Alliance Partners

Sunday, November 29, 2020

Vale Tony Hsieh Chief Happiness Officer




Tony Hsieh cofounder and “Chief happiness Officer”  of Zappos for 21 years - prior to that he  founded “LinkExchange” that sold to Microsoft  for $265m.

Tony’s Zappos mantra coined his DNA 

“Zappos doesn’t deliver shoes, we deliver happiness” 


Last night he died in a house fire last week - age 46


Tony inspired millions of people, a philanthropist of note . Tony will be remembered for his commitment to culture, employee engagement, and delivering happiness.


His memory will live on! 


#tonyhsieh #zappos #deliveringhappiness #culture #employeeengagement #shoes #success #leadership #learning #happiness #customerservice #ceo #team

Wednesday, November 25, 2020

If you’re not an Innovator / back one!




Andrew Sypkes is one of Australia’s most active family office technology investors being a founder investor in 4 amazing success stories that have become Unicorns


  • Leigh Jasper’s Aconex 
  • Martin Hoskin’s - Redbubble 
  • Melanie Perkin’s - Canva 
  • Tim Klay and Jesse Levinson’s -  Zoox 

About Andrew Sypkes

Andrew Sypkes began his career with McKinsey & Company and then worked with start-up technology businesses before completing an MBA at Stanford University. He now based in Hobart where he manages his family’s investment business, family office and foundation, and is a co-founder and Director of several private companies and charitable organisations.. 


He is also a partner at SecondQuarter Ventures, Australia’s first venture secondaries fund.



Why angel investing?

Andrew realised he was not  a great entrepreneur , but was great at supporting them - and that angel investing was a great way for him to work closely with entrepreneurs — vicariously living their journey — while actually playing to his more natural analytical and investing strengths.


His first 2 investments got him hooked ....  and he blames Leigh Jasper and Martin Hosking for that!!


 So what makes a founder and entrepreneur succeed?

  • resilience
  •  interpersonal skills - a great team 
  • a combination of big picture thinking
  • a sense of detail and urgency  for the daily execution 
  • a sustainable competitive advantage - which could be 

an abnormally-sticky product, 

a trusted brand/customer loyalty, unique assets, 

scale economics or 

network effects. 


A great product just gets your to the starting line but is not a durable advantage. 


If you do win, you want it to be big, because that’s how you make a real impact - says Andrew 


To go deeper on that topic, read 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy by Hamilton Helmer and the white papers about network effects by Nfx.com.


It’s a great time to be in Innovation in Australia!!

Why secondary investing  in the Australian venture capital ecosystem?


Secondary investing is investing in already funded startups  enabling founders, early investors and long term staff to cash put and get liquidity - maybe before a listing 


Andrew saw the importance of this at Aconex pre-IPO when there were numerous early investors and long-term staff who needed liquidity due to their personal circumstances. 


This also included the founders themselves who wanted to take a bit of money off the table to be able to confidently keep swinging for sixes in the next stage of their journey.


Having secondary liquidity available is a sign of a maturing ecosystem, and there have been a few really big secondary transactions that Andrew has been involved with over the past five years.


As a result  he has set up SecondQuarter, Australia’s first venture secondaries fund. 


The fund had  already made half a dozen secondary investments and have committed to work alongside another cohort of top-tier ventures as an ongoing provider of liquidity for their staff and early investors. 


It’s potentially a great asset class -


A secondary Fund  is a stepping stone for entrpreneurs of an innovative company to cash out a little without having to list!

Sunday, November 22, 2020

Insights into getting VC investment



https://youtu.be/IK7HkSp1KBI

 

An interesting TEDX talk on Why VCs and Angel Investors Say "No" to entrepreneurs

 By Alicia Syrett - whose quote a famous VC  investor 


She shares 8 things you need to do got a VC to say yes!!

  1. Do you Research to your investor 
  2. Character natters - be authentic - have a good character 
  3. Money for business - not for your salary 
  4. There needs to be a Fit
  5. Fomo - make them excited 
  6. Business basics - fundamentals
  • is it scalable and global ? 
  • Show traction - execution 
  • Customers , partnerships , accolades
  • Know your numbers 
      8. Investors make mistakes too - let them know why! Be resilient!! 

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Bookipi raises $1.6m



Bookipi, a fast-growing invoicing and payroll processing startup raises $1.6 million seed investment to accelerate its global growth. Investors include Our Innovation Fund, LP (OIF) and investment syndicate TEN13.


Founded by Tim Lee in 2017, Bookipi bootstrapped their business to global scale and built an international customer base of over 640,000 giggers who love their easy-to-use product offering. The business does no sales or marketing and a team of less than five. 


Its being coined as the easiest and most intuitive to use book-keeping platform. To date, the company has two core products: an invoice generator ‘Bookipi Invoice’ and a payroll application ‘Payroller’.


Talk about “beautiful software”


Bookipi’s invoicing app generates over $12 billion of invoices per year, being one of the fastest growing and highest ranked invoicing apps globally. The app is ranked in the top five on the US Apple App Store. 


Payroller, an ATO compliant single touch payroll application, launched less than a year ago and is already processing over $4 billion in annualised payroll through the platform. It is used by both accountants and small business owners.


Following the funding round, Bookipi has made its first new senior hire, with COO Chad Hardy joining the team. A former early employee of Uber in Australia, Chad has strong experience scaling technology startups.


Another business to watch is Anwar Kahlil’s “My Recruitment Plus”


Which will be a unicorn first? 

Sunday, November 08, 2020

4 gems to create your elevator pitch




An elevator pitch  is not a sales pitch; it is a creative and succinct way to generate interest in the listener.


With that in mind, here are my 4 rules for creating an engaging elevator pitch:


1. Don't do it in an elevator unless asked!! Just be pleasant! 

 

2. Make it tight.  

It needs to be short, sharp, professional abd natural. It needs to flow from you !!!

 

 3. Share your USP.

A USP is your Unique Selling Proposition. One example of how to craft a pithy USP is to alter a bland, general statement such as, “I’m an accountant and coach and consultant” to something like, “I connect entrepreneurs , business owners and leaders to people and money” instead. This is short, powerful and informative, i.e. the perfect combination for part of an effective elevator pitch.

 

 4. Pass the eyebrow test.

Sam Horn talks  about the "eyebrow test." If what you say in your elevator pitch causes the listener's eyebrows to go up, you've got 'em! 


Leave them wanting more


If the listener’s eyebrows scrunch down, you’ve just confused them. Find a new pitch.