$800m fund for Climate Tech Startups

(Bloomberg) -- Venture capitalist Chris Sacca is launching four climate tech funds worth about $800 million in total through his new firm Lowercarbon Capital LLC

Sacca says “Let’s fund the unfundable, What’s the stuff where the business case isn’t there yet, but with relatively small dollars there might be a super high leverage opportunity?”

 VC money flowing into climate tech startups has grown 40-fold between 2013 and 2019, from $400 million to $16 billion, according to a 2020 PwC report.

So who is Chris Sacca

Sacca made his name and lots of money with early bets on companies such as Twitter, Instagram, Uber, Stripe and Kickstarter. But in a surprise move in 2017, at the age of 42, Sacca walked away from traditional venture investing.

Sacca thinks climate tech is at a tipping point, especially because of the pace at which talented people are entering the space. 

“Covid created this reflective moment and so did being drowned in fire smoke,” he says. “A lot of these folks are hearing from their kids: ‘Hey, what are you doing to save our future ?’”

The Saccas funds will be joined by more than 250 other limited partners. The smallest capital commitment is $15,000 and the largest they declined was for $150 million. The Limited Partners ( LPs ) include not just rich individuals, but also foundations, non-profits, universities and pension funds.

The Climate VC Model

“When you’re building a new social network, you spend a couple of years coding it all towards launch day. Then you put it out and no one cares,” he says. With climate tech companies, “we seed the science and we get to prototype. Then we find that first customer willing to pay for it, because what we’ve made is cheaper, better, faster, easier to use, more delicious or requires less maintenance. And we see that first incremental revenue faster.”

The Goal

Like other climate-tech VCs, Sacca wants his startups to reduce or remove emissions ideally at the scale of billions of tons each year. Many of Lowercarbon’s 50 investments to date—not all of which are public yet—have been for startups that remove carbon dioxide from the air using a variety of technologies.

Australia’s Tech Council funded by a Stable of Unicorns

Afterpay co-founder Anthony Eisen wants Australia to become the “head office for global tech companies” and compete with Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv, joining Atlassian boss Scott Farquhar and Tesla chair Robyn Denholm in a push to drive the fast-growing sector above one million jobs by 2025.

The nation’s leading tech companies – including Afterpay, ­Atlassian, Canva, Google Australia, Airtasker and Microsoft Australia – will launch Tech Council of Australia on Wednesday, bringing together tech ­moguls and start-up pioneers to position the country as a ­global hub.

With the industry already pumping $167bn into the economy and employing 861,000 Aus­tralians, fuelled by a 65,000 jobs boom during the pandemic, the Tech Council has set a target of ­increasing economic output to $250bn within a decade.

Tony Jacobson - A Legendary BBG Foundation Member

 Tony, thanks for all that you do!!

You have an ability to soak in information , and share it in such a beautiful way!!

Australia is coming into its own as a Global Tech Hub

Great post by Lisa Wood of Austrade 

Exciting news with Square acquiring Afterpay in what will be the largest M&A deal in Australian history!

Afterpay CEO Anthony Eisen says Australia is rapidly becoming a major global technology and financial services hub.

“We have the talent, infrastructure, location and lifestyle necessary to be among the best in the world. As an Australian company, Afterpay is proud to play a role in making that happen.

Find out more at: www.globalaustralia.gov.au

Global Business & Talent Attraction Taskforce Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade) 

Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Peter Verwer AO David Tony Michael Susan Stan Brendan Jodette Sandaldeep Brooke Bel Rob Tom Zenia Sarah Pip Stephanie

TechLend nabs $50m from Partners For Growth

Exciting times ahead for Aaron Bassin’s TechLend as they secure an additional $50M in funding, from Partners For Growth! 

What TechLend does

 Theymake bridging loans much simpler in the housing market - disrupting the traditional property finance market

Some of the people 

Nick Jacobs Amber Johnston Aleisha Smith Adam Borowsky Maximilien Penel Jason Georgatos Richard Osborne Karthi Sepulohniam (Subramaniam)) Matt Leibowitz 

So who is Partners for Growth

Partners for Growth (PFG) is a Silicon Valley based VC firm that invests in emerging growth companies across the innovation economy, and has invested more than $450 million in over 60 Australian startups and scale ups to date.  PFG has partnered with leading ecommerce furniture and mattress company Koala; small business loan specialist Prospa and rewards platform Cashrewards.

Jason Georgiatos, Managing Director of Partners for Growth, said: .. Techlend’s vision is in line with PFG’s strategy to support global fintech disruptors. “

Square intends to acquire Afterpay

Nick Mnar and Anthony Eisen  cofounders of Afterpay

Afterpay announced Square intends to acquire Afterpay for $39 billion - the largest corporate transaction in Australian history. 

Congrats Nick Molnar and team 👏 #startupaus #auspol #entrepreneurship

Square and Afterpay are two of the fastest growing fintech companies with a shared mission of economic empowerment and financial inclusion, and together, plan to deliver an even more attractive platform for consumers and merchants across geographies, categories and segments.

This partnership marks a huge milestone for the Australian technology sector and our growing profile on the world stage.

Congratulations on this wonderful moment to the entire team

You can read all about it here: https://lnkd.in/gZMGiCXy

A new animal has come to Australia - the Unicorn

Nick Crocker, general partner of Blackbird, says now “is the best time to be a founder in Australian history”.

Here are some of Australia’s “unicorns” valued at $1bn or more, after a spate of raisings as venture capitalists and wealth investors have piled in and spent billions in

• Culture Amp hits a $2 billion,
• Canva - a $19 billion 
• Airwallex - $3 billion - founders created their own find
• Safetyculture- $2.2 billion 
• Judo - $1b
• Zip - $5b
• Afterpay - 80b
• GO1
• Rokt
• Redbubble
• Atlassian
• Aconnex
• Redbubble
• Envato
• Nearmap 

Who else ?

Who in the next 10 years?

Circle In raises $2.275M for global expansion

Jodi Geddes and Kate Pollard  startup “Circle In”a “fam tech” has secured.seed funding of $2.275m funding from the VC Community including Our Innovation Fund , Leigh Jasper and Carol Schwartz and has a host of big name clients including Medibank Private, Atlassian and Culture Amp, EY, GAP and Estee Lauder.

The money used is to expand into USA and UK.

https://www.smh.com.au/business/small-business/parental-support-startup-circle-in-raises-1-5-million-20190813-p52gr4.html

https://www.afr.com/street-talk/carol-schwartz-leigh-jasper-back-circle-in-20210729-p58e00

Nakd brands powered by Reddit army of investors

Nakd Brand’s CEO Australian Justin Davis-Rice 

almost fell out of bed - when he saw his struggling lingerie company’s NASDAQ share price going through the roof - “We were trading at a market cap of $US550 million and we had been about $US80 million the day before - on the verge of collapse 

— Justin Davis-Rice, Bendon CEO”

A band of Reddit Investors came to the party to support the stock giving the Australian export a chance to shine 

Innovation for Export of Australian flowers around the world

Wafex provides about half of Australia's national flower #exports. It employs 150 staff, owns 4 large grow farms and buys from 50 domestic commercial growers across south-west Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, the NSW North and South Coast regions and south-east Queensland.

When airfreight availability plummeted at the start of the pandemic, Australia’s largest wildflower exporter was looking at a $5 million dollar hit and the heartbreak of laying off staff.   

Enter the International Freight Assistance Mechanism (IFAM). Accessing IFAM-supported flights was a lifeline for Wafex as it enabled their prized blooms to continue moving into markets including the United States, Taiwan, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Holland, Vietnam and Japan which in turn helped them bounce back from the brink of financial ruin.

Read more:  https://lnkd.in/d6JJu48

https://lnkd.in/d6JJu48

#exporters #emdg #exports 

Do you have a good news story ?

Www.Bsi grants.com.Au

7 common mistakes when pitching for money

 As one of Business Insider's"30 Women in Venture Capital to Watch,” Fran Hauser knows what gets her to open up her own wallet to help fund a startup.

Here are Fran Hauser’s 7 most common mistakes people make pitching their business:

1. Forgetting the investor is a human being. Yes, fundraising is about products and money and financial returns and all of that. But there is also the human factor, too. You're asking this person to join you in a potentially risky (and hopefully successful) long-term relationship. Since this is a human relationship—and not one solely with the investor’s bank account—trust needs to be established first. To do this, spend time learning about the investor ahead of your meeting so you can make a personal connection. I know I greatly appreciate it when a founder starts the meeting by referencing something about me personally. Remember, the investor is a human being, not a human ATM.

2. Not qualifying investors. The same way you qualify prospects for a sales position, you have to qualify investors too. Look for investors that, not only like your industry, but also have either previously invested in that space or have a personal affiliation with it. It’s important to know if they are actively investing at the stage you’re seeking funding for, because otherwise you’re wasting their time—and yours. Find out when the last investment they made was, plus how many investments they make annually. And it’s crucial to know their reputation as an investor and how they treat partners. Regardless of how much money they can offer, do you really want to work with a known jerk?

3. Lack of honest Q &A prep. A great salesperson always tries to anticipate what the objections, comments and questions are going to be. Develop answers to the five questions you hope investors won't ask. Where are the company’s vulnerabilities? What holes are still yet to be filled in? Why won’t the company turn profit for a year? Make sure you air all your personal concerns that keep you up at night and have data-backed reasons why those issues won’t be a problem in the future.

4. Too much jargon. You want the investor leaving the meeting thinking yours is an opportunity too big to pass up. That now is the right time and YOU are the founder who can make it happen. But you don’t want the investor thinking you’re full of BS because you load on inspirational quips and a giant vocabulary. Be authentic by providing actual numbers and real-life stories. These are things that investors are going to remember and will be able to easily repeat to their colleagues. Simpler is better.

5. Dismissing feedback. The companies in my portfolio that failed have one common thread and it went back to my initial meetings with the founders: They were quick to dismiss any feedback. You can still be confident, have conviction in your company, and run things they way you want, and also show that you’re coachable too. Being responsive shows the investor you’re open to ideas, just like any good boss worth their salt should be. Relationships are not one sided.

6. Lack of mindset. Mindset is everything. If you go into your fundraising with a growth mindset, it will make the whole process so much more enjoyable. Go in with your eyes wide open. There are going to be a lot of NOs, but if you turn each one of those rejections into a learning moment, you’ll enjoy the process a lot more.

7. Why does the world need another X? Another common mistake I often see is that the founder starts with a product description before they communicate the pain point or opportunity. Convince the investor that there is a need first and then follow up with how you are addressing that need with your next billion-dollar idea.

five strategies to make your investor deck compelling

From seeing dozens of pitches from entrepreneurs every week, I've learned what makes a great pitch deck TRULY STAND OUT! 

Here are five strategies to make your deck compelling and increase your chances so that investors can't say "NO" to you when you go out to raise money for your business.

✔️ Make it crystal clear what problem you're solving and how your business is doing that. The person on the other side of the table or the other side of the email you're sending the pitch deck to probably knows nothing — so you should make sure you're explaining things so clearly as if you were telling something to a toddler. 

 ✔️ Clearly outline how much of the market opportunity you think you could capture. Whether that's a billion-dollar or two-thousand-dollar opportunity, be realistic and let investors understand your business's full potential. The right investor is going to be a little different depending on what the market opportunity is. 

✔️ There are many teams out there that investors can back; why should they back you? What is the unique expertise that you bring to the table? Why are you the person to solve this problem? 

✔️ Don't be afraid to be clear about what you don't know. Be open about the gaps in your skill sets or your team's and share how your advisors and other people can fill them in when you don't meet specific criteria. Investors like to see that you're not pretending to know everything in the game. 

✔️ Establish a clear ASK in your deck. I've seen so many great pitch decks that got me excited about a company, but then they never specifically said how much money they were raising, in what increments, or how much the valuation was. Make sure you have a specific ask at the end of your deck so people know exactly how they can get involved. 

Check out her latest YouTube video on this topic here. #pitchdeck #pitching #investors

Female Founders Fund closes $57M fund

New York-based Female Founders Fund has raised $57 million for its third flagship vehicle. The firm makes seed-stage investments in companies created by women, targeting deals in sectors including ecommerce, media and advertising. Its portfolio includes wedding planning startup Zola and Rent The Runway, a designer clothing and accessory rental service. Institutional investors including Goldman Sachs, Cambridge Associates and Pivotal Venturescontributed to the fund.

Rhipe sells for over $400m to Crayon

One of our investees who started in our office was a company called NewLease - that leased software to corporates.

It backdoored into a listed shell called Rhipe - and last week accepted an offer by 

Global IT consultancy Crayon to acquire it for  $2.50 per share or $402.7 million.

What an amazing story 

Smes and finance - an opportunity?

SMEs are the backbone of our economy 

and yet they seem to  “be stiffed” by the banks! 

To say that they are  under-serviced by the finance sector Is an understatement 

The Problem  for SMEs

• Even with Covid gaurantees - it was nigh impossible for an sme to het a bank loan from a traditional bank without security or a guarantee from someone other than the founder
• Many small businesses have been knocked back for finance
• The Australian Bureau of Statistics show that the lack of access to finance is the most common barrier to innovation
• Fintechs have begun meeting the demand, but have their quirks 

The funding gap 

The Problem  for Investors

Investors - who invest in equity and hybrids (a mix of equity and loan are a great source.

Money that is not getting good returns need to find a home

The Connection 

There is money out there - but how do you 

1. Find it ?
2. Negotiate the best repayment terms for you?
3. Find the right lender / investor  for your business
4. Understand the different forms of finance ? Nomad, peer to peer lending, loan backed by security, equity Or a mix?

This is where the finance broker comes in and why there role is critical 

The $2m to $10m turnover range SME have the opportunity for exponential growth - and this is where The opportunity is!

Challenges

The Banks

Most SME loans are currently secured by housing - lack of collateral is the most common reason for a business’s inability to access finance; 37% of all rejections can be attributed to this issue.

The Fintechs 

For the last five years, so-called peer-to-peer lenders have connected investors and borrowers to provide more than $20bn in finance, faster than the banks ever could.

The Investors

Where to find them?

 many are unsophisticated 

The VCs invest - but not in many 

Connecting SMEs with lenders  and investors is a challenge  – and beefing up risk assessment in the process is a requirement by the SME 

The Opportunity 

SMEs, investors and indeed brokers are looking for viable alternatives to the banks, but not at the cost of security.

A broker’s job is not just to secure finance for a client, but to find the right finance.

• banks 
• fintechs 
• Vcs
• Bomad
• Investors - fool family and friends 
• Professional Investors
• Stock exchange
• Trade sale
• Mergers and acquisitions 

Good advice and great financial management from brokers is crucial for the success of small businesses over the next 10 years 

Who can relate?

Who needs money? 

Whose keen to invest and play in this space 

Let’s explore the opportunity 

Inspired by https://www.marketlend.com.au/blog/editorial-the-true-role-of-the-sme-broker/

In a cash rich VC world @ThinkstCanary Haroon Meer - founder and CEO bootstrapped and has crossed $11M in ARR -

What it does 

Cybersecurity

Canary provides  an early warning system using honeypots - for $10k and 4 minutes of your time - you will know that you are being hacked and where - and you identify the hacker 

The Product

Thinkst deploy security honeypots that allow customers to discover when they are breached (without them having to be informed by third parties some 300 days later). 

The key - deployment and management needed to be dead-simple. 

Honeypots have a long history in the security world (pre-dating Canary by decades), but were always painful to install and run. Removing this pain became their North Star. 

What made the succeed 

Kept promises

We were so crazily grateful for the early customers who took a chance on us, that all 5 of us worked like crazy to make sure we never dropped a promise. We are genuinely grateful for our customers and work hard to keep our promises is baked into everything we do and guides all our product decisions.

Being grateful to our customers guides all our decisions, so our sales will never be spammy, and our legal documents try hard to be in simple English and gotcha-free. 

Connecting and collaborating

In 2017 we attended a bunch of evening functions and most were not really our scene. So in 2018, we rented a venueabout a kilometre from the madness for a little gathering of our own. While all the parties and bars were full and loud music was making sure nobody could hear anybody else, we had a quiet location where we bought drinks and pizza as Halvar Flake spoke about his experiences selling his first company to Google.

In 2019 we had the same deal with Jon Oberheide talking about how they scaled and sold Duo Security to Cisco.

A nice place to work

The rush to market in our early days demanded long hours, but we’ve been able to grow our team over this time so we didn’t all have to be “on” constantly. Today, while still small by sprawling SV standards (we are 22 people all in) we get to work pretty normal hours. (It’s still totally normal to see people chatting on Slack in the wee hours of the morning, but this could just as easily be people commenting on recent NFT craziness as it is likely to be because of work.)

We get to focus on projects that reasonably stretch each other, we get to work on features we think are important, and we get a chance to ship stuff that doesn’t suck. (It’s a little bit surprising, but just committing to not sucking is surprisingly rare). Over time it means we get to build a team of smart people who enjoy what they do and enjoy how we do it.

Giving Back

One of our core values at Thinkst is that we can do well by doing good. We sit in South Africa which ranks first in the world  for income inequality. Last year we were able to cover tuition & accommodation for 3 University students, and over the past 2 years have managed to donate over a million dollars to local charities. We have some cool plans to do a little more in this space, but we will save those announcements for after we have more of those runs on the board.

The Product, the product, the product

If there’s one take-away from this post for young startups, let it be this: 

The product absolutely matters. 

If you can combine a great product with a really low burn-rate you are in fantastic shape for the road ahead (that’s particularly true for entrepreneurs outside the Valley).

The secret sauce - passion about the product and the people 

From day-1 we’ve focused relentlessly on making Canary better, easier to deploy and easier to manage. We constantly research and develop new Canarytokens that can be used to detect badness with high levels of certainty (for small deployment costs). As we’ve grown, we’ve been able to hire smarter people so we’ve been able to continually up our game, from the devices we ship to the infrastructure that makes it all possible.

What do you miss out when bootstrapping vs VC 

• Great VCs make good sounding boards for problems you might be having (but great VCs are pretty rare). So founders need to find the right VC
• Press is easier to come by for funded startups, but we also don’t think that that sort of press is super helpful.
• VCs give you credibility and in some ways give you permission to act grown up. 
• It almost certainly has benefits for exits.

Where to from here 

For us, it’s absolutely business as usual. We know that we’re still judged by our next update.  That all our previous customer interactions don't matter if we screw up the next one. 

So we continue to work like hell keeping our promises, growing Canary by making even more customers happy.

An inspirational interview with  Haroon Meer - a hacker made good!

Inspired from 

https://blog.thinkst.com/2021/03/we-bootstrapped-to-11-million-in-arr.html?m=1

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.”

So what’s at Stake?

Today Stake announced it’s plans to partner with one of the large Australian broker-dealers that will let its users buy and sell all publicly traded stocks and ETFs on the ASX and Chi-X.

So what’s at Stake?

Stake is a low-cost equities broker with over 300k users, and will allow customers to  trade ASX-listed equities and exchange traded funds (ETFs) putting pressure on incumbent brokers like CommSec by lowering fees to next to 0 and providing a slicker trading experience.

Stake is an Australian alternative to Robinhood – that provides millions of customers  with cheap access to US equities. 

#neweraofbrokerage #asx #disruptfinancialmarkets #nexttechrevolution #disruption #anewway

Superhero

Aussie Online Training Startup sells to USA Pluralsight for $2 billion

Melbourne brothers Sam and Ryan Kroonenburg have struck it rich after their online learning startup was snapped up by US giant Pluralsight in a deal that values the company at more than $2 billion.

The Kroonenburg brothers started A Cloud Guru just over five years ago after Sam built the online training provider in four weeks from his bedroom. It has grown to $116 million in revenue driven by the shift to online education and cloud storage.

A Cloud Guru teaches people how to use cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform and has more than 2.5 million users around the world. The startup is backed by local venture capital firm Airtree Ventures alongside US-based Summit Partners and Elephant, and has raised a total of $55 million in funding.

https://apple.news/AzHVK-d2dSh2wSfc2hjohBw