Startup Daily joins Growth Summit, the Melbourne and Sydney event for ambitious startup founders

Presented by SmartCompany and Startup Daily, in partnership with Optus, the Growth Summit is Australia’s premier event for ambitious startup and SME founders and leaders.

Following the success of the first Growth Summit in Sydney in April 2025, the event is returning in 2026 across two cities.

Melbourne will host the Growth Summit on February 25, 2026, at Crown, while Sydney will get its turn in May 2026.

The Melbourne event will once again feature two content streams – one designed for startups that are scaling and one dedicated to growing SMEs.

Koch and Morrey will be joined by other expert speakers, including Culture Amp co-founder and CTO Doug English, HEX co-founder and CEO Jeanette Cheah, Up Bank’s head of growth Sebastian Neylan, Birchal CEO Kirstin Hunter and Giant Leap partner Rachel Yang.

The startup stream will feature a live pitching event with the finalists from The Startup Network’s pitch heats in 2025, and a series of afternoon roundtable discussions – a popular feature in the 2025 event’s program – will return once again.

Will Hayward, CEO of SmartCompany’s and Startup Daily’s parent company Private Media, said the Growth Summit will reach even more growing businesses this year.

“Growth Summit was a huge success last year, and we’re so excited to bring it back and extend it across Melbourne and Sydney this year,” he said.

“With even more fantastic speakers from a variety of high-growth businesses, this is the only event explicitly focused on helping startups, scaleups, SMEs (and sole traders!) to accelerate their growth.”

For more information about the Growth Summit, including ticket sales, click here.

For sponsorship and partnership opportunities, please contact the SmartCo Media sales team.