Gen Z fashion startup Zipr wins the Pitch, taking home more than $100,000 in prizes

This evening in Sydney SmartCompany hosted its very first early stage startup competition, the Pitch, with forward-thinking retail startup Zipr crowned the winner.

Held at The Commons, George Street, the event was created in partnership with AWS, Pin Payments and The Commons, with nearly 200 people in attendance to hear 10 early stage startups pitch their ideas to an exclusive judging panel.

Attendees were a vast range of startup and VC community members, there to learn more about Australia’s up-and-coming entrepreneurs’ big ideas, with host Robyn Foyster keeping the crowd captivated the whole event through.

After rigorous deliberation due to the high quality pitches from all 10 shortlisted candidates, the judges — Alex Khor of AfterWork Ventures, Kylie Frazer of Flying Fox Ventures, Adrian Osman of Mr Yum, John Kearney of AWS and Chris Dahl of Pin Payments — announced Zipr as the winner due to its high market potential.

Now, Zipr will recieve a $100,000 boost in AWS Activate credits and a one-on-one support sessions with Pin Payments.

Zipr is a video-first fashion app that will allow brands and users to sell their clothing, while targeting the correct consumers.

It will echo the kinds of content taking over TikTok, founder — and former Canva product designer — Amber Linz explained in her pitch, by offering Australia’s fashion-forward buyers a new way to engage in the secondhand economy.

“As a Gen Z girl, I really don’t want to scroll endlessly through pages and pages of e-commerce websites,” Linz told the crowd, explaining how her idea came to fruition.

Speaking with SmartCompany after being awarded the grand prize, Linz said it’s “absolutely amazing” to be crowned the winner against such promising competition.

“It’s really going to help us scale up our business, and we’re definitely going to use the video capabilities and the AI capabilities in the future,” she said.

This time next year, Linz hopes to be taking the startup to the US.

The startup already has 50 influencers onboard to launch its MVP, which will go live next week.

“Hopefully we’ll have a couple 100,000 users by next year,” Linz anticipates.

Runners up of the Pitch — Gravy, melo and KomplyAi — will also receive varying prizes, including an architecture review and advisory from Parallo; a product market fit consulting session from Propel; and a architectural review or technical build advice from DNX Solutions.  

Further, the top ten shortlisted pitches — LUMOS, Gravy, Metaboly, Melo, Zipr, Grubalo, KomplyAi, Deep Meds, Cya on the Road, and Borlen — will each receive an AWS Startup Expert to support the founder, or founders’, idea.

SmartCompany congratulates Zipr on their success, and extends that to all other shortlisted candidates for their incredible pitches, along with the wider applicants.