Afterpay going full tilt into USA

Nick Molnar and Anthony Eisen’s Afterpay has been a story that has given its Investors a pay day and something  to talk about all year - with its shares going from a low of $10 to $133 on the last year.... with their business going from strength to strength.

Today Anthony tells Colin Kruger  that they will be going full tilt into the USA! 

HeadSpin Raises $60M Series C Round at a $1.16 Billion

On-Track to Hit $100M in Annual Recurring Revenue in Early 2020 Just Over Four Years After Inception, New Investment Will Help HeadSpin Deepen Position Within Cloud Ecosystems

February 25, 2020 12:00 PM Eastern Standard Time

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HeadSpin, the company that ensures flawless connected experiences enabled by web, mobile, IoT and 5G, today announced a $60 million Series C funding round led by Dell Technologies Capital and ICONIQ Capital with participation from institutional investors Tiger Global Management, Kearny Jackson, and Alpha Square Group. 

The round brings the total amount raised since inception to $117 million. HeadSpin will use the funding to develop new product offerings, expand into new market segments, and deepen position within cloud ecosystems.

Nikesh Arora, Chairman CEO of Palo Alto Networks, has joined the company Board of Directors as Chairman of the Board. Arora is the former Chief Business Officer at Google who most recently served as President and COO of SoftBank prior to joining Palo Alto Networks.

Also participating in the round are leading angel investors, including LinkedIn’s Jeff Weiner, We’s Shiva Rajaraman, Calm’s Alex Will, Notion’s Akshay Kothari, Bumble’s Derek Callow, Caviar’s Gokul Rajaram, Uber’s Manik Gupta, Stripe’s Amber Feng, Facebook’s Kevin Weil and Andrea Moore, OpenDoor’s Sheila Tran, AngelList’s Sunil Pai, Supercast’s Jason Sew Hoy, mParticle’s Michael Katz, SVB’s Cheryl Sew Hoy, Airbase’s Thejo Kote, Spotify’s John Bonten, Twitter’s Lisa Kleinsorge, and Pinterest’s Ali Altaf.

Why is Headspin so Valuable?

“HeadSpin’s extraordinary technology has broken barriers and redefined the frontier of testing, monitoring, and analytics across devices, locations and networks to understand a customer’s connected experience. This means business, development, devops, and product teams can finally be on the same page and focus on what matters most: delivering high quality, innovative digital experiences enabled by web, mobile, IoT, and 5G,” said Nikesh Arora.

Understanding that connected experiences enabled by web, mobile, IoT, and 5G technologies have become the primary point of interaction between companies and their customers, HeadSpin developed the world’s first Connected Intelligence Platform™ to unify testing, monitoring and analytics across applications, devices, and networks. This enables companies to optimize the functionality and performance of connected experiences throughout the development lifecycle and across the increasingly complex ecosystem of software and infrastructure used to reach today’s global audiences.

"HeadSpin has achieved remarkable results in only four years,” said Deepak Jeevankumar, Managing Director, Dell Technologies Capital. “Not only has the team managed exceptional sales execution, but it created a new solution category that is now the standard for how the best consumer and enterprise G2000 companies ensure top-notch connected experiences for their users and customers. HeadSpin today is one of the fastest-scaling software companies I’ve seen in my 10 years of investing and has truly exceptional growth potential.”

Since launching in 2015, HeadSpin has doubled its annual revenue year-over-year, earning the trust of over 1,000 enterprise customers and telco operators. New HeadSpin enterprise customers include Microsoft, Tik Tok, Bandai Namco Studios, Yahoo!, Uber, DeNA, AirBnB, Kohls, ByteDance, BYJUs, Optus, Australian Post, Telefonica, and Walmart. As part of their international expansion, the company also recently opened regional offices in London, Tel Aviv, Berlin, and Cape Town to address increasing customer demand in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

“HeadSpin is well-positioned to take advantage of this huge market opportunity as enterprises transition to providing higher-quality digital and mobile experiences.” said Manish Lachwani, CoFounder and CEO, HeadSpin. “We’re privileged to be able to grow the company with our excellent team, partners and investors.”

HeadSpin is headquartered in Palo Alto. For more information visit www.headspin.io or follow HeadSpin on Twitter (@headspin_io) and LinkedIn.

About HeadSpin

HeadSpin is the world’s first Connection Intelligence Platform™ that provides Web, Mobile, IoT, and 5G solutions to unify testing, monitoring, and analytics across applications, devices, and networks. HeadSpin empowers development, QA, operations, and product teams to optimize connected experiences and ensure digital business success. Find out why HeadSpin is trusted by some of the largest enterprises in the world at https://www.headspin.io, on Twitter @HeadSpin_IO, and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/headspin/

About Dell Technologies Capital

Dell Technologies Capital is the global venture capital investment arm of Dell Technologies. The investment team backs passionate early stage founders who push the envelope on technology innovation for enterprises. Since inception in 2012, the team has sustained an investment pace of $150 million a year and has invested in more than 100 startups, 40 of which have been acquired and 5 have gone public. Portfolio companies also gain unique access to the go-to-market capabilities of Dell Technologies (Dell, Dell EMC, VMWare, Pivotal, RSA, Secureworks). Notable investments include Adallom, Arista Networks, Cylance, Docusign, Graphcore, JFrog, MongoDB, Netskope, Nutanix, RedLock, RiskRecon, TwistLock, Wavefront and Zscaler. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Dell Technologies Capital has offices in Boston, Austin, and Israel. For more information visit www.delltechcapital.com.

About ICONIQ Capital

ICONIQ Capital is a privately-held financial advisory and investment firm, and a partner of choice for exceptional entrepreneurs, leaders and institutions around the world. The firm invests in technology growth equity and real estate asset classes and employs a distinctive ecosystem to build enduring businesses. ICONIQ is a trusted advisor fostering meaningful strategic relationships across industries to source powerful ideas, magnify global impact and support a new generation of entrepreneurs and companies. For a full list of investments made by ICONIQ Growth, an affiliate of ICONIQ Capital, please visit here.

Contacts

Sriram Krishnan 
sriram@headspin.io 
+1-408-601-0523

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200225005402/en/HeadSpin-Announces-60M-Series-C-Round-at-a-1.16-Billion-Valuation-and-Adds-Nikesh-Arora-as-Chairman-of-the-Board

Elivio exits to Dixa for $US15m with a $3m ARR

Elevio (whose ARR is circa $3m) has exited to Dixa in a cash and share deal worth circa US$15m, providing a significant exit for its backers , AirTree and Blackbird Ventures.

Another great story for Innovation in Australia ! 

Who is Elevio? 

Elevio was cofounded by Chris Duell and Matt Trimarchi in 2015, was incubated at Startmate and after traction, raised circa $1m from VCs AirTree and Blackbird Ventures in a seed round in 2016.

What does Elevio do ?

Elivio is a user education and onboarding platform, allowing companies to upskill their user base with ease.

It provides product knowledge via user guides to customers - enables agents to quickly replicate best practice answers using machine learning, ensuring fast, standardised and correct answers for customers.

 It is simple, requiring no technical skill and its ‘Embeddable Assistant' allows support content to be delivered in-product or injected into any area of a website without involving developers.

Who are Elivio’s  customers 

Over the last 6 years Elivio currently serve 500 customers delivering over 16,000,000 answers every month. 

Customers include  Epic Games, eBay, AccuWeather, Loom and TripAdvisor.

Chris share a story about getting his first $million customer in Epic Games - this was a game changer! 

Who paid US$15m for Elivio and why? 

Dixa enables brands to serve customers across multiple channels from a single screen including social media, chat, voice and messaging apps, enabling an outstanding experience for both customers and agents. 

It doubled its revenues during 2020 and raised $50 million in funding to date with backing from Notion Capital, Project A Ventures and SEED Capital. The company has offices in Copenhagen, London, Kyiv and Lviv.

Mads Fosselius, CEO of Dixa says about the deal :

“We’re all about customer service , and the Elevio acquisition will enable us to bring the CX to another level . It’s about “close partnership, strong integration, unique tech” disrupt the world of customer service”.

The Investment Banker

Chris shared on a clubhouse chat that this deal would not have been able to be done without the amazing support and skills of their adviser Scott Colvin at Blackpeak Capital .

Says Chris (albeit after a few celebratory drinks)

 Scott painted a real detailed of the company - building a compelling factual story about Elivio and why Dixa had to acquire us. When he showed us the investor deck and proposal  that he was  taking to  Dixa, we were  blown away. This resulted in a valuation and offer made that was beyond our expectations - and worth every cent of the success fee paid! 

Join us with JR as we talk and collaborate around teams

Join me next Thursday 25 February - we will be talking teams -  if you believe you have something to contribute - register as my guest to join us 

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/sydney-super-forum-tickets-136227194205?aff=eemailordconf&utm_campaign=order_confirm&utm_medium=email&ref=eemailordconf&utm_source=eventbrite&utm_term=viewevent

Artesian set to launch new AI accelerator and $100m fund

The Fund

The Victoria Government , Launch Vic and Artesian capital - have launched Boab AI, an artificial intelligence accelerator and venture capital fund for revenue-generating AI “scale-ups”

The accelerator has received $1.5m from Launch Vic and $8m in private capital that will support a planned $100 million VC fund for AI companies.

The  Players 

Artesian is one of the country’s biggest supporters of early-stage AI companies, with 40 in its portfolio already.

The $100 million fund, which is yet to be raised, will support up to 150 AI companies across the Asia Pacific.

Artesian chief executive Jeremy Colless shared this with 

Yolanda Redrup of AFR 

We believe AI is interesting in that it has applications across all industries. If the Australian economy is to remain competitive, we need the local capability to create new AI-driven innovations that help to generate economic advantage,”

LaunchVic CEO Kate Cornick said that the funding will position Victoria as a leading destination for AI within the Asia Pacific region, attracting and developing the best talent, investment and AI expertise.”

Victorian innovation, medical research and digital economy minister Jaala Pulford said that

“We are backing Victoria to be a world-leading innovation ecosystem, and this funding will help us attract and develop the best talent, investment and artificial intelligence expertise.” 

The Managers and Directors of the Fund 

Boab AI will be run by former founder of agriculture tech accelerator SproutX and Deakin University venture director, Andrew Lai , and will offer companies a tailored six-month program and a minimum investment of $300k - that will supposedly be designed to meet the needs of each company 

Boab directors include Dr Catriona Wallace, founder and CEO of Ethical AI Advisory, Rosyln Hames COO of Clear Dynamics as well as Artesian managing Partners Tim Heasley and Matthew Clunies-Ross.

The Investees

The ideal investee will have a minimum valuation of 5m that already has some mature products, traction in the marketplace and already have enterprise customers 

They will have a minimum valuation of  $5 million. 

Artesian estimates there are more than 300 AI start-ups in Australia.

Bomb has already invested in Victorian companies Pi.Exchange, Plaetos and Strongroom nAI, and Australian companies Daitum and Remi AI.

Article written by Ivan Kaye - sourced from Yolanda Redrup of AFR

Australian VC cashed up to invest in Startups in 2021

The Australian startup investment environment has remained robust during the Pandemic Year, where VCs have raised record levels of funding from private and institutional sources. ( US$1.6 billion, up from US$1.48 billion in 2019 according to the latest KPMG Venture Pulse report.

Amanda Price - head of High Growth Ventures at KPMG notes that founders are  entering 2021 with every opportunity to secure the funds they need to fuel their  rapid growth - which is great for Job growth and the  Australian Economy.

The quarterly research, which captures investment in startups across the world, reported 227 Australian VC investment deals over 2020, down from a record 285 in 2019

The larger investments included 

• Site minder $70m
• Brighte 83.5m
• Canva 60m
• GO1 40m
• Safety Culture $70m
• Future space 40m

It’s been a big few weeks in Social Media and Digital!

Bumble - the online dating company raised nearly $2.2 billion in its IPO, then saw its shares climb more than 60% on their first day of trading, taking the company's market cap above $13 billion.

Silicon Valley ‘s latest startup lately is Clubhouse, its facilitates audio-only chat rooms in January, the company raised new funding at a reported $1 billion valuation.

Cameo, aservice, where users can find a menu of thousands of celebrities who are willing to record a personalized video in exchange for a fee. Has just done a raise at $1b, tripling its 2019 valuation. 

Then there’s Tik Tok ..... the Chinese company that has candidates chomping ar the bit to take it over 

The Bull leading the charge, however , is Bitcoin, that seems to be building a momentum and global support that is electrifying .

Who wants to know how to buy Bitcoin? 

It’s all about your team

Great insight by Bernard Desmidt  

Teams are the predominant unit of organisational performance. 

So, given high performing teams are so powerful, why are they still so rare?

In the work Bernard Desmidt does facilitating and coaching executive and leadership teams, four common pitfalls serve to compromise and undermine the power of teaming:

1. Teams lack a common purpose and clarity of direction – ““we’re mostly a group of leaders focused on doing our own thing”
2. Team meeting agendas don’t address collective performance objectives – “It’s all about each looking good and less about us achieving great work, together”
3. The prevalence of a collective ‘mood of resignation’ – “why bother, just another restructure, nothing will really change”
4. Breakdowns in the relational dynamics – “can’t trust a thing he says, all that matters to him is his own success, and bonus”

To make teaming your differentiator, he shares 4 strategies to building kickass teams - which will result in the exceptional performance and growth 

1. Agree the team’s purpose – agree the cause the team serves greater than itself. Why does the team exist? What is it for? Then live it!
2. Set an “outcomes focused” team meeting agenda – for each agenda item, specify what decisions are important be made and actions agreed and committed to.
3. Identify a mood that will best serve the team’s collective way-of-being – rather than show-up in a mood of frustration, resignation or anxiety, choose to collectively stay in a mood of ambition, possibility, curiosity and wonder.
4. Legitimise your own and each other’s concerns – make it safe to share and talk about what is of concern to each individual and the team, collectively.

Your team is your distinguishing competitive advantage - they will build your corporate culture  which  will make you win