Oltre wins the Pitch with its pledge to make architecture easier

Housing design startup Oltre won SmartCompany‘s early-stage venture competition the Pitch on Wednesday night, earning plaudits from startup sector leaders for its architectural vision and commercial prospects.

Founded by experienced architect and first-time startup pitcher Kirby Roper, Oltre is billed as a digital platform connecting homebuyers to housing designs created by esteemed architects.

Instead of selecting cookie-cutter builds from a developer’s booklet, Oltre promises to give buyers access to a new world of thoughtful designs, malleable to every buyer’s personal preferences.

Roper says Oltre will also cut down on consultation times for architects, giving them more leeway to actually design, while simultaneously providing them with a passive income each time a user commits to one of their plans.

Engaging an architect the traditional way can be a “hard process”, based on word-of-mouth recommendations, Roper told SmartCompany after her win.

Existing opportunities are also limited to the upper end of the market, where well-heeled buyers engage architects to design around complex sites.

“Oltre doesn’t actually try and take away from that market, it’s opening up a whole new market segment,” she says.

Architects are like oil painters, Roper continues, with Oltre offering access to ‘prints’.

“You buy a number of prints, they’re the same as the oil painting in look and feel, but you don’t have to wait for 12 months for it to be painted: it’s there,” she says.

Kirby Roper (centre) celebrates with other the Pitch contestants and attendees. Source: Marie-Luise Skibbe / SmartCompany

Roper’s five-minute pitch won over judges at SmartCompany‘s premiere startup event, held at the Commons in Cremorne, Melbourne.

Judging the competition were Maxine Lee, COO and investment director at Skalata; Sarah Green, co-founder at Protagonist Capital; Will Hasko, director of small business marketing for Dell Technologies in Australia, India, and Japan; and Mark Newman, startup programs manager for LaunchVic.

The judging quartet praised Oltre, saying it had unrealised commercial opportunities, a founder with deep experience in the sector, and a legitimate point of difference to other housing design platforms on the market.

“I hope they saw we have a really innovative way to solve and enhance what is essentially our Australian suburbia, our Australian fabric,” Roper adds.

With its the Pitch win, Oltre and Roper will take home a Dell technology kit, including a Dell XPS 13 laptop, a PowerEdge T150 server, a monitor, peripherals, adapters, and access to the Dell Technologies Mentor Program.

Other finalists included:

Humpday Dating: Co-founded by Kara Zervides and Charlotte Vieira, the dating app upends the standard format by limiting connections to Wednesdays only. It aims to foster more genuine connections than the incumbents, which Zervides fears have actually contributed to the so-called ‘loneliness epidemic’;
Grapevine: The social commerce concept, formulated by Gan Yu Pin and Aaron Fraser, intends to pair consumer goods reviews with an e-commerce marketplace. Unlike other platforms, Grapevine is focused on sustainability; Fraser says real-world reviewers can add a new dimension to corporate claims of sustainability and ethics;
Restify: An end-of-life management platform, founded by Infosys project manager and BibVault co-founders Devipriya Selvaraj and Karthik Viswanathan, Restify hopes to guide first-generation immigrant communities through the loss of loved ones. Its unique offering pledges to make the logistics of end-of-life care easier to navigate; and
Peak Medical: Built around the BIBO philosophy — that is, ‘better in, better out’ — founder Hayley Saddington is building an app and platform to drastically improve the kinds of in-home physiotherapy available to those living with arthritis. In short: a regulator-approved pathway to self-guided physical therapies, that goes beyond a simple ‘wellness’ app.

Humpday Dating won the People’s Choice Award, which was voted on by attendees on the night.

Are you ready to pitch to a panel of leading VCs and startup founders? Applications to the Pitch are now open for Sydney!

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