CultureAMP raises $10m

Culture Amp, a startup headquartered in Melbourne, Australia that helps businesses know just what their employees think about work, has raised US$10 million (A$13.5 million) in a new funding round. 

The Series B funding was led by Index Ventures, along with Felicis Ventures and Blackbird Ventures.

Culture Amp banks on the fact businesses now recognise a good workplace culture can provide a competitive edge, Peter Haasz, vice president said "culture is key to effective growth"

Culture Amp aims to help companies grapple with these issues by offering an analytics platform that can provide them with quantitive and qualitative data about their employee satisfaction.

The company will use the cash injection to add new features to its platform and to begin a push into Europe, Haasz said. They're just about to open a London office, to compliment those in Melbourne, San Francisco and New York.

The Culture Amp founders, Rod Hamilton, Doug English, Didier Elzinga and Jon Williams [L-R].

Monday's news marks the company's biggest funding round so far, Haasz said. It raised US$6.3 million (A$8.5 million) in March, 2015.

The company, which began in its current form in 2013, claims to have some high profile, high-tech clientele, including Slack, Namely, Airbnb, Etsy, Eventbrite, Pinterest and Warby Parker.

When asked if the company intends to one day go public, Haasz said they didn't have any specific exit goals. "Our vision is the primary motivator for us — change the world of work for 10,000 organisations," he said.

Currently, Culture Amp is in more than 500 workplaces. While it began working mostly with technology companies, it has started to field interest from a wider circle of businesses. "We got our start in technology in 2014, and partly I think that was because tech companies are inherently innovative and willing to do things differently," he said. 

"What we found last year is the credibility of working with those companies has helped us branch out into hospitality, media and mining companies."

In fact, Culture Amp is now used by five Australian Football League teams. "We have quite a large number of sporting teams," Haasz said. "Organisations where performance matters."

What do these 15 Billionaires have in common

Complements of Business Insider, Indian Times and Referron 

Facebook, Airbnb, Snapchat, Flipcart, Atlassian, Stripe , Theranos and DJI have created the top 15 billionaires under 35! 

1. Mark Zuckerberg

Age: 31

Professional qualification: Facebook CEO
Estimated wealth: $45 billion

The Facebook co-founder and CEO became the youngest self-made billionaire in history at age 23, thanks to Facebook's IPO. Today, Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla are the ninth-wealthiest couple in the world and active philanthropists.

2. Eduardo Saverin

HowRichIs.com

Age: 33

Professional qualification: Facebook co-founder
Estimated wealth: $5.6 billion

The Facebook co-founder is no longer as involved in the company after legal disputes with his fellow co-founders, but he still holds a small stake in Facebook. The Brazilian-born entrepreneur is now an active angel investor as well as the director of 99, a Singapore-based property rental and sales website.

3. Sachin Bansal

Financial Express

Age: 34

Professional qualification: Flipkart co-founder
Estimated wealth: $1.4 billion

In 2007, Bansal teamed up with Binny Bansal — no relation, despite the same surname — to found Flipkart as an online seller of books. Today, it's India's top internet retailer, with 30 million products and 44 million registered users.

4. Binny Bansal

YourStory

Age: 34

Professional qualification: Flipkart co-founder
Estimated wealth: $1.4 billion

The co-founder of Flipkart has been the chief operating officer for years, but is slated to take over as CEO. Sachin, the CEO since the early days of Flipkart, will take on the newly created role of executive chairman.

5.Dustin Moskovitz

Age: 31

Professional qualification: Facebook CTO
Estimated wealth: $10 billion

The Facebook co-founder was the company's first CTO. He left to launch Asana in 2008 with fellow Facebooker Justin Rosenstein, but Moskovitz still holds a significant stake in the company.

6. Nathan Blecharczyk

WorldHeadWay

Age: 32

Professional qualification: Airbnb co-founder
Estimated wealth: $3.6 billion

The Harvard graduate was working as a product manager at Microsoft when his former roommate Joe Gebbia recruited him to co-found Airbnb. As the current CTO, he led the company's recent push into Cuba.

7. Joe Gebbia

Age: 34

Professional qualification: Airbnb co-founder
Estimated wealth: $3.6 billion

After starting a handful of smaller, less profitable business and tech ventures, Gebbia struck gold when he co-founded Airbnb with Blecharczy. He currently serves as the company's chief product officer.

8. Evan Spiegel

Mashable

Age: 25

Professional qualification: Snapchat CEO
Estimated wealth: $1.8 billion

At the ripe age of 25, the Snapchat CEO is the youngest billionaire in the world after launching the popular photo-sharing app with two of his former Stanford classmates.

9. Bobby Murphy

ibxk.com

Age: 26

Professional qualification: Snapchat CTO
Estimated wealth: $1.8 billion

Just five years out of college, the CTO of Snapchat is one of the youngest billionaires in the world, along with his Snapchat co-founder Spiegel. The two met during their days as Kappa Sigma fraternity brothers at Stanford.

10. John Collison

Wired

Age: 26

Professional qualification: Stripe co-founder
Estimated wealth: $1 billion

The Harvard dropout co-founded Stripe, an online payment company, with his brother Patrick in 2011. The Irish-born brothers now live in San Francisco, where the company is based.

11. Patrick Collison

Speakerpedia

Age: 27

Professional qualification: Stripe co-founder
Estimated wealth: $1.0 billion

The Stripe co-founder and CEO dropped out of MIT to partner with his brother John and pursue an entrepreneurial path. Their start-up was most recently valued at $5 billion in October.

12. Elizabeth Holmes

Business Insider

Age: 31

Professional qualification: Theranos co-founder
Estimated wealth: $4.3 billion

Holmes founded healthcare-technology company Theranos as a sophomore at Stanford. Within months, she dropped out to pursue her entrepreneurial path and build her company. Today, she's America's youngest female billionaire at age 31.

13. Scott Farquhar

Business Insider

Age: 35

Professional qualification: Atlassian co-founder
Estimated wealth: $1.9 billion

The Australia native co-founded software company Atlassian with a university buddy, Mike Cannon-Brookes, in 2002. Atlassian grew at a rapid rate and pulled off a successful IPO in 2015, the fifth-largest US IPO of that year.

14. Mike Cannon-Brookes

Forbes

Age: 35

Professional qualification: Atlassian CEO
Estimated wealth: $1.9 billion

Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar share the role of CEO at Atlassian, which now has 15 software products and serves clients including Citigroup, NASA, Twitter, and Tesla.

15. Frank Wang Tao

FortuneDotCom

Age: 35

Professional qualification: Dajiang Innovation Technology founder
Estimated wealth: $3.4 billion

In 2006, Frank Wang Tao founded Dajiang Innovation Technology (DJI) from his dorm room at Hong Kong University of Science

Melbourne startup HealthKit raises $1.6 million Series A round

From start up daily 

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Melbourne healthtech startup HealthKit, which has created a practice management system for private practices, a practitioner directory, and a health management platform for patients, has raised $1.6 million in a Series A round led by a Melbourne-based family office investor, with participation from existing investors.

The funding will go towards building out the team, product enhancements, and expanding the platform into Asia, Europe, and North America. This is the first substantial round of funding for the startup, which raised a small amount of angel funding in its early days.

Launched in 2012 by Lachlan Wheeler and Alison Hardacre, HealthKit now has over 11,000 practitioners around the world using its practice management software, while its directory boasts more than 220,000 practitioner profiles. The startup stated that 90 percent of its practitioner base is located in Australia, with the rest spread across more than 40 countries.

The global expansion was planned from the get go, with Wheeler and Hardacre originally working on a health platform for the Australian system before realising that the same problems were facing healthcare systems globally, and starting over on HealthKit. Wheeler said the fresh funding will now help the startup accelerate its push overseas.

“The funding will allow us to grow the team five-fold. We will also add product features, functions and integrations along with mobile platform capability to benefit practitioners and patients,” he said.

Cofounder Alison Hardacre added that the startup found an investor who will “really help us achieve our growth and who is committed to our vision of making health better.”

“We are building a global network of practitioners and patients, and all while growing a pool of anonymised data that can be used to better understand global health trends. So far we have achieved 1 percent of what we want to achieve,” she said.

This data aspect of the platform is particularly interesting; HealthKit collects health data through its booking system and the exercise and food diaries made available to patients.

Hardacre previously told Startup Daily that the startup is looking at various ways to put this data to work to help better understand health.

“We built HealthKit as a data analytics hub right from inception. We knew that the anonymised health data would have benefits for governments, to show where there may be a shortage of practitioners or disease clusters; medical researchers, to analyse patient populations and health data metrics; and corporate partners, such as pharmaceutical companies for clinical trial participant recruitment,” she said.

It’s set to be a big year for the Australian healthtech space, with health insurance company HCF last month announcing the startups taking part in its HCF Catalyst accelerator and scale up program with Slingshot. Companies taking part include CareMonkey, My Health Test, and Curo.

Image: Lahclan Wheeler and Alison Hardacre. Source: Supplied

Join us for Breakfast for the BBG Breakfast Briefings launch in March and April

What is BBG?

Business Builders Group (BBG) is designed to help you grow your business via a powerful close knit referral marketing community. The group is about helping each other grow each others business through referrals!

The BBG Process is specifically designed to overcome the key challenges that business owners and executives face when attracting referrals ... through their Community, unique BBG Structure, Professional Mentoring and Best of Breed Tools. 

The power of warm referrals work!

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Top 10 Big Mistakes by Entrepreneurs

Great talk by Guy Kawasaki - who I met at AlwaysOn a few years back.

ex Apple, now Canva evangelist and Exec fellow at Haas business school - prolific blogger

1. Multiply big numbers by 1pc

If only 1 percent of Entrepreneurs in Australia will join BBG, it will turn $15m make a profit of $5m and be worth $100m and multiply that by 10 countries! (If only!!!!!)

I hear plans along these lines every day. Huge mistake. It is hard to get 1 percent. Plus I don’t think any investor wants to hear that you want to get a mere 1 percent.

Be realistic with your projections. Work from the bottom up... What is your warm lead base, how many will look at the proposition , how many will you convert - based on market research or an actual sample! 

2. Scale too fast

Build infrastructure and business doesn't come! Be sure to build a laser focussed plan - to scale an already successful model - before diluting to build infrastructure 

I've never seen a business going broke by making sure more money goes out than comes in!! 

Case in point Atlassian ! Most successful Australian startup! 

Case in point... 2 technologies in competing space 

Company A - raised $8m - built infrastructure - entrepreneurs energy focussed on cap raise and infrastructure... Cash burn - Entrepreneur's vision is diluted with hired gun CEO - business sca

Company B - small team - laser focus on serving customers and building what customer wants - from 6 people - living on beer and pizza - now with annuity of $1m plus per annum and writing $100k plus a quarter

Make sure you have built a solid small business with a set of core customers - then think about the next step in scaling your business.

3) Focus on partnerships.

Most partnerships and JVs are just blowing smoke. Most partnerships are bullshit.

Sales solves most things and fixes most mistakes! (Money talks and bullshit walks)

4. Focus on the pitch.

Most entrepreneurs are so focused on the pitch that they think the most important tool is PowerPoint. The reason for your company is not to raise money. The end goal is to create customers.

A prototype and a demo is worth a thousand PowerPoints.

(Download Referron and have a play! )

5. Use too many slides

10:20:30 rule

10 points

20 minutes

30 point font

DONT

In the first minute, explain what you do. Not who you are. Nobody gives a shit. If you need money, it’s because you’ve not been successful so far.  … don’t tell about your team. Focus on what you do.... What is the pain you have solved 

Canva .... “We have democratized design so people don’t have to buy Photoshop and spend weeks learning.”

Referron ...." We have enabled people to easily refer (within 3 taps) and track measure and reward referrals! "

6. Proceed serially.

First raise money, then hire team, then get sales, then go public. But life is not serial. 

I need to raise money, hire, sell, support all at the same time. Life is a bitch.

7. Retain control.

Retaining control is a delusion. You think if you have 51 percent of the company, you control it. You are a tool, a means to an end to the investor. They want to give you a dollar and make back $50. If they don't - they will fuck you over! 

Have a small percentage of a Google or Apple rather than 51 percent of a piece of crap. 

8. Use patents for defensibility.

It will impress your parents. The ideal number of times to use “patent” in your pitch is one. But you won’t win a patent lawsuit against Google or Apple or Microsoft. The exception to this may be biotech, but generally don’t say patents make you 

Focus on building your business.... Scale makes you defensible.

(Too many examples of this!!)

Scale makes you defensible.

9. Hire like you.

If you’re male and white, you hire male and white. If you’re young, you hire young.

If you’re a kid, you need an adult. If you’re a man, you need women. It takes two women to overcome the stupidity of one man. Hire people who are different from you.

10. Befriend your investors.

You think they really like you. That they have faith in you. That is a very tenuous relationship. Accept the role that you are a means to an end.

As long as you exceed expectations, it will be a friendly and cordial relationship. 

Being an Entrepreneur is not for the faint hearted! Welcome to club fear!!!!

Venture Capital in Australia: 4 Gems from TED X 2016

Venture Capital in Australia: 4 Gems from TED X 2016:

4 Gems from TED X 2016

Why Procrastination works - from Australis own Vik Nithy 

I learned that pretty much everyone procrastinates, and that pretty much everyone does not feel they have enough time to finish the things they start.

This great quote from Leonard Bernstein was shared,” "Two things are necessary for great achievement: A plan, and not quite enough time.” I learned that Leonardo DaVinci toiled for 16 years on the Mona Lisa. I learned that while procrastination can be a vice to productivity, it can be a boon to creativity.

Riccardo Sabatini, showed us the amazing potential from us understanding  the entire human genome

   

He wheeled out on stage 175 huge books with 262,000 pages of information, each page filled with A, G, T and Cs, containing the entire DNA of Craig Venter. 

If just two letters were in the wrong order, it would mean he has cystic fibrosis. 

If just two letters were in the wrong order, it would mean he has cystic fibrosis. Using machine learning, he is now able to predict things like height, eye color, skin color, and even facial structure based on a person’s genome.

Using machine learning, we are now able to predict (and potentially change!!)  things like height, eye color, skin color, and even facial structure based on a person’s genome.

How Joe Gebbia formed the idea of Airbnb 

I thought of a way to make a few bucks, turning our place into "designers bed and breakfast". Offering yourg designers who come into town a place to crash during the 4 day event, complete with wireless internet, a small desk space, sa sleeoing mat and breakfast each morning... hah!! 

"the sharing economy really isn’t just about sharing. It’s about commerce. But it’s about commerce with the promise of human connection."

The promise of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). 

Microsoft showing their Hololens augmented reality headset.

At TED, Microsoft showed their Hololens augmented reality headset. It precisely maps the room, and projects objects that you can interact with directly and seamlessly into your environment.

 My mind was blown looking at the possibility below of imagining a future where you can walk around in a magical forrest. Look how amazingly realistic the surface is, and how close you can get to the experience.I VR and AR is going to have a dramatic effect on  entertainment, educational, and productivity applications beyond anything we can easily imagine today.

I can't wait to see what kinds of impact these ideas have in the future.

inspired by Bill Goss 

Is higher spending a pathway to prosperity?

 Tax Cuts or Investment in our future?: Treasurer Scott Morrison and his team are busy preparing the Australian Budget (or if thy already have, busy preparing how to sell it to the Australian public.

Here's a thought..... If you focus on reducing expenditure - you can only reduce your expenditure to 0 - and when you do that - all is destroyed.If you focus on the upside - it's not that relevant what you spend - if you earn more .... And there is no limit to the upside that you can create! 

In my view - continue to focus on investing on infrastructure, on education, on innovation. Spend more, continue to build and improve infrastructure, support the innovators , entrepreneurs and business builders - invest in building value - and the money will come - it always does.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

VC in Australia in 2016 is looking good

From startup magazine 

With four funds with $800m to invest , Blackbird, Blue Sky Venture Capital, Square Peg Capital and Brandon Capital all announcing $200 million raisings. and a host of success stories, Blackbird's Scevak is looking forward to exciting times in the Australian VC world. 

As these funds begin to deploy capital to local startups, the market will inevitably begin to compete with the world, Blue Sky Venture Capital investment director Elaine Stead tells Startup.

Is there enough deal flow to place these funds in Oz! It us known that the money is made in the series A an B rounds - when companies are established and ready to scale aka Atlassian 

Tony Holt of Square Peg says the industry will take a while to mature, and building a successful VC community does not happen overnight 

" This year will see large deployments of venture capital into the Australian startup ecosystem.We have a significant capacity to invest,” Holt says.

“We’ve had interest that has exceeded our expectations. We’re certainly in a position where we are investing from the new fund.”

Blackbird is on the hunt for founders that are ready to scale globally, Scavek says.

“We want to invest in ever more ambitious Australians who are aiming to be the best in the world, not the best in Australia,” he says.

“We’ll simply invest in the best entrepreneurs at a pace that we think makes sense.”

Blue Sky Ventures will be looking to close its own $200 million fund by the end of the year and is on the verge of fully deploying its previous fund after it was closed only eight months ago.

“That’s a strong signal of the deal-flow quality and volume we are seeing at the moment,” Stead says.

“This year we will be relentlessly focused on delivering investor value.

“We have three investments in the works right now which I look forward to sharing with everyone when we can talk about them.

“Then we will focus on developing deal-flow for our third fund so we can hit the ground running when it closes.” Watch outkleiner Perkins !!!!!

Australian startup knocks back $1 million

Troy Westley knocks back $1 million investment offer from his Melbourne based startup "CareMonkey" after  winning the Slush international startup pitch challenge after taking out the local competition in Melbourne.

The event was a great opportunity to network and meet potential partners and winning it was great publicity for us.” 

CareMonkey provides a system of managing sensitive personal and medical information stored by schools, clubs and groups with a duty of care, expanding from a team of eight in November to 17.

The company saw more revenue in November and December last year than all of the previous financial year and is “quite profitable”, Westley says.

“The business is growing fast – we’re earning good revenue,” he says. “We’ve turned into a profitable organisation.”

Because of this Westley says he isn’t interested in any outside investments at the moment – even a $1 million one.

“We did take it seriously and had a look at taking the investment but my co-founder and I decided that our focus is on generating revenue and proving we can be a profitable company,” he says. (Taking a leaf out of Mike and Scott's unicorn, Atlassian! )

We would rather focus on building the business than spending energy raising capital.

The Secret Formula 

Providing a great product, having happy customers and earning revenue.

We are spending our energy focussing on our  customers, giving them massive value so that they would be delighted to pay to use our service.

“From the very first customer we had revenue – I think that’s a good way to build a sustainable business.”

International Aspirations 

Westley says a move into the US and UK is already in the works, and we’ll do the same there as we’ve done here,” he says.

“We’ll get a foothold, get happy customers, earn revenue and understand what we need to do to be a dominant player in those markets."

“After that it’d be a good time to go to investors.”

Referron : Become a founding member of our business builders ...

Referron : Become a founding member of our business builders ...: If you'd like to attract a lot more referrals in your business, join us for drinks

Ideal person I like to work with

How to get involved in the Australian Startup Community in 2016

Wayne GerardCo-founder & CEO RedEye

 Views • 98 Likes • 19 Comments

The startup scene in Australia is gaining momentum very quickly, with over $1 Billion dollars in new funds announced in 2015, the federal government's new innovation policy and awesome state and local government initiatives, like Advance Qld and Brisbane City Council's new startup hub, there is a lot of excitement around startups and innovation!

How do you get involved and if you're a startup founder what are you doing to capitalise on all these initiatives?

Here's 10 things you can do to get engaged in the startup scene in Australia:

1.     Sign up for the StartupAus email.  https://startupaus.org/ StartupAus is the startup communities voice and has great relationships with all the incubators, accelerators, coworking spaces, events and the local, state and federal governments. You'll find out about events and get insight into the key players, initiatives and opportunities to participate in the startup ecosystem.

2.    Attend an event at an accelerator or coworking space. checkout http://www.rivercitylabs.net/ , http://www.ilabaccelerator.com/ in Brisbane http://fishburners.org/ , https://www.bluechilli.com/ , http://stoneandchalk.com.au/ , http://tankstreamlabs.com/  in Sydney http://yorkbutterfactory.com/ in Melbourne just to name a few.

3.    Checkout what's happening with the federal governments National Innovation and Science Agenda http://www.innovation.gov.au/

4.    Checkout what the QLD Governement is doing with Advance Qld  http://advanceqld.initiatives.qld.gov.au/  and check out what the other states are doing by visiting their websites.

5.    Attend a startup event, there are literally hundreds of big and small startup events happening around Australia in 2016. Check the events calendar at StartupAus or any of the coworking spaces to find out more.

6.    For a great source of startup news checkout http://www.startupsmart.com.au/ 

7.    Sign up for This Week in Startups Australia a great podcast about the Australian Startup Scene hosted by my friend Mark Pesce.  https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/twista-this-week-in-startups/id951368363?mt=2

8.    Visit a local startup, find a local startup in an area you're interested in, most founders will happily grab a coffee with you and help you to get a feel for the community and the right people to engage with. Come and meet our team at www.redeye.co 

9.    Attend a startup weekend in your capital city, find out more at http://www.up.co/ 

10. Start a startup! Its a wild ride, you'll learn stacks about business, leadership, building teams, solving problems, servicing clients, making money.... and not sleeping :-

What's the next frontier?

It was radio, the television, then internet then mobile.......

It was IBM, then Microsoft, then Google then Facebook

What's next? 

Virtual Reality will be the next frontier!!!!

A study has found that 32% of consumers are interested in buying a VR head set - especially to augment gaming and shopping!