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

Kinde supporting Startups, Innovators and SAAS Based Companies

If you are a startup or looking to build an app or saas product - speak to the team at Kinde .

Building a startup is not for the feint hearted and you need all the help that you can get... focus on what you are really good at and build a team around you that can help you with what you need to do to scale your vision!!

People generally become overnight successes after 10 or 20 years!!

Live the dream!!

Great post Ross Chaldecott ....

Here’s the thing. If you’re founding a startup – and particularly if it’s going to be successful – then you’re going to be at it for a long time. It’s going to be your life for 5, 10, 15 years. It may even be the last job you ever have. So you’d better make sure you’re solving a problem that you are in love with. Something that you are going to be passionate about years from today. And something that you can convince others to believe in also. Startups are not get-rich-quick schemes – they are long term investments of time, money and energy.

Kinde is built on this mindset. The problem of developer infrastructure is one that almost everyone in our team has personally experienced over their careers. It is also a problem that many of us have wanted to solve at some point. I believe it’s one of the last true universal problems that exists in tech today. A problem that affects every SaaS business at every stage.

And so, even when things feel tough, we can still come back to the fact that the work we do is having a real impact on people’s abilities to advance humanity and change the world. Which feels like a pretty worthwhile thing to invest time into.

#startup #tech #business

SunDrive Nab’s $21m from blue chip Climate tech investors

Founders David Hu and Vince Allen Of Solar Disrupter Sun Drive has nabbed the whole who of investors in their latest $2m round 

Investors include 

• Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull
• Canva co-founder Cameron Adams 
• Atlassian s Mike Cannon-Brookes 
• Blackbird Ventures
•  Chinese-Australian solar pioneer Dr Shi Zhengrong
• Bill Bartee’s Main Sequence - CSIROs Innovation fund
• Ian Learmonth’s - Clean Energy Finance Corporation (government funded 

What it does 

SunDrive co-founder designed a solar cell that uses copper rather than silver paste in the electrode lines; an innovation that will make cells cheaper , scalable but also more efficient 

The Pain 

Local manufacturing would help break China’s stranglehold on the Australian solar panel market, which currently Supplies more than 80 per cent of Australian panels.

The painkiller 

Sun drive plans to revolutionise the onshore mass production of solar cells and the development of an Australian solar manufacturing industry. Improving sovereign manufacturing capability will increase Australia’s resilience to supply chain disruptions and further enable the uptake of solar PV,

What the money will be used for 

SunDrive will use the $21 million to build a pilot production line to help accelerate its plan to mass manufacture solar panels in Australia.

Source Peter Ker of AFR. https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/turnbull-makes-a-push-for-hydro-in-the-hunter-20220331-p5a9nv 

Melbourne deep tech Black.ai raises 5.4 million in a seed a round - with cctvs , machine learning and serious brain power

Keaton, Sebastien, Karthik and Phoebe from video #ai tech company black.ai , have just raised a $5.4M Seed+ round from the likes of Jelix Ventures, Right Click Capital, R3i Ventures and In-Q-Tel (connected to the CIA)

Their seed round of $1.2m was funded by Blackbird Ventures, Right Click Capital, Pan Group, Canadian VC firm Saltagen Ventures, Macquarie Bank’s head of personal banking Ben Perham, and William Tunstall-Pedoe, who was the entrepreneur behind the voice recognition system that became Amazon’s Alexa.

The seed round was raised after completing the Sydney Startmate program in 2017, securing $75,000 in initial funding.

Black.ai are ready to scale up with the help of insightful investors including Alon Greenspan, Andrea Gardiner and Ulric Ferner bodes. 

What Black.ai does

Black.ai is a platform  that can map what’s happening pretty much anywhere in a physical environment using data from CCTVs and movement sensors. It is able to understand and generate insights about how humans interact with each other and their environment. 

Black.ai have created automated computer vision software, to let organisations watch and analyse the behaviour of their customers via cameras, and create deep technology to analyse behaviours

The deep tech ai company  started off developing and deploying its robotics and artificial intelligence solution into Australian supermarkets (identifying people ringing up the wrong vegetables at the tills!)

Technology used in many industries from mining - automating parts inspections, and automate mineral grading to health and retail! 

Black.ai wants to compete with the Amazon Go store technology, and with Google’s robotic automation technology.

Is big brother watching you? 

Click here for more information 

https://lnkd.in/dFmbA5pa

You might want to read what Malcolm Turnbull is up to in the realm of AI 

https://www.afr.com/street-talk/turnbull-s-ai-robotics-bet-taps-investors-for-blockbuster-raising-20220419-p5aegf

Incredible year for @ZellerAustralia

Founders :- Ben Pfisterer and Dominic Yap

The Money

Spark Capital invests $50m at a $400m valuation into Zeller - making  founders Ben Pfisterer and Dominic Yap,l (former Square Execs  and founding investors pretty happy !

This is what founding investor  Square Peg’s Paul Bassat had to say:- 

Raised $81m in 3  rounds, hired 75 people & acquired 1500 customers in 4 weeks post launch. Awesome work @benpfisterer Dom & your amazing team. Memo to small biz: switching to Zeller is a no brainer

 @SquarePegCap

So who is Spark Capital  - a fund who invested in Twitter, Slack and Coinbase - the dude who managed this investment is James Kuklinski

What does Zeller do

The company launched its first products for small businesses on May 4, including EFTPOS (electronic funds transfer at point of sale) terminals, business accounts and cards.

The customer take up

The company says more than 1,500 Australian businesses signed up in the month after its launch, and weekly payment volume has been growing 200%. About 80% of businesses that started using Zeller switched from Australia’s four biggest banks, citing their desire for lower fees and better customer support.

What’s the money going to be used for 

To grow its research and engineering hub, including filling 18 new engineering roles that will support Zeller’s plan to become a fully regulated business bank.

Why it will succeed 

Australian banking system  is ripe for disruption and  Zeller is in a position to disrupt!

“Its technology is simpler, has more transparent pricing, is best-in-class technology and had better customer service.”

Immigration easing for startups

Are you trying to recruit more talent outside Australia for your startup but don’t want to wait 6 months for the visa to be accepted? 

Well, this is your lucky day.

The Department of Home Affairs is introducing  a Global Talent Scheme (GTS). This scheme allows startups to apply for 5 high priority visas per year that are exempt from the skills shortage lists and that will be processed within 17 to 30 days. Those visas will last for 4 years and will lead to the possibility of the visa holder becoming a permanent resident.

 

This Australian first could be very valuable and could definitely solve the lack of talent availability that is said to be the biggest factor of growth limitation within the startup ecosystem.

For more information please visit StartupAus’ newsletter here:

https://mailchi.mp/startupaus/priority_visa_access_for_startups 

#startups  #innovation #immigration

How Startup funding works - Splitting the Pie

100% of Nothing is a lot less than 17% of a Company 

By Anna Vital - from linked in post of David Synge- Smith 

If you are lucky, you, as the  founder will end up with 20pc of your company after the journey from idea to ipo. 

In my experience, the founder would get around 5pc, as their is usually a seed round, a series A, B and C round before an IPO.

What do you think?

Prospa raises $25m to focus on Growth

GREG MOSHAL AND BEAU BERTOLI

Prospa, Australia’s leading online lender to small business, has secured $25 million in growth funding led by AirTree Ventures – one of Australia’s most successful tech-focused venture capital firm.

Prospa will use the funds to accelerate its market leadership: boosting technology, product expansion and distribution, ramping up talent acquisition and building a world-class brand.

Greg Moshal, Founder and joint CEO of Prospa (and fellow ex Durbanite!!) said continued interest from top technology investors like Airtree, and the scale of their investment, recognises the difficulties small businesses have in accessing finance, and will support Prospa in its growth phase.

“We’re driving a fundamental change in the way 2 million small business owners in Australia access finance." 

“We’ve now provided over 10,000 loans and put over $250m into the Australian small business economy. All the while maintaining our ability to wow our customers, which continues to be proven through a stellar customer satisfaction score of over 90%.

Why has Prospa attracted this funding?

AirTree Ventures’ managing partner, Craig Blair, said “Greg and Beau have built a world class team and are obsessing over how to solve customer problems in a better, faster way. They are exactly the kind of founders we want to partner with.”

“This is a coming of age of the fintech sector in Australia. Prospa is a real business solving a real problem, winning awards with tremendous customer and market feedback while achieving profitability from the very early days,” Mr Blair said.

Prospa passed $250 million in loan originations and has added a series of strategic partnerships with Westpac, Reckon and Mortgage Choice coming on board to offer Prospa’s small business loans to their customers.

Co-Founder and Joint CEO Beau Bertoli said “strong partnerships are key to Prospa’s rapid growth and future success.

“To reach more small business owners, we’ll continue to invest in partnerships with trusted brands who share our values of putting their small business customers first."

“Small businesses are the driving force of the Australian economy. We’ve solved a huge challenge of access to finance for them by building the best local lending platform, making it faster and easier to get a small business loan than it ever has been,” Bertoli said.

23 amazing Startups present to 400 humans

Tech 23, held in Sydney yesterday, saw 23 startups pitch their ideas to an audience of over 400 people and a panel of industry leaders.

Among the experts on this year’s panel will be Bill Bartee of Blackbird Ventures; partner at NAB Ventures, Melissa Widner; Angela Clark, director of digital at the ABC; and Petra Andren, CEO of ATP Innovations.

Rachel Slattery, director of SlatteryIT, said, “Tech23 is all about encouraging our informal networks, so collaboration can increase between industry, research and development organisations, and startups.”

Over the years the likes of Rebekah Campbell of Posse (now Hey You), Scriptrock (now UpGuard), goCatch, Rome2rio, SmartSparrow, 2Mar Robotics, and GoFar have also pitched at Tech23.

The clear winner was  AgriWebb has created a livestock management solution with full data transparency to capture information and help farmers make smarter farming decisions. This technology is targeting management problems and trading inefficiencies that affect the global $1.4 trillion livestock industry. CEO Justin Webb said this potentially solves a major pain for the farmer.

Agriculture is the largest employer in rural and regional communities and according to a StartupAUS report the sector makes up four percent of Australia’s total employment. 

I have no doubts the team at Jobs NSW will be looking to support companies in this industry with their $193m fund to support business and increase employment! 

Startups that also received awards on the day include:

ResApp Health– Tech23 Innovation Excellence Award

Plutora– Tech23 Greatest Potential Award and B2B Enterprise Award

Cardihab– Austrade Best Startup Award and $2,500 AMP Amplify Award for Best technology Tech23 2016 startup founded by a woman

Hovermap– $5,000 Market Changing Technologies Award

Biteable– $5,000 PayPal Enabling Choice Award

Myriota– $2,500 Audinate Prize 

SPEE3D– $2,000 Advanced Technology Award 

Haventec– Tyro Fintech Award 

agAlytics and Rappsio– Saasu Award

Gruntify– Square Peg Capital Award and MYOB Awards 

Lorica Health– OneVentures Prize 

Black AI– Bigtincan Enterprise Mobility Leadership Award 

GeoInteractive– Berkeley Advisory Best Commercial Success Award

Details of Company's presenting :- 

agAlytics – a Queensland agritech startup developing sensors utilising lab-on-a-chip technology to manage water and soil nutrients.

Agersens – an agritech startup developing a virtual shepherd. This IoT system will connect each animal to the internet and enable farmers to fence, move and monitor their livestock using their smartphone or tablet

AgriWebb – a farm management platform made up of the AgriWebb Notebook, for easy record keeping in the paddock, and the AgriWebb Portal, which enables customers to make decisions that improve productivity and increase profits.

Airwallex – facilitates international money transfers through a combination of local payment collection, foreign exchange and distribution.

Biteable – looks to make it fast and easy for any individual or organisation, regardless of video production skills, to create studio-quality videos.

Black.ai – has built an artificial intelligence system, Ani, that can watch and understand human behaviour. She automates the direct observation of people movement and flow through environments, detecting interactions and notable events, reporting on them in real time.

Cardihab – provides healthcare organisations with the ability to deliver clinician led, remote chronic disease management and prevention programs.

Data Creative – the platform creates data-driven personalised videos in seconds, that deliver relevant, timely and valuable information to any individual who receives them

Gelion – the startup is working with the idea of one day building houses with batteries inherently included as part of their structure, ready to take advantage of rapidly improving, solar energy technology and also to serve as a buffer for the grid

GeoInteractive – a geoscientific company building smart mapping devices to help prevent catastrophic failures in underground infrastructure, with a current focus on critical waste and stormwater assets.

Gruntify – provides enterprise customers with an all-in-one, mobile-to-cloud data management platform in 3 easy steps. 1) Mobile apps for data collection, 2) online data management portal with in-built workflow processes, and 3) data mapping and analytics for streamlined decision-making

HavenTec – helps organisations build trust by maintaining their customers’ privacy in every interaction

Hovermap – does for drones what Google does for driverless cars. Hovermap provides software which makes drones safe and easy to use, and allows them be used for a host of new applications

Lorica Health – a specialist team of data scientists, domain experts, clinicians, analysts and engineers develop industry specific solutions which target fraud, abuse and waste, while also making markets that improve the quality and safety of health care.

Myriota – a satellite communications platform to transmit small amounts of data at a very low cost. Myriota uses tiny low powered transmitters, small amounts of bandwidth, tiny low earth orbit satellites and signal processing software to transmit small amounts of data via satellite.

Ninox Robotics – looks to enhance productivity within various industries, through increasing automation and improving accessibility to information. Ninox Robotics is able to deploy a UAV team anywhere in Australia and provide clients with various spatial imagery products that can assist their enterprise.

Plutora – develops an innovative platform for enterprises to test and release complex applications.

Pointduty – a software development company that focuses on applications that capture and visualise data from social media networks, peer to peer networks, the dark web and other internet sources. It’s tools are used to combat such crimes as violent extremism, child abuse, fraud as well as the standard crimes investigated by police forces.

PredictBGL Diabetes – helps people to better manage their medications. While currently focused on diabetes and insulin dosing, ManageBGL can also help with dosing of warfarin and other drugs such as cholesterol drugs.

Rappsio – an all-in-one cloud platform for digital agencies that makes web application development fast, and secure infrastructure simple. Increase productivity by configuring the core of your web application, code only to solve new and interesting problems.

ResApp Health – is developing digital healthcare solutions to assist doctors and empower patients to diagnose and manage respiratory disease. We are creating easy to use affordable, clinically-validated and regulatory-approved diagnostic tools that only require a smartphone.

Reposit Power – a platform that learns, adapts and predicts a consumer’s energy usage so you’re getting the most from your solar. What’s more, you’ll save on your energy bills which means, on average, you’ll pay off your battery in half the time.

SPEE3D – a high speed and low cost digital manufacturing process that can manufacture equivalent parts to casting processes. This new technology is born out of several industries including 3D printing, patented and owned by SPEE3D.

From a Stamford dorm room to world domination in 20 years

Inspired from Business Insider 

Google executive chairman Erich Schmidt, back, with founders Sergey Brin, left, and Larry Page AP

Google is now the most-visited website in the world, makes Google Android, the most popular operating system in the world, is the most profitable advertising business in the world, and  its parent company Alphabet is now worth $543.3 billion.

BOOM

 Larry Page and Sergey Brin, 2 Stanford PhD students, started Google in 1996.... incubating "BackRub," a revolutionary search engine that used a technology called "PageRank" that would rank web pages based on how many other web pages linked back to them.

(Bloomberg Game Changers)

Bakrub rebranded "googol," or the number one with a hundred zeroes before it, better reflected the amount of data they were trying to sift through. 

Goog01 morphed into  "Google" 

(Google)

The first-ever Google server was built in a custom case made out of Legos and housed on the Stanford campus, at google.stanford.edu, and the Google.com domain name was registered a year later on September 15th, 1997.

(Wikimedia Commons)

After using too much of Stanford's bandwidth, Page and Brin relocated to the garage of Susan Wojcicki - googles 1st employee, after getting $100k seed investment from Sun Microsystems founder Andy Bechtolsheim. 

Google officially incorporated on September 4th, 1998.

(Wikimedia Commons)

Google's first homepage was a bit clunky where their focussed efforts wereon the algorithms that made it run.

(Google)

In 1999, Excite was in negotiations with Google to acquire it for $750k  but the the deal fell through and later that year , Google moved into its first-ever office at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto — the same office building that housed companies like PayPal and Logitech.

(Google)

Google then raised its first round of venture capital funding in the form of a $25 million investment from Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and Sequoia Capital. (3 years from inception) .

How key was it for google to be in an incubated space? Was this a critical factor in its $25m series A? 

Google debuted its AdWords product in late 2000, generating revenue, protecting the from the dot com bust! Brin and Page were becoming rock stars in the tech community for succeeding where everybody else failed.

Google had an awesome  corporate philosophy: 

"Don’t be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served — as shareholders and in all other ways — by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains."

(Tangi Bertin/Flickr) DOnt Be Evil - Be Nice!

Eric Schmidt became the first CEO in 2001, leaving the founders free to focus on Google's technology.

Eric Schmidt (Getty Images)

In 2003, Google leased its Googleplex campus from Silicon Graphics and in 2006 (10 years on) bought the building.

(Google)

The Googleplex became a symbol of Silicon Valley success. Google worked at making an awesome environment, offering free meals to its employees. 

(Flickr/Dmitry Alekseenko)

August 19th, 2004, Google had its initial public offering on the stock market, priced at $85 per share. Today, a share in Google parent company Alphabet costs over $800. 

10X

On April 1st, 2004, Google launched Gmail, 

(Biz Stone) Gmail Launched 

In fact, after the IPO, Google set its sights on expanding past the search engine. Google started gobbling up startups to launch new products like Google Docs and Google Maps, Android, YouTube 

Acquisition Trail 

2006 also saw Google buy up YouTube, a brand-new video-sharing site that was founded by a bunch of ex-PayPal employees. Google paid $1.65 billion in stock for YouTube.

Google was getting bigger and bigger.

 In 2006, Google opened up its first wholly-owned and designed data center in The Dalles, Oregon, on the banks of the Columbia river, squeezing out incredibly high levels of efficiency from its data centers with inventive new designs.

data center in The Dalles, Oregon (Google)

Google had become the generic word for "searching the Internet." And in June of 2006, the verb "google" was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

In 2008, the first-ever Android smartphone that consumers could buy. Today, Google Android is bigger than Apple IOS 

(Wikimedia) 1st Google Android

In 2008 Google Chrome was created, a web browser that integrated tightly with Google's growing roster of web services. Google wanted to make sure that on every device, you keep using Google — and looking at Google ads.

In 2011, Schmidt stepped down as Google CEO, and Larry Page became the new CEO of Google.

Larry Page (EPA)

In 2010, Google announced that it was working on driverless cars.

Driverless Car (Google)

In 2012, Google announced Google Glass

Google Glasses (Getty Images)

And recently, google restructured so Google became a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet, leaving Sundar Pichai in charge of the whole company, guiding Google into artificial intelligence.

Sundar Pichai has become Google’s new chief executive (AP)