This Week in Australian Startups #65, 28th April 2024

Short and sweet this week, as I’m taking a personal day off to spend time with family to celebrate my daughters second birthday.

But if there’s one things you need to know this week, it’s that Atlassian co-founder and co-CEO Scott Farquhar has decided to call it a day after 23 years - read more in his public note.

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Australia

Top News

• 'Legendary run': Farquhar hailed for putting Atlassian and Aussie tech on the world map (Capital Brief)

• Global cybercrime crackdown sees five arrested in Australia over phishing scam (Startup Daily)

• Harikesh Pushpapathan named partner at Stoic Venture Capital (Startup Daily)

• Employment Hero debuts SmartMatch amid concerns over AI and recruitment bias (SmartCompany)

• How much has Canva made Blackbird’s partners? Hundreds of millions (AFR)

• One Future Football, backed by Nick Kygrios, Naomi Osaka, Steve Smith, written down to $0 by its largest investor but is determined to grow with a new model (AFR)

• NIB unleashes AI-powered symptom checker to slash hospital wait times (The Australian)

• Birchal CEO issues equity crowdfunding defence after sharp VC criticism (Capital Brief)

• Australian VC King River Capital dives back into Web3 (Capital Brief)

• Sydney Uni to lead $18.3M Quantum Australia effort (InnovationAus)

• Legal fight with Elon Musk's X looms as eSafety Commissioner's greatest test (Capital Brief)

Funding Rounds

• Veyor Digital, a cloud-based logistics scheduling and planning platform, has raised $2.75M in a pre-Series A round (Startup Daily | SmartCompany | BNA)

• Raygen, which is building a world-leading capability in the next generation of solar power and electricity storage, has raised a $51M Series D round (Startup Daily | SmartCompany | BNA)

• Peeplcoach, on a mission to democratise access to leadership development and one-on-one coaching, has raised $1.3M (SmartCompany)

• Outread, which aims to streamline the process professionals use to access and digest academic research, has raised $750K in an oversubscribed pre-Seed round (SmartCompany)

• Kindling, a new media-startup which aims to help content creators “supercharge” their product and build a marketplace for them to meet potential advertisers, has raised $500K in a pre-Seed round (AFR | Sachin Shah)

• CoraMetix, a medtech startup developing next-generation polymeric heart valves using advanced 3D printing technologies, has raised $500,000 seed round (SmartCompany)

• Mighty Kingdom, one of the largest independent game developer in Australia, has raised $8.2M on the ASX (BNA | ASX)

• DroneShield, a counterdrone defence technology startup, has raised a total of $105M on the ASX after seeing a huge increase in demand (BNA | ASX)