What’s a SAFE, what’s a convertible note, and are they really better for founders than raising investment in a priced equity round? The short answer is that you can raise investment with a SAFE note or convertible note in Australia, but you might not necessarily find it easier to raise the money if you do.… Read more »
You’re a product visionary. You’ve incorporated customer feedback into your business. Your revenue model is scalable. Your brand is on point and cutting through. Your prototypes and proof of concepts are gaining customer traction. Your metrics are pointing in the right direction. Now all you need is funding to support your go-to-market. While we’ve previously… Read more »
Welcome to Ignition Lane’s Weekly Wrap, where they cut through the noise to bring you their favourite insights from the technology and startup world. Ignition Lane works with ambitious business leaders to apply the Startup Mindset to their technology, product and commercialisation problems. This wrap goes out free to subscribers every Saturday. Don’t forget you can catch Gavin Appel discussing… Read more »
For the past three years in Australia, proprietary companies have been able to raise capital via Crowd-Sourced Funding (CSF), in return for equity in the business. This process has enabled budding entrepreneurs across a vast range of industries to realise their dreams and get their businesses off the ground. It has all been possible courtesy… Read more »
Congratulations! You’ve launched your startup, survived the notorious “valley of death” for early stage funding between seed rounds and series A. Your venture is now on the road, with products in place and the revenue rolling in. But perhaps, as you look to scale rapidly, your story is of growth (*waves at BNPL fintechs*), and… Read more »
When the pandemic hit early last year, like many business owners, I had two immediate questions. One: are our people safe and how can we support them? Two: how is this going to impact our business in the short and long term? Adventus.io connects students with recruiters and universities around the world. The international education… Read more »
When an investor asks a founder to reveal their financial model, they are looking for the best possible attempt to provide a consistent, financial representation of the expected performance of the startup. It consists of well thought out projections about the future of the business, and a properly structured, understandable, and dynamic spreadsheet with easy-to-read… Read more »
If you’re certain you understand the business, and you are confident your investment in it will succeed, what you’re doing is not venture capital, it’s banking. Venture capital must have a high degree of risk in order to have a chance of earning the high returns venture capital investors expect from this asset class. Venture… Read more »
Investor due diligence has one simple objective: to reduce the risk of the venture capital (VC) investor losing their money. In the early stages of a budding relationship between a VC and a founder, due diligence is an informal “get to know you” process. Startups are vetted on the basis of qualities such as the… Read more »
The push for diversity in venture capital is long overdue but like a lot of diversity campaigns, First Nations people are being overlooked by investors in Australia. As founder of the world’s first Indigenous Accelerator, I reached out to venture capital firms operating in Australia to conduct research into how much or more accurately, “how… Read more »
Nothing excites investors and markets more than an emerging technology predicted to transform the way we live and work. Cloud accounting, NFC payments, mobile phones and social networking have all been this transformational force. Others have been hailed as the next big thing, to then plateau abruptly, or even fade into obscurity. Amazon’s Kindle is… Read more »
So much is written about the startup journey, but we don’t often talk about what comes next once you’ve left the business that has consumed so much of your life. When a founder launches a startup, they’re often laser focused on the problem they are trying to solve. In my case, following a chat with… Read more »
Inventory forecasting software StockTrim achieved international sales in the UK, Australia and US immediately after launching in 2017. It’s been growth ever since, and in 2020 the Kiwi company pitched for seed funding to scale up. StockTrim came out successful – oversubscribed, in fact. The fund raise required three in-person pitches, seven Zoom pitches and… Read more »
There is a myth about great ideas. It is the fallacy that a winning idea simply sells itself to investors and lenders without too much effort. But what actually matters most is a founder’s ability to take an idea and mould it into a value proposition that is compelling to parties who have capital to… Read more »
Welcome to our new, regular column, The Pitch Doctor, with Cheryl Mack, Head of Community at Stone & Chalk. When Mack appeared on the Startup Daily show recently on ausbiz, we asked her to name the best pitch deck she’d seen. She only half-jokingly replied “Fyre Festival”. You can read what she had to say about… Read more »
The lessons from Uber, Ola and rideshare’s disruption is that in the end, the consumer still pays 
Here are the finalists in Fintech Australia’s 2024 Finnies awards 
Atlassian cofounder Scott Farquhar steps down as co-CEO 
Unicorn dehorned: Nasdaq-listed Brisbane EV charging venture Tritium collapses into receivership 
Daily startup news and insights, delivered to your inbox.
