Forbes Australia picks out three Australian entrepreneurs who are making waves in the startup space right now.
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Mustard Made
Living on opposite sides of the world never stopped sisters Becca and Jess Stern from planning a future where they would build a business together. Visiting from the UK, Jess joined her sister for a walk when a conversation about life and work turned to an unexpected source of inspiration.
“We started talking about my collection of vintage lockers,” Becca recalls. “We realised there was an opportunity to re-imagine that classic form: to honour its retro roots, but make it more practical, more playful and more relevant to modern homes.”
In 2018, the sisters used $25,000 of their own savings to launch Mustard Made in Australia and the UK, designing storage furniture and homewares with a core range centred on vintage-inspired metal lockers.
Eight years on, Mustard Made’s products now feature in homes, studios and commercial spaces across Australia, the UK, the US and Europe, including the homes of Paris Hilton, Celeste Barber, and Justin Bieber. The business has remained self-funded and recorded a 50% growth rate across its four regions in 2025.
Becca says the focus is now on the company’s next stage of expansion. “2026 is going to be big. We’re ready to refresh and re-imagine the brand with new products that will take our concept of ‘home, work and play’ to the next level.”
Seastock
After a seasoned career in agribusiness, Tom Puddy decided it was “now or never” to build something from the ground up. Partnering with long-time friend and capital-markets veteran Bryant McLarty, the pair began exploring agri-tech and bio-tech opportunities that could move quickly from lab to paddock.
The pair launched SeaStock to turn native red algae into high-value ingredients. Using the seaweed Asparagopsis, the company produces natural red pigments for food, beverages, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, alongside a feed additive that can reduce methane from cattle by up to 90%.
“We started SeaStock because consumers and regulators are no longer willing to accept business as usual on what goes into food or how it impacts the climate,” says SeaStock co-founder and managing director Tom Puddy.
Since 2021, the company has opened a laboratory and pilot facility in Fremantle, WA, and raised $3.9 million in seed capital to support its R&D and early commercialisation.
“I invested in SeaStock because it is building a rare agribusiness platform where sustainability and commercial logic genuinely reinforce each other,” says Cherratt a CEO and SeaStock investor Malcolm Wylie.
Fabra
When designer Gloria Yu and fashion entrepreneur Luke Grana first crossed paths, they discovered a shared frustration with physical product design. “The tools available to us made the process slow and tedious,” says Grana.
With ambitions to build a global design tool that would unlock product creation for millions of people, the pair knew that they needed an engineering leader. They turned to Canva engineer Nick Manks.
“Luke and Gloria reached out with an idea that intersected with so much of my previous experience,” Manks says.
In 2023, the trio launched Fabra, a web-based 3D design platform designed to flatten the learning curve for physical product creation.
“Designers can customise modular-based products created by our in-house designers, or remix a ready-made template”, says Grana.
The Sydney-based start-up has raised $2.8 million in pre-seed funding from investors including Side Stage Ventures, January Capital, Concept Ventures and LFX, and is preparing to open its next funding round in the first quarter of this year.
“Fabra represents the next wave of web-based design,” says January Capital investor Alex Rankin. “It will truly unlock a new category of concept to commerce over time.”
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