There’s been a changing of the guard at Australia’s first angel investor network for women-led startups, Scale Investors, with the founding team selling the business to the current management team Scale was created a decade ago by Susan Oliver, Carol Schwartz, Annette Kimmitt and Laura McKenzie. Over that period the angel investors backed 47 women-led… Read more »
Jessy Wu, investment principal at AfterWork Ventures, is an unlikely venture capitalist. She happily admits it was “the furtherest thing from my mind” when she emerged with a ANU with a philosophy degree, also majoring in English literature. Next thing she knew, she was working at NAB Ventures. Within 18 months, Wu became part of… Read more »
Concerns about the cryptocurrency, including pending Australian regulation, have not deterred cricketer Steve Smith from wading into sector, taking a minority equity stake in Perth crypto app Bamboo, and also becoming its brand ambassador. The move by Smith comes as US sports stars including NFL legend Tom Brady, NBA star Stephen Curry and tennis champion… Read more »
Atlassian cofounder and renewables advocate Mike Cannon-Brookes has backed a new fund to finance grid-scale battery projects via his family fund, Grok Ventures. Canberra-based specialist fund manager Infradebt announced that Grok, JANA Diversified Infrastructure Trust and several existing family office clients had participated in the first close of its Infradebt Energy Transition Fund (ETF). The… Read more »
Early-stage venture capital firm Investible has named Asia-Pacific investment expert Charlie Ill as the group’s first Chief Investment Officer as the fund ramps up its global presence. The Sydney-headquartered VC, which also has an office in Singapore, has also promoted Jayden Basha to principal and Ben Lindsay to investment manager. Ill has been charged with… Read more »
Ethic Adviser, a sustainable investing solution for financial advisers, investment brokers and accountants, is looking to raise $1 million in Seed funding to expand the globally. The fintech was developed by Tom Culver last year, before launching in March, to give advisers a SAAS solution offering specialist sustainable investing tools and information. “With the acceleration… Read more »
A convergence of tailwinds and current market conditions make this an unparalleled time for climate technology. Climate tailwinds are coming in the form of new government policy and public dollars to support climate solutions are being announced (and now deployed) at unprecedented levels. Also, corporations now see decarbonisation as an imperative and being a leader… Read more »
Venture capital firm Blackbird has raised Australia’s first $1 billion VC fund, with superannuation funds once again cornerstone investors. The announcement comes just a week after Square Peg announced it had raised $860 million for its fifth generation of funds. Combined with another $700 million raised earlier this year by Airtree. that means the country’s… Read more »
Early stage VC firm Sprint Ventures has raised $8 million in the first close of its $50 million second fund. Managing Partner and entrepreneur Llew Jury said the second fund, called the Expansion Capital Fund, follows the success of their first $5 million Vintage Sovereign Seed fund in 2020, which has delivered a return on… Read more »
Last week we completed our end of financial year valuations for the Blackbird portfolio and communicated them to our investors. They’re down as you would expect in light of the public markets but with this blog post, we wanted to share in greater detail the process that we used to come to the valuations. The… Read more »
Australia is becoming the place to watch for venture capitalists looking for the next big thing in quantum technology. In the lingering shadow of the global financial crisis and dot-com crash, Vikram Sharma decided to establish Australia’s first quantum technology company. Born out of his research on quantum cybersecurity with the Quantum Optics Group at… Read more »
A new approach to investing in early-stage startups has been developed by former Stone & Chalk national head of community Cheryl Mack. Aussie Angels is an investment platform that lets sophisticated investors join experienced startup investors in syndicates backing the next wave of Australian startups. Investors can find and join angel syndicates to get access… Read more »
When the topic of regulations that need to change to increase angel investment in Australia, an excuse that often comes up is: “Retail investors aren’t prevented from investing in startups, there’s the 20/12 rule!” Well let me tell you why that’s largely unhelpful. I recently spoke with someone who told me they were looking to… Read more »
While there are commonalities among their criteria, startup investors don’t take a cookie cutter approach. The key to unlocking investment is understanding the stage of your startup. “In the race of life, always back self-interest; at least you know it’s trying,” the late former premier of NSW, Jack Lang, once said. Self-interest is defined as… Read more »
Big news dropped this week – Brisbane based video editing platform, Clipchamp, was acquired by Microsoft. The following is part of a lovely note sent out to all shareholders by one of the founders, Alex Dreiling, when trying to use my own words as an intro – I failed to find better words, so I am using… Read more »
The lessons from Uber, Ola and rideshare’s disruption is that in the end, the consumer still pays 
Unicorn dehorned: Nasdaq-listed Brisbane EV charging venture Tritium collapses into receivership 
Here are the finalists in Fintech Australia’s 2024 Finnies awards 
Atlassian cofounder Scott Farquhar steps down as co-CEO 
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