Mike Cannon Brookes and Twiggy forest invest in Solar Farm

"If we nail this, we can build a new export industry for Australia, create jobs and set our economy up for the future." 

@mcannonbrookes

 

We must continue the transition to clean, affordable and reliable renewable energy and storage technologies. 

@smh

Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest are part of a Capital raise of  $millions in a David Griffin’s Sun Cable - solar farm which will enable Australia to supply electricity to Singapore.

The project  aims to supply competitively priced electricity to the Darwin region and to Singapore via a 4500-kilometre high-voltage cable.

This is the start of a $22 billion plan to build the world's largest solar farm with a 10-gigawatt capacity covering 15,000 hectares near Tennant Creek in the NT, and a 22GW-hour storage plant.

Square Peg Nails it in 2020

Imogen Baxter shares 2019 Squarepeg in review... 

2019 , Squarepeg invested over US$86m in technology —all working on ideas that in success, will move humanity forward. 

It’s amazing how they are actively connecting their investees and enabling them to work together to grow from strength to strength.

Well done Justin and Paul !! 

They are a VC building an amazing culture :

🇮🇱Aidoc

🇦🇺Amber

🇦🇺HealthMatch

🇸🇬Neuron

🇦🇺Q-CTRL

Some interesting developments of their investments...

🇦🇺 Airwallex became the fastest Aussie unicorn, raising US$100m. Jack told the AFR at the time "we've done less than 10% of what we want to achieve

🌈 Paul Bassat keynoted a packed room at the AWS Summit in Sydney to bang the drum for innovation.

🇦🇺 Prospa IPO'd on the ASX, continuing on their mission to help small businesses access flexible finance

🇮🇱 Fiverr IPO'd on the NYSE, rang the bell, rebranded the iconic bulls and celebrated the Fiverr community. Read Fortune's IPO article.

🇦🇺 Canva's valuation hit AU$4.7B following an AU$125m round. Read the press.

🇦🇺 Rokt announced their US$48m Series C round led by TDM.

Square Peg’s mission is to back outstanding founders across Israel, ANZ and Southeast Asia. We are humbled to work with founders who are shaping the future. If you’re building something extraordinary and consider yourself a square peg in a world of round holes, we’d love to meet you in 2020

Looking forward to 2020!action of VC in Australia 

https://www.squarepegcap.com/resources/2019-year-in-review For detailed report 

Netflix was the best-performing stock of the decade, delivering a 4181% return

Inspired by Ari Levy of CNBC 

Ten years ago - in 2010 - Netflix was worth $2b and had 12m subscribers paying $9 a month - receiving dvds  by mail . No late fees... and going head to head with video stores .

 

CEO Reed Hastings' shared a vision of streaming videos directly to your lounge. 

10 years on it is worth $148b today, giving investors a 4,181% return. $1m invested 10 years ago would be worth $40m today! 

The company has had its issues. In 2011 , the share price plunged and company needed more money .... as the company went to streaming $400m was raised! 

Jay Hoag’s firm, Technology Crossover Ventures, led that raise pumped in $200 million in exchange for 16 million shares at $12.26 a piece. With the stock now trading at over $336, TCV's current stake is worth about $1.66 billion after selling a big chunk of its shares in the years since the investment.

"When you're being contrarian is when you'll end up with the most exceptional returns, if you're right," said Hoag - who is a proud Director of Netflix .

Why did Jay Hoag  invest?

• He believed in the team and in Reed Hastings 
• Netflix had a Global and Scalable model
• Technology - high-speed broadband would make streaming the bomb 
• Licensing movies in a disruptive way 

Content and Licencing

It’s all about content and  originals seem to be the bomb.

The Irishman, Ozark , House of Cards, Narcos  and the Crown are some of the BB series that have taken up a significant portion of my weekends with me binging in front of TV!!

Netflix have invested $15b on content in 2019 up almost 70% from two years  who, borrowing more than $10 billion making debt to equity greater than 2:1.

Competition is fierce with HBO, Disney and Warner fighting for content. Recently  Netflix have lost “Friends” and “the Office”

This is fantastic news for movie industry and creators - Netflix seems to have revived Hollywood and encouraged creators to create! 

Case in point ... "Otherhood" was among the 10 most-watched Netflix original films of the year, with 29 million views in its first four weeks.

Subscriber Growth is the upside 

12m to 158.3 million in 10 years - with International growth being  62% of the total and a strategy to continue to grow.

That is a powerful catalyst for future growth 

Technology

With the advent of 5G - will Netflix invest in Gamification and Interactive? 

The risks 

High debt, high costs and high competition with a cash burn create a volatile equation for a company that has over half the market cap of WarnerMedia parent AT&T and only 12% the revenue. 

Is Netflix going to continue to Innovate? 

You gotta listen to my mother-in-law 

You’ve got to accumulate to speculate! 

2 year old Trust and Will raises $6m Series A

Trust and Will has just raised  a $6 million Series A round to transform the future of estate planning.

Cody Barbo, CEO and co-founder of Trust & Will shares her pulse

“We are driven by our mission to help millions of families in America protect their legacy,” 

Cody has built a brilliant team that has built a rapidly growing customer base, with over 60,000+ members signing up since launching in April 2018. 

What it does 

Trust & Will creates digital trusts, wills and guardian ships in an online affordable easy way - helping people create an estate plan, protecting their valuable assets and loved ones.

All documents have been designed and vetted by attorneys experienced in estate planning.

Support from Awesome Investors 

Investors include  Jesse Draper’s Halogen Ventures, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, WTI, Luma Launch, Techstars Ventures, and others. 

We look forward to leveraging our big data assets to help them scale,” said Rob Chaplinsky, Managing Director at Link Ventures (Lead Investor).

“We are proud to have participated in both the Seed and Series A rounds of another transformative company based outside of Silicon Valley,” said David Hall, Managing Partner of Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund.

“We are excited to back Cody and her amazing team - who are providing the opportunity  for millions of families to protect their assets and families” - Jesse Draper - Halogen Ventures - investing in female founded consumer technology companies 

$4 Billion Self Storage Market being disrupted by Startup Second Closet with a $13.2m raise

Second Closet - a self storage - Canadian Startup has raised a Series A - $13.2 million 2 years after a seed round in 2017!

“The self-storage space is a few billion dollar sleepy industry and our model is customer focussed.”

– Mark Ang, CEO, Second Closet

What it does 

Second Closet’s digital platform allows people to order and schedule the pickup and storage of their belongings, and only pay for the space they use. 

The company provides boxes for people to store their items in, and picks them up to be stored at a warehouse. Many of Second Closet’s customers are seasonal users living in apartments and looking to free up space.

Used by thousands of customers across its two locations, Second Closet claims to have seen triple digital revenue growth over the past year.

What the raise is going to be used for

The $13.2 million is meant to help “pour accelerant” on Second Closet’s growth - using the financing to 

• launch in other Canadian markets,  
• doubling its office team to more than 75 employees, and 
• further develop its technology platform 

It’s about A $4b untapped market

The self-storage industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors in commercial real estate in Canada, according to a reportfrom industry market researcher IBISWorld. With a total revenue of $4 billion in 2019, the industry has benefited from dense urban cities – like Toronto and Vancouver – which increasingly see people living in smaller homes with limited storage space. 

This industry has yet to see significant technological disruption.

“We are looking to change the game from a customer experience perspective and a usability perspective.” - Steven Ang 

 

In an era where consumers are used to “immediate gratification” from rideshare and food delivery apps, for example, Second Closet is operating in a way that fills that gap for the self-storage industry.

 It’s about your Investors and Alliance Partners 

Second Closet is backed by 

- Whitecap venture and Partners and  a number of Canada’s biggest real estate players.

“the self-storage industry has not seen innovation in decades and Second Closet has the potential to be one of the Canadian biggest tech exits, given its team and the market it is addressing.” -Steve Lau, partner at Whitecap Venture Partners, which led Second Closet’s Series A round

- Real estate moguls Mike and Mark Cowie through their firm, Cowie Capital Partners. 

The Cowie brothers are also executive vice presidents at Canada-based global commercial real estate firm Colliers International, and have a long history of working in the real estate space. 

One of Cowie Capital Partners’ four investment focus areas is self-storage, where it operates 500,000 feet of gross leasable land throughout Southern Ontario, through storage company Self Stor

- Dream Maker Ventures, the venture arm of Dream Maker Corp., a Toronto-based asset management firm that operates in real estate, development, and property management. The firm has opened doors for Second Closet by giving the startup access to its multiple real estate properties, and by promoting Second Closets to its residential property tenants.

Second Closet leases its warehouses to be agile, and is focused on the B2C space for the time being, as it is “swamped with demand.”

- MIG Group, which led Second Closet’s previous round, and BlueCat founder Michael Hyatt, who has been with the startup since its early days.

It’s about the People 

It’s about the people, says Michael . 

“Mark is smart, coachable, and super hard working. I think Second Closet brings a higher level of simplified logistics for both people and businesses when it comes to storage and deliveries. He’s a fucking star.”

Thanks to Beyakit for the story 

https://betakit.com/second-closet-raises-13-2-million-to-disrupt-billion-dollar-self-storage-market/

Meagan Simpson - Betakit - Canadian startup news

Referron v2 ready for testing

Click here to download android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.referron.android

Click here to test on Apple IOS

• Easy to login 
• Easy to send business card 
• Easy to write notes on contacts
• Easy to refer
• Easy to track 
• Easy to navigate
• Activity summary sent to your email on demand 

Still to do

• Connect with people around you - connect on the go 
• Seek function - looking for people - google for people you know like and trust - klt
• Connect to your CRM - so only input is via referron 
• Activate groups 
• Make it faster 

Why Venture Capital is so important

I look forward to VC starting to emerge as a significant Asset Class in Australia .

It has grown significantly since 2002, and BSI has been priviliged to have played a small Part was of this journey! 

The best is yet to come! 

The 10 P’s that created a $230m exit

Retail guru, Paul Greenberg , shares the 10 “Ps” that made for a perfect exit of Gaby and Hezi’s “Catch  Group” to Wesfarmers (owner of Target and Kmart) .

“Wesfarmers Limited today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Australian online retailer CatchGroup Holdings Limited (“Catch Group”) for cash consideration of $230 million.”

The backstory is that Paul was a fierce competitor to Gabi and Hezi - but both supported and respected each other - understanding that all ships sail on a rising tide !

קל הקוד “,  kudos to you Paul, Gabi and Hezi””

PERSISTENCE

It wasn’t all plain sailing ... it took 13 years to be “an overnight success” and an eventual exit in 2019

PARTNERSHIPS

Gabby, Hezi and the leader team have always sought alliances partners and synergistic acquisitions . Some worked - many didn’t! 

PLATFORM PIONEERS

Catch used Marketplaces and eventually created their own  platform and marketplace where they could add value and collaborate with partners. 

Gaby and Hezi - like many early players in ecommerce in Australia started off on eBay.

PEOPLE

It’s all about the people and their leader. 

Catch CEO, National Harpaz , has built an amazing team . The boys new when to move from entrepreneurial and bring in a strong leader to build a great team so as to systemise and scale.

Part of the “Founders Syndrome” is not wanting to let go. This can be a costly mistake.

PURPOSE

Catch culture never wavered from the price card. 

“Unbeatable prices” are a key catch cry of their business. Sure value, sure variety, sure convenience, but they stuck to their purpose of price killers. It paid off. Love a bargain.

PERSONALITY AND PR

Gabby put his personality on the line and became the face of the brand. His Personal face and touch  built a great connection with customers.

Who can forget his famous ‘recession shushmession’ on A Current Affair! 

PLAYFUL

You gotta have fun - a massive colorful tube slide  and a serious basketball court says it all. Fun is a value - and they strive to live it 

PARTICIPATORS

Gabby (and his key team) participated in  retail conferences and shared their experiences and best practice. 

The Catch guys are formidable competitors to deals direct -  they recognize their place in contributing towards a growing retail pie, not just their slice.

PUNTERS

The Catch guys have never been afraid to take a a punt... Many didn’t work ... but one, their investment in Menulog was a home run - beyond! 

As Tim Draper (the Silicon Valley guru VC ) says - if he invests in 10 companies and only a few work .... he does exceptionally well! 

Physical 

Catch launched there first physical store in the Chadstone mall, and it will be interesting where there will be a rollout of stores creating more Brand Equity and another physical retailer of note 

Meat free meat raises $35m from blue chip VCs and CSIRO fund

Nick ­Hazell - founder V2food  is pumped about having just raised  $35m Series A funding  on the back of the Vegan Hungry Jack’s  “Rebel Whopper” . V2 is in the hot space of the “meat free meat sector 🥩 with over half a million Whoppers have been sold in Oz - With the funding of V2 comes Li Ka-shing’s Horizons Ventures. Li Ka-shing  (Hong Kongs richest human - has backed companies including Spotify, Siri, Zoom and fellow meat-free meat start-up Impossible Foods. He sees massive growth for V2 in Asia!! 

With this funding - V2 led by Nick and supported by fantastic investors is now gearing up for an Asian Push!

Nick understands the power of  leverage  - starting as a one man band who built a virtual team around him of the best scientific minds to help perfect the product. 

He has now taken this model to the VC space - building a team of the best money minds to help perfect the global rollout of this scalable venture .

.

Other investors include CSIRO’s innovation fund Main Sequence Ventures (Phil Morle)  , the Fairfax family’s Marinya Capital and Sequoia Capital China.

Phil Morle - a seasoned Aussie VC - of Main Sequence Ventures  said he was sold by the the vision of V2 solving the pain of having to feed 10 billion people by 2050.

The food production industry is a major growth area that Phil believes has massive growth potential for Australia .

“We have all the raw materials, the science and the farmers to build a fabulous new industry - 

“it’s time to take action” says Phil!! 

How did Kevin Plank launch a $5b fashion brand - now one of the biggest global fashion powerhouses?

What was the 10X factor ?

1. Kevin was passionate about football and built a Rolodex of 50 nfl stars 
2. He identified a need - Wearing cotton T-shirt under his pads was uncomfortable, and always wondered why no one ever made an alternative to a short sleeve cotton T-shirt in the summer and a long sleeve cotton shirt in the winter. “I wanted to build the best T-Shirt in the world for football players” said Kevin 
3. Innovated - Tested synthetic material to make compression shorts and tops and made his first six or seven prototypes and tested them on his teammates . 
4. 500 T-shirts were custom-made. Mr Plank then sent three to each of his nrl mates saying “if you like this, try it. And if you don’t like it, please give one to the guy in the locker room next to you.”
5. Turnover growth - $25k - $160k - $585k - $7m - $440m in 2005 - $1b in 2010 - $5b now 
6. UnderArmour became a brand  - an ethos - an idea - and you can’t kill an idea 

What’s your 10X factor ?

Funding and Networks can be a powerful cocktail

Research from the 2019 Global Startup Ecosystem Report identified 4 of the 9 Key components of a high performing startup ecosystem include 

• funding, 
• knowledge, 
• connectedness and 
• market reach 

There are lots of events, mentors and desire to help add value to startups and ventures.... and yet Australia’s startup ecosystems are sliding down the ranks, according to the Sydney fell six places from 17th to 23rd, while Melbourne fell out of the top 30 altogether.

Why? 

1. Inability to access angel/VC level funding, 
2. access to distribution channels and networks, and 
3. challenges with scaling into different markets

Were identified as issues 

So, how can we fix this?

Funding 

• How does a business become investor ready?
• How does a business become referrable ?
• How does a business get access to capital, distribution channels and networks? 
• Who do the go to - to find the money 

Australia needs to grow its Angel investor community - 

We are a gambling nation - Melbourne cup for example - and yet we have not yet doing the key to connect “punters to players” 

Startup economies such as Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv, New York, China and other ecosystems around the world seems to have nailed this! 

On of the biggest risk mitigation tactics for investors is to access a highly diversified portfolio. Invest in 10 - one will nail it.... 

so there is an opportunity to invest in VC funds - that the “punters” can trust . 

Why are there so few of them in Australia? 

What a great opportunity!! I believe this opportunity will grow exponentially over the next 10 years.

Can VC be an asset class that can be as prolific as property? I believe the returns can be better for the investors, the economy and the country.

Access to Networks

How can we connect larger business or enterprise clients, suppliers, and partners to startups .

How can we build know like and trust with each other? 

Maybe BBG can be a conduit to provides larger companies with access to industry trends and the opportunity to collaborate with the startup communities and founders. 

Give people what they want and you will get what you want! 

Accessing international marketing 

Founders and companies should be global and scalable.

How to access international markets is a key challenge.

Some solutions could include 

• Austrade have launch pads , and grants
• Investors have connections
• Networks need to be accessed
• Trade shows
• International VCs 
• Network of professionals 
• Founders and unicorns that have been there and done that - becoming mentors and investors 
• BBG building out an international network of forums 

The next decade should provide an outstanding opportunity for Australian founders, the startup  community and BBG www.bbg.business 

Onwards and upwards 

Relentlessly Resourceful - the key to success

Just read this article reposted on twitter 

Www.paulgraham.com

March 2009

A couple days ago I finally got being a good startup founder down to two words: relentlessly resourceful.

Till then the best I'd managed was to get the opposite quality down to one: hapless. Most dictionaries say hapless means unlucky. But the dictionaries are not doing a very good job. A team that outplays its opponents but loses because of a bad decision by the referee could be called unlucky, but not hapless. Hapless implies passivity. To be hapless is to be battered by circumstances—to let the world have its way with you, instead of having your way with the world. [1]

Unfortunately there's no antonym of hapless, which makes it difficult to tell founders what to aim for. "Don't be hapless" is not much of rallying cry.

It's not hard to express the quality we're looking for in metaphors. The best is probably a running back. A good running back is not merely determined, but flexible as well. They want to get downfield, but they adapt their plans on the fly.

Unfortunately this is just a metaphor, and not a useful one to most people outside the US. "Be like a running back" is no better than "Don't be hapless."

But finally I've figured out how to express this quality directly. I was writing a talk for investors, and I had to explain what to look for in founders. What would someone who was the opposite of hapless be like? They'd be relentlessly resourceful. Not merely relentless. That's not enough to make things go your way except in a few mostly uninteresting domains. In any interesting domain, the difficulties will be novel. Which means you can't simply plow through them, because you don't know initially how hard they are; you don't know whether you're about to plow through a block of foam or granite. So you have to be resourceful. You have to keep trying new things.

Be relentlessly resourceful.

That sounds right, but is it simply a description of how to be successful in general? I don't think so. This isn't the recipe for success in writing or painting, for example. In that kind of work the recipe is more to be actively curious. Resourceful implies the obstacles are external, which they generally are in startups. But in writing and painting they're mostly internal; the obstacle is your own obtuseness. [2]

There probably are other fields where "relentlessly resourceful" is the recipe for success. But though other fields may share it, I think this is the best short description we'll find of what makes a good startup founder. I doubt it could be made more precise.

Now that we know what we're looking for, that leads to other questions. For example, can this quality be taught? After four years of trying to teach it to people, I'd say that yes, surprisingly often it can. Not to everyone, but to many people. [3] Some people are just constitutionally passive, but others have a latent ability to be relentlessly resourceful that only needs to be brought out.

This is particularly true of young people who have till now always been under the thumb of some kind of authority. Being relentlessly resourceful is definitely not the recipe for success in big companies, or in most schools. I don't even want to think what the recipe is in big companies, but it is certainly longer and messier, involving some combination of resourcefulness, obedience, and building alliances.

Identifying this quality also brings us closer to answering a question people often wonder about: how many startups there could be. There is not, as some people seem to think, any economic upper bound on this number. There's no reason to believe there is any limit on the amount of newly created wealth consumers can absorb, any more than there is a limit on the number of theorems that can be proven. So probably the limiting factor on the number of startups is the pool of potential founders. Some people would make good founders, and others wouldn't. And now that we can say what makes a good founder, we know how to put an upper bound on the size of the pool.

This test is also useful to individuals. If you want to know whether you're the right sort of person to start a startup, ask yourself whether you're relentlessly resourceful. And if you want to know whether to recruit someone as a cofounder, ask if they are.

You can even use it tactically. If I were running a startup, this would be the phrase I'd tape to the mirror. "Make something people want" is the destination, but "Be relentlessly resourceful" is how you get there.



Notes

[1] I think the reason the dictionaries are wrong is that the meaning of the word has shifted. No one writing a dictionary from scratch today would say that hapless meant unlucky. But a couple hundred years ago they might have. People were more at the mercy of circumstances in the past, and as a result a lot of the words we use for good and bad outcomes have origins in words about luck.

When I was living in Italy, I was once trying to tell someone that I hadn't had much success in doing something, but I couldn't think of the Italian word for success. I spent some time trying to describe the word I meant. Finally she said "Ah! Fortuna!"

[2] There are aspects of startups where the recipe is to be actively curious. There can be times when what you're doing is almost pure discovery. Unfortunately these times are a small proportion of the whole. On the other hand, they are in research too.

[3] I'd almost say to most people, but I realize (a) I have no idea what most people are like, and (b) I'm pathologically optimistic about people's ability to change.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell and Jessica Livingston for reading drafts of this.

Dosist- cannabis company makes hottest startup list

Dosist is a “modern wellness company” known for its proprietary cannabis dose pen with purported benefits such as helping to reduce pain, inflammation and even insomnia. 

The startup has hired more than 100 employees over the past year, attracting top talent from the likes of Apple and Tesla, and looks for candidates who reflect the startup’s stated values: 

inspirational, collaborative, accountable and committed to quality.

The Industry

The global cannabis industry is expected to reach nearly $15 billion this year, representing a 36% increase over 2018, thanks to both legalization in Canada and state-by-state efforts across the border.

Cannabis is more than just a socially-acceptable vice, like alcohol. It has been rebranded as a wellness product, not only for cancer patients seeking relief from pain and nausea but for anyone facing a range of conditions from anxiety to acne.

There’s  a sense that people in the industry are on the brink of a new frontier, more on par with the industrial revolution or the gold rush. 

Companies that operate in the cannabis space describe their culture as not that different from a Silicon Valley startup, with casual dress codes and flexible work policies.“

“One year in the cannabis industry is sort of like dog years.”