Scott Farquhar, the kid from Sydney’s Western suburbs who became a billionaire after responding to an email from fellow uni student Mike Cannon-Brookes about starting a tech company, will step down as co-CEO role at the end of August The father of three sons called time on role after 23 years as Atlassian posted a… Read more »
Healthcare startup Mentwell and the Love Out Loud Foundation have joined forces to raise and distribute support to the victims, families and others feeling the impacts of the Westfield Bondi Junction attacks on April 13, which saw six people die. Mentwell, offers digital gift cards for health and wellness services. Love Out Loud Foundation is a… Read more »
Life sciences and deep tech VC Stoic Venture Capital has promoted Harikesh Pushpapathan to partner at the fund. Pushpapathan joined Stoic in early 2022 as an investment analyst, becoming an investment manager 12 months later. He graduated from University of Sydney with degrees in psychology, neuroscience and finance, and now sits on the Uniseeed biotech… Read more »
Victorian solar generation and thermal storage company RayGen has kicked off a Series D raise with $20 million from Breakthrough Victoria alongside a US$20 million (A$31m) follow-on investment from NYSE-listed SLB, as part of plans to expand offshore. RayGen uses proprietary photovoltaic solar modules that generate nearly 2,000 times more power than traditional photovoltaic systems… Read more »
A New Zealand startup offering to train 1000 students in the entry-level AWS certification for free has raised $2.3 million in pre-Seed funding The round for NextWork was led by Kiwi VC GD1 with support from Blackbird, Icehouse, Phase One Ventures and the founders of Eucalyptus. The Wellington-based online education startup has set out to… Read more »
Less than three years after listing on the US Nasdaq, Brisbane-based electric vehicle charging company Tritium has been placed in receivership in a spectacular collapse for the 23-year-old business. McGrathNicol Restructuring has appointed partners Shaun Fraser, Katherine Sozou, Matthew Hutton and Jamie Harris as receivers of Tritium DCFC Ltd (Nasdaq: DCFC), less than a day… Read more »
The arrival of Uber and its ilk in Australia has seen more $1 billion in taxpayer funds handed to the what’s now known as the point-to-point transport (ie including taxis) sector in compensation. And users in NSW will continue to be slugged for it until the end of this decade. The entire sector has been… Read more »
Blackbird partner Phoebe Harrop will take the helm of VC fund’s Kiwi out as its founding head, Samantha Wong, returns to Australia pending the birth of her second child. Wong announced the move back across The Ditch on Blackbird’s blog, saying “I’ve decided this is the right time for me and my family to move… Read more »
Build Club, Australia’s largest AI engineer and founder community is partnering with AWS to launch an accelerator for technical AI founders. The Build Club Accelerator is for 15 Australian technical founders – AI engineer and researchers – and will give them a springboard into the US market. Build Club founder Annie Liao said her ambition… Read more »
The latest Centauri-6 satellite developed by Adelaide mining tech startup Fleet Space Technologies is now in orbit after heading skywards aboard SpaceX’s Bandwagon-1 “ridesharing” mission. The Falcon 9 reusable rocket’s payload of 11 satellites took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida last week. The Centauri-6 microsatellite brings Fleet Space’s constellation of low earth… Read more »
The New York-based cofounder of New Zealand subletting startup Kiki, Toby Thomas-Smith, is blunt in his own performance assessment. “When we launched Kiki.nyc last year I fucked up,” he’s written on LinkedIn, after the business shuttered its New York launch after 3 months, only to revive it late last month amid controversy over plans to… Read more »
Clean energy startup MGA Thermal, has raised an additional $5.7 million to develop its thermal energy storage (TES) system. This round was backed by existing investors including Main Sequence and Melt Ventures with specialist clean tech investor JEKARA joining the cap table. The new capital tops up an $8 million in September last year. MGA Thermal has… Read more »
A senior marketing exec from Canva and Eucalyptus has struck out on his own to launch a media strategy startup. Matt Rossi left his role as head of growth at Eucalyptus to found Oodle, saying it will offer media strategy and buying for growth-oriented brands, with a focus on helping internal marketing teams build conviction… Read more »
Online share trading platform Superhero has cut its brokerage fee on ASX trades up to $20,000 from $5 to just $2. The 60% reduction in the digital trading platform’s brokerage fee undercuts rival Stake, which charges $3 for ASX trades up to $30,000. Superhero charges a 0.01% fee for trades over $20,000. The Superhero-branded app… Read more »
After a year in power, NSW Premier Chris Minns has decided to put Investment NSW under his watch, along with the Office of the Chief Scientist, amid a restructure of the NSW Department of Enterprise, Investment and Trade (DEIT) that will see its demise. The state government announced the shakeup on Friday afternoon, claiming that… Read more »
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