This Week in Australian Startups #53, 4th February 2024

It’s often difficult to see progress of a maturing ecosystem in a short time period, generally a longer perspective is required. Luckily for me there’s been a few strong signs this week of how the Australian startup ecosystem is maturing - making it easy for me to decide what to write about this week.

1. Atlassian reports its first ever $1B USD revenue quarter

Quite the achievement, and something for us all to be proud of and rally behind. Despite this though as trading closed shares in Atlassian dropped 9% taking ~$5B USD off Atlassian’s market cap. The fact we have an Australian tech company that just drop $5B USD in valuation is also a sign of what can be achieved.

Other promising signs for Atlassian included hitting $1B ARR for Jira, along with cutting net losses down to $84.5M USD for the quarter compared to $205M USD last year in the same quarter.

In its top priorities co-CEO and co-founder Scott Farquhar mentioned cloud migrations and AI among others. If there’s still plenty of space to convert on-premises customers to cloud, we should continue to see Cloud/SaaS ARR go up to the right and AI should be driving more cost efficiencies in the long term.

2. Secondary markets continue to be utilised

More liquidity of equity for employees is step change in the right direction. A hallmark of more mature ecosystems like the US and the UK is that many early employees have seen liquidity events, making share options much more tangible a real part of compensation.

This will only attract more high quality talent to the sector, and for those already in it hopefully a healthy payday that can either kickstart their own journey to start their own startup or as Eucalyptus founder Tom Doyle mentioned “to purchase Sydney property” as news of a secondary share sale for the startup broke.

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Australia

Top News

• How to _SOUTHSTART – why you want to be in Adelaide in March (Startup Daily)

• FinTech Australia has teamed up with Westpac and ANZ for a reverse pitch event (Startup Daily)

• University of South Australia is offering a scaleup pathway for space startups that includes $10,000 equity-free (Startup Daily)

• Controversial yet resilient, Eucalyptus eyes $8 million employee share sale (SmartCompany)

• Eucalyptus’ staff cash out $8M (AFR)

• Linktree explains new AI play that is “laser-focused” on social commerce (SmartCompany)

• Atlassian cuts loss in half as AI roll-out lifts quarterly revenue above US$1 billion (BNA)

• Fast-growing Brisbane software firm ChangeGPS acquired by UK’s Access Group (BNA)

• Online retailer The Whisky List barrels into festivals with The Whisky Show acquisition (BNA)

• LVLY co-founder Verity Tuck launches AI assistant Goldee for parents (BNA | AFR)

• VC firm AirTree names new partner, Kell Reilly former MD at General Atlantic (AFR)

• ‘About $8b short:’ big name investors buy into Canva for a bargain (AFR)

• VCs and climate change: Virescent Ventures, managed by the team behind the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, make $200M bet that climate tech’s time has come (AFR)

• Renewables start-up Brighte slashes marketing but still lost $30M last year (AFR)

• Cloudflare says Atlassian server briefly hacked in November (AFR)

• Atlassian tumbles 9% despite ‘incredible milestones’ (AFR)

• Afterpay’s global ambition feared in job cuts (AFR)

• From $500m to $75m: Whispir’s founder’s ‘deep regret’ as bidding war ends (AFR)

• ‘Plethora’ of underperforming AI apps to get the chop this year, Canva survey reveals (The Australian)

• Canva in no rush to IPO after $2.3bn share sale beats expectations (The Australian)

• Los Angeles Police SWAT team partners with Australian VR company xReality (The Australian)

• No longer the Nasdaq of the Pacific, the ASX wants next-gen startups to list at home (Capital Brief)

• The Flying Fox Female Founders Program (F4) is open for new female founder applications in Victoria (LinkedIn)

• HEX, an edtech startup, has signed its first major agreement in Australia with the University of Sydney which will give students academic credit for HEX courses (LinkedIn)

• Startmate shares its 5 year plan, introducing Startmate 3.0 - Startmate Nation (Startmate)

• Qloud Games has been selected to participate in the Andreessen Horowitz SPEEDRUN gaming startup accelerator (LinkedIn)
  

Funding Rounds

• The Australian government’s Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF), has invested a combined $3.25 million in four digital health startups through the commercialisation program ANDHealth+ (Startup Daily)

  • Baymatob, which developed a wearable monitor for pregnant women that uses AI to analyse to their vital signs for risks of birth complications

  • Macuject, which uses AI to analyse macular scans for early detection of preventable vision loss

  • Neurotologix, which is pioneering remote assessments of dizziness and vertigo with a portable and user-friendly device called ROMI

  • WeGuide, which allows healthcare providers, clinical trial sponsors and medical research institutes to create bespoke digital health applications securely and 12 times faster and 10 times cheaper than alternatives.

• Amber, the energy retailer on a mission to shift Australia to 100% renewables, has raised a $29M Series C (Startup Daily | SmartCompany | BNA | The Australian)

• Yume, the food redistribution startup, has raised a $2M Seed round (Startup Daily | SmartCompany | BNA)

• Alt.leather, which makes a 100% bio-based leather alternative, has raised a $1.1M Seed round (Startup Daily | SmartCompany | BNA | AFR)

• ProcurePro, which simplifies the subscontractor procurement process for the construction industry, has raised a $6.15M Series A round (Startup Daily | BNA | The Age)

• Nbryo, which is tranforming the beef and dairy production systems globally through bio-digital technologies, has raised an undisclosed sum from Tenacious Ventures (LinkedIn)

• Ecommerce Equation, ecommerce coaching platform, has raised an undisclosed amount from Glow Capital (AFR)

• Gaia EnviroTech, an organic waste management and bioenergy company, has raised $4.3M from the decarbonisation fund of RFC Ambrian Funds Management (AFR)

• MySite, the community and stakeholder tool used by organisations like NSW State Government, has raised an undisclosed sum from PE Advent Partners (AFR)

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Around The World

Top News

• Apple Vision Pro: Day One (TechCrunch)

• Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it’s not (The Verge)

• Fintech Ramp acquires another AI-powered startup, Venue (TechCrunch)

• Spotify told to reverse layoffs in the Netherlands after not consulting with its works council (The Pragmatic Engineer)

• Amazon’s $1.4B iRobot deal is dead. Now what? (TechCrunch)

• VCs need exits — but how are they going to get them? (Sifted)

• Mark Zuckerberg calls Apple’s DMA rules ‘so onerous’ he doubts any developer will opt in (TechCrunch)

• Elon Musk’s Neuralink implants brain tech in human patient for the first time (CNBC)

• Meta’s $197 Billion Surge Is Biggest in Stock-Market History (Bloomberg)

• Reddit chooses New York Stock Exchange for long-stalled IPO (FT)

• 23andMe’s Fall From $6 Billion to Nearly $0 (WSJ)

• Elon Musk’s $56B Tesla pay deal is unfair, judge rules (TechCrunch)

• Some suggested events for Peter Thiel’s all-drug Olympics (The Verge)

• Raspberry Pi is planning a London IPO, but its CEO expects “no change” in focus (Ars Technica)

• PayPal to Cut Around 2,500 Jobs as Rivals Snag Market Share (WSJ)

• Google spent billions of dollars to lay people off (The Verge)

• Hottest Job in Corporate America? The Executive in Charge of A.I. (NYT)

• Blackstone Is Building a $25 Billion Empire of Power-Hungry Data Centers (Bloomberg)

Funding Rounds

• Amsterdam’s newest unicorn: DataSnipper raises $100M at $1B valuation to empower auditors with AI (Silicon Canals)

• Climate Data Service Watershed Secures $100 Million Round (Bloomberg)

• Codeium reels in $65M for its AI-powered coding platform (SiliconANGLE)