Ten year old incubator Pollenizer to shut down
Summary
The tributes are flowing for Pollenizer, with the pioneering incubator yesterday telling staff and investors that it will officially be pulling up stumps in June. The Australian Financial Review reported that the decision to close was made as the organisation faced the fact it had not been able to find a sustainable business model. He said, “In the end we just couldn’t see the path to that, and now the important thing for me is that the amazing team around me get to move on and do amazing things.” The company will shut down at the end of the financial year; according to the AFR it has been sizing down from 22 staff for a while in order to retain enough capital to assist its remaining group of startups – Lawpath, HiveXchange, Mezo, CohortIQ, and Spot – as planned. The impending closure of Pollenizer raises the question of what a sustainable model looks like for incubator and accelerator programs, the number of which is seemingly growing every day. We pay mentors, we can put on better events, and we can invest a lot of that corporate money back into the startups.” With Liubinskas having left his day to day role at Pollenizer to join Telstra-backed accelerator program muru-D, Morle told the AFR he is now considering his next steps and hunting for his “moonshot project”, with the commercialisation of a software platform developed at Pollenizer a potential option.