Martech startup Flowing Bee lands on $1.6 million pre-Seed

Flowing Bee, the AI-powered behavioural insights platform for marketing strategy and execution, has raised $1.6 million in a pre-Seed round.

The raise was led by Archangel Ventures, with participation from The University of Melbourne Genesis pre-seed Fund, Antler, LaunchVic’s Alice Anderson Fund, and M8 Ventures, plus strategic angel investors.

The cash will be used to expand the headcount and customer base in Australia and the US, as well as develop the startup’s behavioural insights engine and enhance automated campaign creation capabilities.

Flowing Bee combines behavioural science and artificial intelligence to streamline marketing decision-making.

It was founded by Michael Sankey, a behavioural scientist a 15-year veteran of helping companies understand and drive customer behaviour, and former a Formula 1 simulation engineer, Sara Khorasani.

An estimated $600 billion is wasted annually on ineffective marketing communications, and martech startup has several ASX-listed companies as clients.

Sankey, the CEO, enables marketers to unlock deep consumer insights and create high-performing campaigns at speed and scale.

“Brands waste billions on ineffective campaigns because they fail to activate the true psychological drivers of consumer behaviour,” he said.

“Our platform combines proven behavioural science and AI to bridge this gap, delivering deep audience insights and automated campaign creation at scale.

“Our goal is to remove the guesswork from marketing—starting with enterprises and eventually making this technology accessible to small and medium-sized businesses worldwide.”

M8 Ventures partner Emily Rich said Flowing Bee represents a fundamental shift in how brands understand and connect with their audiences.

“Their unique combination of behavioural science and AI delivers insights that most marketers never access, creating campaigns that truly resonate with customers,” she said.

“We’re backing a team that’s not just creating incremental improvements but reimagining the foundation of effective marketing itself.”

Genesis pre-Seed fund CEO Hun Gan said the investment is about nurturing the next wave of AI innovation emerging from universities.

“Their behavioural AI technology showcases exactly the kind of groundbreaking research-to-market transition that our fund was designed to catalyse,” he said.

“As we look ahead, it’s increasingly clear that university-born startups will play a pivotal role in solving tomorrow’s challenges, yet they often struggle to secure that critical first round of funding. By bridging this gap, we’re not just backing individual companies—we’re helping to create sustainable innovation pathways from academic excellence to market impact.”