Building our FUture and Nurturing our Innovators

Our call for Investment in Startups in 2002.... 16 years on... the time has come!! from Ivan Kaye

Guzman y Gomez has raised $134.5 million in at a valuation of $1.73 billion.

Mexican food chain Guzman y Gomez has raised $134.5 million in at a valuation of  $1.73 billion. 

Founded by by Steven Marks and Robert Hazan in 2006 - from a single store in Newtown , the chain now has more than 200 stores in Australia, Singapore, Japan and the US.

With Global Sales of $758.8M (including franchisees) – it has grown by over  29% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) since 2014.

Existing investors, Aware Super and TDM Growth Partners, have been supported by 

Cooper Investors, 

Hyperion Asset Management, 

Firetrail Investments and 

QVG Capital, 

Guzman y Gomez had as of the end of 2023.

You can read more about the chain’s business model in this SmartCompany article by Jason Andrew, published in January.

Betting before anyone else is ready to gives exponential returns in Ozzie Tech!

Blackbird has netted  $800m payday from its  Canva share sale. 

"If you find yourself in a privileged enough position to take such a risk, the bets that pay off biggest, are the bets you take before anyone else is ready to." Great quote from VC veteran Alan Jones

The transaction, which valued Canva at $US26 billion, allowed staff and early investors to sell their shares, turning some employees into millionaires and generating big returns for superannuation funds that tipped money into the local tech company! 

For Blackbird’s 2012 fund, which participated in Canva’s earliest funding round, the sale represented a return of just more than 2600 times the cost base of its original investment.

Link to AFRs article