VC Blackbird’s now invested $1.15 billion in the last 5 years – and delivered just as much back to investors in 2024

Venture fund Blackbird has surveyed its investment efforts in 2024, and deployed almost the same amount last year as it has annually, on average, since 2020.

Blackbird’s annual year in review reveals they deployed $229 million across 20 new and 30 follow-on rounds in 41 companies. That’s an increase on the 38 cheques in 2023, when the investments combined dipped below the $230m five-year average to $203m (it’s worth noting the VC revised that figure up from $14m from its original 2023 summary for the 2024 review). But that drop was offset by 2021’s $267m splurge.

Blackbird’s annual total investment 2020-24. Source: Blackbird

In total Blackbird’s invested $1.15 billion in 5 years, and coincidentally, returned $1.14bn to investors from exits and secondary share sales last year.

‍In 2024, the 12-year-old fund, which has grown from a trio to more than 70 staff, wrote cheques ranging from a $100,000 pre-Seed bet to a $46 million Series C, with 1,600 pitches flowing across their desks in Australia and New Zealand.

Blackbird’s 2024 investments broken down by series. Source: Blackbird

Keen to counter the perception that it’s now just hunting to large later stage deals, the VC was keen to point out that it’s ‍never too early to pitch pointing out that 85% of new investments made in 2024 went into pre-seed and seed stage companies, while nearly half (45%) featured at least one woman in the founding team.

‍Amid ongoing criticism of the lack of funding flowing to female founders, Blackbird committed to tracked and disclosing how it’s going when it comes to backing women and non-binary founders.

Not everything turned out as hoped last year.

AI-powered Sydney retail startup Hivery was handed to administrators in November. Blackbird invested across three funds and last March, slashed the value of one investment by 47%, from $11.4m t0 $6m. Another worth $17m, was written down to zero.

But then voluntary administration was making a strong play to be the startup sector’s 2024 word of the year.

Meanwhile, New York-based Kiwi accomodation startup Kiki, which Blackbird backed with $7 million in its Seed round, made headlines for the wrong reasons when cofounder Toby Thomas-Smith announced the all-male team would shut down their original concept of “the Tinder of subletting” to launch a “girls only club” called Girls Who NYC. A few months later, they went back to subletting apartments.

But there were some big wins that saw the VC’s LPs (limited partners) pocket around $1,114,656,850 in returns.

Canva continues to be the gift that keeps on giving for Blackbird.

There were secondary market share sales as Blackbird’s original funds reached the end of the lives, netting around $880m, and then Canva’s valuation jumped 23% late in the year to $49 billion.

SafetyCulture delivered similar returns for those early funds when $90 million worth of shares in the 20-year-old workplace checklist app developer changed hands in September.

And an early bet on Leonardo.ai delivered a win and a place for Blackbird when Canva acquired the generative AI startup in a deal worth more than $300m