The founders of Melbourne-based integrator Sixtree, now part of Deloitte Australia, have launched a new business, Web 3, blockchain and engineering firm Lab Eleven.
Ben Wylie and Yamen Sader have left their partner roles at the big four consulting firm more than four years after they sold Sixtree to start the new venture and “rejoin the startup world”, according to the company’s announcement.
Lab Eleven bills itself as a similar entity to an early-stage investor for Web 3 and blockchain projects, specifically those on the Solana blockchain, aiming to provide support through capital and talent.
“We aim to partner and co-invest in a handful of Web3 projects each year and, as a result, grow a stake in web3 businesses we are proud to have helped build,” Wylie said.
“We’ll be working more with web3 founders and investors to offer a Solana delivery partner that co-invests to bring innovative web3 ideas to market. With the crypto world being a little turbulent, anonymous and unpredictable at times we hope we’ll be seen as a safe, proven and invested pair of hands.”
The company said it is now taking expressions of interest from startups and groups that are already in motion that need extra engineering horsepower to productise and scale. It is also expanding its engineering team through training, enabling and certifying software engineers.
Sader said, “As a developer and as an end-user, I was impressed by how far blockchain technology has come.”
“With the speed and low cost of modern blockchains, it is possible to create the experience users expect these days. This was a lightbulb moment, and we were only able to see opportunity from there.
“I’d love to see web3 making a real world impact, and for Lab Eleven to have played a role in that. Our secondary goal is to give back to the blockchain community, and to be leaders in educating and building hundreds of blockchain careers.”
Wylie and Sader, along with Brett Wilson, founded Sixtree in 2010 as a MuleSoft, Red Hat, Elastic and AWS partner specialising in engineering platforms. The company was acquired by Deloitte in 2016, joining its technology advisory practice at the time.
