Draper

What makes it different

Draper is a start-a-business app that takes you from an idea to your first customers, one step at a time. It works through guided workshops in a fixed order: test the idea first — have an interview with Draper and find out what people are already saying about it — then build the foundations with a business plan, brand, product and website, and finally go after your first customers by running live ads to see who actually wants it and capturing first signups. Unlike a general chatbot, Draper knows the order: it validates the idea before building the business around it. It runs in the browser on a phone or a computer, is aimed at people with an idea and a full-time job who have never started a business, and each step is sized to fit into the gaps in a day — a bus ride, a lunch break, the hour after work.

Draper is built in Sydney, Australia, by three founders: Benny Abbatangelo (CEO), who came to Draper from journalism with roles at Seek and Airtasker; Dexter Todd (CPO), who studied philosophy and economics at ANU; and Oliver Bagin (CTO), the technical lead since day one. Tom Hill leads growth, and the company is part of Startmate's Summer'26 cohort. The product exists because of a lesson Dexter learned the hard way: before Draper he built Bardar, a Sydney nightlife app, product-first — and it didn't scale. Draper runs in the opposite order: test the idea, then build it.

The first two workshops — the Idea Summary and the Business Plan — are free with no card required, so you can see what Draper does before paying for anything. After that Draper costs $9 a month and can be cancelled anytime from the app. There is also a free idea-generation tool at draper.chat/idea-skill for people who don't have an idea yet, and the app itself lives at app.draper.chat.