Victorian startups have raised a combined total of $790 million in funding over the last five years, according to a database compiled by the Victorian Government’s independent startup body, LaunchVic.
The database is the result of a review conducted by dandolpartners, which examined 510 unique capital raises for 385 Victorian startups across the seed, angel, and venture stages.
The review was informed by public sources including Crunchbase and AngelList, media, publicised portfolios of venture capital funds, and research conducted for the Mapping Victoria’s Startup Ecosystem report released in conjunction with Startup Victoria in August.
With the review finding just half of the 510 deals had been recorded on global investment databases, LaunchVic CEO Dr Kate Cornick is calling on the state’s startups and scaleups to check the LaunchVic database to ensure any data is correct before it’s shared with global databases like Crunchbase.
“These global databases are where many angel investors and research agencies go to understand the strengths and talent within a particular startup ecosystem, so it’s important we are putting our best foot forward in terms of our global investment profile,” she said.
According to the review, the median angel investment is $250,000, while VC investment comes in with a median of $2 million.
As one might expect, the rate of investment has drastically increased over the last five years.
According to the report, 24 seed-stage deals were recorded between 2012-15, increasing to 52 in 2016-17. Meanwhile, at the angel stage 33 deals were conducted between 2012-15, and 53 between 2016-17, while the number of venture deals rose from 42 in 2012-15 to 49 in 2016-17.
The number of private equity deals also rose from 6 in 2012-15 to 27 across 2016-17.
With these figures in mind, the majority of the $790 million raised has come in the last year, with $457.77 million raised in 2016-17. Just over $97.5 million was raised across 2012-13, and $234.8 million raised in 2014-15.
The largest deals have come from CultureAmp, which raised $30 million, ASX-listed GetSWift with $29 million raised through a private placement, and Unlockd with a $23 million round.
Startups in the commerce and health fields have raised the most capital across all funding stages, compared to other sectors, while health and education-related startups have raised the largest amount from VCs.
The funding database comes after the Mapping Victoria’s Startup Ecosystem report polled over 1,600 companies across the state; calling for responses from startups, which it defined as ‘any business with high impact potential that uses disruptive innovation and addresses scalable markets’, 1137 met this definition.
The report found health, enterprise and corporate, and media and entertainment are the three biggest sectors for Victoria’s tech ecosystem, representing a combined 33 percent of the state’s startups, while health alone provides 26 percent of jobs in the space.
Image: City of Melbourne/ That Startup Show /Photographer Wren Steiner.
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