. Not as a gesture, and not as a seasonal campaign, but as a sustained, structural commitment to building an innovation ecosystem that reflects the full range of human ambition and ingenuity.
UNSW Founders has run dedicated programs like New Wave, a community for women to explore their ideas and build their entrepreneurial skills. It has also designed programs and events that recognise the realities many women face when participating in entrepreneurship, including family-friendly events, activities for children, online delivery options and after-hours programming.
UNSW Founders is dedicated to addressing issues that impact women, and investing directly in women led businesses – with 61% of total capital invested in 2025 going to startups with one or more women co-founders.
This commitment takes visible form on 17 July at the Female Founders Showcase – a community event designed to spotlight women-led startups, foster meaningful connections, and celebrate the founders helping shape the future of innovation. A chance to see what women are building, to connect with the people who support them, and to be part of a culture that treats inclusive innovation not as an aspiration, but as a standard.
The backdrop to this event is a funding landscape that remains stubbornly unequal. Australian startups with all-female founding teams were on track to receive less than 0.5 percent of total venture capital in 2025 – a record low, down from two percent in 2024 and four percent in 2023.
The statistics are not simply disappointing; they point to a structural gap that costs the broader economy real value. Women-led ventures consistently demonstrate strong social impact focus, bring diverse problem-solving perspectives to market, and build businesses that address needs too often overlooked by homogeneous founding teams. The Female Founders Showcase exists both to celebrate what women are building and to actively counter the conditions that make it harder for them to do so.
One of the most important things about this event is who it is for. The showcase is open to everyone – regardless of gender or any affiliation with UNSW. Whether you are a founder at the earliest stage of an idea, an investor, a researcher, a student, or simply someone who believes in a more equitable startup community, there is a place for you in the room.
The evening is designed as a space for learning, networking and connection, while also creating opportunities for attendees to show up as allies to the women building the next generation of startups.
Learning from a Founder Redefining What's Possible
The keynote speaker is Michele Stansfield, Co-Founder and CEO of Cauldron, and her story is precisely the kind that demands to be heard in a room full of current and aspiring founders.
With a background in biomedical science and over a decade as General Manager of Agritechnology, Michele brings industry-leading expertise in the scale-up and commercialisation of continuous fermentation biomanufacturing. She co-founded Cauldron in 2022, built on that deep scientific foundation, and has since helped position the company as one of Australia's most exciting deep-tech success stories.
In June 2025, the World Economic Forum named Cauldron a Technology Pioneer – the only Australian company among 100 startups selected from 28 countries, and one of only three recognised for its work in the future of food. More recently, Cauldron raised $13.25 million in a Series A2 funding round led by Main Sequence Ventures and was named on Fast Company's 2026 list of the World's Most Innovative Companies.
What makes Michele’s trajectory particularly instructive for founders beyond the scale of the recognition is the nature of the path that led her there. She did not build Cauldron from a major metropolitan hub or from within the well-worn networks of the Sydney or Melbourne startup scenes. Instead, she built a globally recognised deep-tech company from regional Australia. That geography matters because it signals that deep tech innovation does not require proximity to a postcode, but conviction, scientific rigour, and a willingness to move through the long, unglamorous phases of validation before the world pays attention.
Attendees will have the opportunity to hear directly from someone who has navigated the difficult path between breakthrough science and commercial success, transforming a complex technical innovation into a scalable business with global ambition. And who has done so while leading a company at the frontier of one of the most consequential sectors of the coming decade.
There are few better arguments for the value of persistence in deep tech, or for the importance of translating hard science into a fundable, scalable business, than Cauldron's story. Stansfield's keynote is likely to offer grounded insights into what it actually takes to lead a technical company, raise capital in a difficult environment for women founders, and build something with genuine global ambition from regional New South Wales.
The Female Founders Showcase is more than an event. It's a celebration of what becomes possible when talent, ambition and opportunity meet.
Whether you're a founder, investor, student, researcher or ally, we'd love to see you there.
Join us on 17 July and help champion the next generation of women-led innovation.