This Week in Australian Startups #60, 24th March 2024
“Perhaps another fundraise could be on the cards in the next 12 months if not sooner - it has all the right ingredients to be the next model startup in the new investor environment of profitability.” That’s how I closed out my analysis and future outlook of Deputy in November last year after Deputy posted their maiden profit.
Now only 5 months later, this week saw Deputy raise $37M through a strategic partnership from Express Employment Professionals at a valuation in excess of $1.1B. It makes Deputy the latest Australian unicorn and fittingly in its 15th year they become Australia’s 15th unicorn as well
Deputy is in many ways the model startup in the post ZIRP world. They waited 8 years after being founded to raise their Series A, and this latest funding is their first after 6 years - having been profitable now for 18 months. Whilst you could argue they were already on a focused path to sustainable growth and profitability, the impact to their business during COVID-19 certainly would have accelerated this.
OpenView (one of Deputy’s investors) Partner Kyle Poyar wrote an excellent piece about how this focus from Deputy resulted in some big wins in their PLG Motion “Self-service conversions have increased from 0 to 70%+ of new customers. Mobile conversion has exploded by 4x. And Deputy’s sales team has had big wins as they’ve been able to focus their time with mid-market accounts like Ace Hardware and Five Guys.”
The AFR exclusive goes into more detail about how this strategic partnership came about. Initially Express Employment Professionals was engaged as a prospect by Deputy - they have more than 860 franchised locations globally which includes ~500,000 shift workers, in fact they liked Deputy so much that they decided to invest instead. If Deputy can convert this workforce into users, it would represent a 36% increase in its current user base.
“..they all [shiftwork communities] deserve dignity at work and a work platform that makes their work more productive and more empowering” Deputy CEO Silvija Martincevic said in her post. According to Silvija, Deputy already has more than 1.4M shift workers using its app checking it up to 7 times a day. It’s launched new tools and foraying into new areas such an employee engagement and event a communication tool akin to Slack for shift workers.
This really is the tip of the iceberg for Deputy in many respects, while there is still so much opportunity for them to grow their core product they can drive a significant increase in their TAM and ARPU through their evolution to a platform. As Howard Liebman, founder of EVP (investor in Deputy) put it in his post this week “A huge congrats to Silvija Martincevic and the entire Deputy team on this milestone achievement. But in so many respects we're only just getting started!!”
Australia
Top News
Culture Amp is acquiring people analytics platform Orgnostic (Culture Amp)
ASIC stops Dubber’s CEO and a lawyer from leaving Australia over company’s missing $26.6M (Startup Daily)
FinTech Australia gets a new chair, with GM Rehan D’Almeida appointed CEO (Startup Daily)
Cicada x Tech23 have opened this years applications for deep tech startups (Startup Daily)
The legal battle by Fortnite maker Epic Games against Apple and Google’s app stores began in Australia’s Federal Court this week (Startup Daily)
Australia’s leading sustainability VCs are gathering in Melbourne for the Climate Investor Forum (Startup Daily)
Canva cofounder says Australian investors don’t understand tech and that’s why they’re listing in the US (Startup Daily)
Uber settles taxi industry class action with $272M compensation offer (Startup Daily)
Job interview analysis platform Sapia launches generative AI chatbot to explain its hiring decisions (Startup Daily)
Biotech Holista Colltech slapped with $1.8M fine for misleading investors (BNA)
Immutable, King River Capital and Polygon Labs launch US$100M web3 gaming fund (BNA)
Car pricing platform AutoGrab partners with JATO Dynamics with strategic expansion into the UK (Chris Gardner)
There’s an AI funding boom - but Australia’s being left out (AFR)
Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas has no plans to wind up the state’s embattled $2B VC fund Breakthrough Victoria (AFR)
SafetyCulture lends staff cash to buy its shares, as it tries to attract 200 workers globally over the next 18 months (AFR)
Investors in $300M self-driving car sensor start-up Baraja have written down their stakes to zero (AFR)
Stone and Chalk touts resilience despite $7M loss (Capital Brief)
How Australian universities' demands are stifling startups (Capital Brief)
Labor backs super fund stapling amid Employment Hero-Hostplus feud (Capital Brief)
Elaine Stead joins Main Sequence in deep tech investing role (Capital Brief)
Startmate launches Ladymates, a new community for women in startups (LinkedIn)
2024 Zurich Innovation Champion awarded to ‘Haast’ (Zurich)
Matt Vitale, co-founder of Birchal, recognised as FinTech Leader of the Year (Matt Vitale)
Bondable, powered by Hutly, launches as Australia’s first subscription rental bond service (Jeremy Hastings)
NAB chases MYOB and Xero with new Bookkeeper software developed with Thriday (AFR)
Eucalyptus founder Tim Doyle discusses the harm Australia's primitive approach to telehealth is doing after “technophobia” and “bad-faith attacks” on its business model from regulators (Tim Doyle)
Funding Rounds
Hola Health, a medtech providing 24hr on-demand telehealth, has raised a $4.5M pre-Series A led by M8 Ventures (Startup Daily | SmartCompany | BNA)
Cauldron Ferm, the fermentation startup unlocking the future of food, feed and fibre at a global scale, has raised a $9.5M Series A (Startup Daily | SmartCompany | BNA)
Prophet, and adtech building a real-time predictive analytics platform, has raised a $5M Seed round (Startup Daily | SmartCompany | BNA | AFR)
Marmalade, an invoice payments platform, has raised $16M (SmartCompany | BNA | AFR)
Deputy, an all-in-one workforce management solution for shift work, has raised $37M at a $1.1B+ valuation from Express Employment Professionals in what’s being called a ‘strategic invesemtn’ (Startup Daily)
Around The World
Top News
The DOJ and 16 states have brought an anti-trust complaint against Apple (Nicholas Thompson)
After raising $1.3B, Inflection is eaten alive by its biggest investor, Microsoft (TechCrunch)
Apple Is in Talks to Let Google Gemini Power iPhone AI Features (Bloomberg)
What Elon Musk Said in Testy Interview on Don Lemon’s New Show (NYT)
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 (YouTube)
Figma CEO Dylan Field on life after the failed Adobe deal and what comes next (The Verge)
Google researchers unveil ‘VLOGGER’, an AI that can bring still photos to life (VentureBeat)
Saudi Arabia Plans $40 Billion Push Into Artificial Intelligence (NYT)
Inflection AI Plans Pivot After Microsoft Hirings (Yahoo)
Temasek-Backed ShopBack Cuts 24% of Jobs in ‘Pay-Later’ Defeat (Bloomberg)
Users ditch Glassdoor, stunned by site adding real names without consent (Ars Technica)
Google hit with $270M fine in France as authority finds news publishers’ data was used for Gemini (TechCrunch)
Musk's Neuralink Shows Patient Controlling Video Games With His Mind (Yahoo)
Reddit Soars 48% in Debut as AI Pitch Gets Warm Reception (Bloomberg)
US DOJ’s blockbuster lawsuit against Apple is headline grabber but poses limited near-term impact (TechCrunch)
OpenAI Courts Hollywood in Meetings With Film Studios pitching its new AI video generation tool, Sora (Bloomberg)
Y Combinator Is Raising Billions In New Funding (Forbes)
Funding Rounds
Wonder has raised $700M in capital to further their mission to create the super app of mealtime (Marc Lore)
Telegram raises $330M fresh capital through bond sales (TechCrunch)
Data security, compliance, privacy and governance solutions provider BigID Raises $60 Million at $1 Billion Valuation (SecurityWeek)
Greenly lands $52M to help smaller companies track CO2 emissions (TechCrunch)
The Browser Company raises $50M at a $550M valuation (TechCrunch)