82 Bold Finalists Announced for the Pause Awards ‘22

Announcing the 5th annual Pause Awards Finalists, powered by VicGov, that represent the most ambitious and forward-thinking companies in Australia. 

Dubbed as ‘The Home for Champions’ that’s building better ecosystems, the Pause Awards programme in 2022 is setting high standards for business recognition. Supporting this mission are the key partners from companies such as: Blackmagic Design, AWS Startups but also Give a Grad a Go, Pappyon and PositiveHR.

The Pause Awards ‘22 entrants showed businesses have a key role to play in creating a more equitable and regenerative world. Submissions were authentic and bold in their approach to tackling some of society’s biggest challenges and delivering real and measurable change where it matters.

Lee Tonitto B. Com, MBA, GAICD and Chair at Pause Awards

There are many new things we’ve launched in 2022, one of them are 15 new categories that add to 32 categories in total, which sit under five key Category Tracks. Interesting fact to point out is that some of the new categories almost received no submissions that were aimed at VC firms, investors and Angels. 

One of the new fun categories is People’s Choice Award, which allows anybody to vote for the entries submitted, just by signing up. This epic race that took turns each week, resulted in Trendii winning with 522 votes! Trendii is changing the way you find fashion inspiration by allowing you to shop the looks of others, from their search engine, images, social media and websites.

This year we took a huge leap of faith to completely overhaul the award programme, from the branding and positioning, new website and trophy design, entry questions to building a new portal for entrants and judges.

George Hedon, CEO & Founder, Pause Awards

Let’s look at how 2022 performed in terms of the industries that entered awards.

Top 5 industries in 2022:

1. Web/ Internet Services
2. Financial Services
3. Marketing & Advertising
4. Education
5. Health/ Consumer Goods & services/ Computer Tech

The 2022 saw the Education sector jump one spot up to fourth place, remarkably the Food & Beverage industry has completely disappeared from the entries altogether. There were some Hospitality, Travel & Leisure entries but pretty dry in the beverage department that charted at the third spot in 2021, whilst Web & Internet Services took the lead from Computer Tech. It’s refreshing to see Health breaking into the Top 5 industry chart this year. 

In terms of the most popular categories, there has definitely been some reshuffling.

Top 5 categories in 2022:

1. Defiant Ones
2. I Wish I’d Done That 
3. Hammer
4. Wildfire/ Company of the Year
5. Women in Business

The Defiant Ones category, for new tech breakthroughs, was introduced last year and floated at fourth place, but it took the lead this year. Out of 15 new categories in 2022, we saw Wildfire, Company of the Year and Women in Business rise to the Top 5 pushing Out of the Garage for scaling globally and B-Good for a good business off the top chart.

From the macro perspective, there is no mistake that Australian businesses strived for excellence this year to combat unstable markets, hence why the Excellence Category Track was the most entered, followed by the Good and Operators.

George Hedon, CEO & Founder, Pause Awards

Our incredible judging pool of over 50 industry luminaries from across the globe have completed the First Round of judging in a record time, mostly due to our new Judge Portal system that distributes the scores.

The Final Round is done by the Judging Board, chaired by Lee Tonitto, Managing Director at Tonitto and Partners along with Ben Ford, Head of Growth at Frollo, Christina Gerakiteys; Co-CEO at SingularityU Australia; Sonia Clarke, Director, Future of Work, PwC and Tom Leyden, CIO at Longview who have debated and deliberated the winners.

The Pause Awards are highly competitive! The judges are experts in their field to ensure the highest quality of winning entries each year. The judging is based on the merit of an entry. We’d like to congratulate everyone on their brilliant efforts in navigating the 2022 turbulent and unexpected market forces!

Finalists of Pause Awards ‘22:

CULTURE

Diverse Co. – Wisr
Medium Team Culture – IMC
Work Sweet Work – Honeycomb Strategy
Work Sweet Work – Megaphone
Work Sweet Work – MindArc
Work Sweet Work – Precision IT
Work Sweet Work – PwC Australia
Work Sweet Work – Wisr

EXCELLENCE

Company of the Year – Aquarzon
Company of the Year – Aussie Broadband
Company of the Year – Birchal
Company of the Year – Bodd
Company of the Year – United for Care
Defiant Ones – Bare Cremation
Defiant Ones – Compass IoT
Defiant Ones – Driveschool Enterprises
Defiant Ones – Great Wrap
Defiant Ones – Hnry
Defiant Ones – Labflow by Comply Group
Defiant Ones – Matrak Enterprises
Defiant Ones – Switch4Schools
Hammer – Aquarzon
Hammer – Aussie Broadband
Hammer – Birchal
Hammer – Marketplacer
Hammer – Music Health
Hammer – Pentanet
I Wish I’d Done That – Bare Cremation
I Wish I’d Done That – Driveschool Enterprises
I Wish I’d Done That – Great Wrap
I Wish I’d Done That – Labflow by Comply Group
I Wish I’d Done That – LunchFox
I Wish I’d Done That – Squizify
I Wish I’d Done That – Switch4Schools
I Wish I’d Done That – Tern-x
I Wish I’d Done That – The Smoothie Bombs
On the rise – Aerologix
On the rise – Bare Cremation
On the rise – Linkmate
On the rise – Music Health
On the rise – The Separation Guide
Women In Business – Angela Harbinson
Women In Business – Christina Hobbs
Women In Business – Kate Pollard
Women In Business – Vanessa Doake

GOOD

B-Good – Linkmate
B-Good – Neometro
Circular Pioneer – Circle In
Circular Pioneer – DiaperRecycle
Circular Pioneer – Goterra
Going Green – Great Wrap
Going Green – Verve Super
Going Green – evee
You’ve Got Ethics – Aquarzon
You’ve Got Ethics – The People Spot
You’ve Got Ethics – Verve Super

GROWTH

Design First – Quad Lock
Design First – Tern-x
Out of the Garage – Matrak
Out of the Garage – Quad Lock
Out of the Garage – STEM Punks
Wildfire – Aquarzon
Wildfire – Food Frontier
Wildfire – Linktree
Wildfire – Midnight Health
Wildfire – Pentanet
Wildfire – Your Stuff Made

OPERATORS

C-Suite – Dom Pym
C-Suite – Ronen Heine
C-Suite – Yogendra Segar
Do You Know Who I am – Mark Brownlee
Future Builder – Alex Goulios
Future Builder – Cube Online
Future Builder – Jordan Shreeve
Future Builder – Slava Kozlovskii
Hottest Hub – Hub Australia
Launch Pad – INCUBATE (University of Sydney)
Launch Pad – Startupbootcamp Australia
Launch Pad – Stone & Chalk
Super Connector – Michelle Mannering
Super Connector – Paz Pisarski

The winners will be announced at the Pause Awards Night & Afterparty on 5 December at classy BOND Melbourne, and in the media the following day. Please get your team tickets via this link.

If you attend, we will send you a Free Entry ticket for a private ‘Breakfast with Champions’ – Sponsored by AWS Startups on 7th DEC as well. At the breakfast, a selected panel of winners, investors and people from the ecosystem (TBA on 6 DEC) will share their learnings from the success and failures in business. 

Huge thanks to all who entered, supportive partners and big congrats to finalists! 

See you at the Awards Night & Afterparty.

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Send us an email to info@pausefest.com.au if you need further assistance. BOOK TICKETS TO AWARDS NIGHT & AFTERPARTY.