This Week in Australian Startups #36, 10th September 2023
Just the one public raise this with Audinate raising $50M on the ASX taking it to unicorn status.
There has been a lot going on in the ecosystem though, and perhaps a bounce back up from the lows of this year.
The AI Builders Club
Launched just 3 months ago by Annie Liao, the AI Builders Club is a coworking residency and exclusive community for 40 of Australia's top AI Builders.
This week they ran ANZ’s biggest demo day with 26 new AI startups launching with over 400 people in attendance.
Safe to say the first cohort has been a success, and applications are now open for anyone to join.
Read more:
Annie Liao’s post on LinkedIn
Meet AI Builder Club: The free short residency program for Australian AI startups (SmartCompany)
Is the startup sector bouncing back after the era of zero interest rates has ended?
There’s enough chatter in the grapevine there to suggest that’s the case.
As free capital dried up, investor theses took a 180. From high growth, market share and aggressive investment strategies things quickly changed to profitability and sustainable growth. Here in Australia that’s led to plenty of startups shutting up shop and redundancies to reduce cash burn, I wrote about this in detail back in March.
It’s been a difficult 6 months. But a few things have happened which have led to, at least early indications that things may be on the up.
Firstly, it’s not as easy as pulling a quick u-turn when you have designed, hired and operating your startup on a different philosophy. With investor theses changing, many startups have course corrected and are now in a much better position, with some having weathered the storm to profitability or at least a clear path to it.
Secondly, a lot of major Australian VCs invested in Canva. Like any investment you want to sell high - well Blackbird did that just recently with a sale of $150M of its stock. This brings much needed liquidity to its fund, gives meaningful return to it’s investors and frees up capital to be reinvested into the market. It’s not just startups that need to show profitability, it’s also VCs - this sale gives that clear path to healthy returns for its investors to other Australian VCs who invested in Canva like SquarePeg and AirTree.
Australia is in need of a startup Mafia - the US has PayPal, the UK now has Revolut and Canva could be Australia’s. No a startup Mafia is not a gang, as interesting as that could be. It’s alumni who have cashed in big from major exits and gone on to create an entirely new ecosystem of startups.
Read more:
Blackbird Ventures, Advanced say tech sector funding is back on track (AFR)
Australian startups are gearing up for a hot secondary summer (Capital Brief)
How Canva helped early funds of Blackbird, AirTree and Square Peg pay staggering returns (AFR)
Top News
Australia
Lighter Capital has $30 million to lend to startups, with Invest Victoria backing the revenue-based VC alternative (Startup Daily)
A new VC fund, Synthesis Capital is backing early-stage medical and healthtech startups is on the hunt for investors (Startup Daily)
GO1, Hysata, LaunchVic’s Kate Cornick, Q-CTRL and Earlywork win at the Startup Daily Best in Tech Awards (Startup Daily)
Nourish Foods is up for sale after being placed in voluntary administration (Startup Daily)
CBA’s venture arm, X15, acqures invoice lending fintech Waddle from Xero (Startup Daily | BNA)
Investments regulator APRA thinks Canva’s $39 billion valuation is on the money (Startup Daily)
Perth startup Little Rippers inks three-year contract with local council for its smart dog bag dispensers (SmartCompany)
Telstra confirms bid for cloud consulting company Versent (ARN)
Coffee fruit snack bar startup I Am Grounded launches in Harris Farm (BNA)
Tim Flannery advocates for RegenAqua, the climate tech tackling toxic runoff in the reef (BNA)
Tyro Payments takes legal action against Kounta (owned by Lightspeed) for marketing rival service breaching obligations as its agent (BNA)
Fintech Upstreet, that rewards shoppers with fractional shares when buying everyday items, has shut down (AFR)
Carted, the startup that turns any website into a store without needing a developer, announces job redundancy round after restructure (AFR)
High staff turnover at Folklore has venture capital sector talking (AFR)
Undaunted by ASIC action, Block Earner prepares to launch a new crypto-backed loan product (The Australian)
Allier Capital hired to shop HR software biz Tambla (AFR)
Stake.com hack: More than $60 million stolen from Young Rich Lister Ed Craven’s crypto casino (AFR)
Inside Optus’s secret cyberattack briefings (AFR)
Koala co-CEO leaves the top job after less than a year (AFR)
Q-CTRL, Diraq partner to expand quantum computing adoption (AuManufacturing)
Patrick Darcy joins Capability.Co as CEO (StartUp ScaleUp)
Industry owned PropertyMate launches to rival Australian incumbents (StartUp ScaleUp)
Sun Cable in revamp as Cannon-Brookes’ Grok takes charge (AFR)
PwC's looks like equity, acts like equity, but not equity startup agreement (Capital Brief)
21 Questions from Canva’s 10-year journey: Part two (Canva)
Around the World
Facebook is getting rid of the News tab in Europe (CNBC)
A Letter from WeWork’s CEO on the Next Phase of WeWork (WeWork)
Clubhouse is trying to make a comeback (TechCrunch)
China reportedly extends iPhone ban to more workers as tensions with US rise (The Guardian)
Grindr Loses 45% of Staff Over Company's Two Days In-Person-Or-Else Policy (The Messenger)
Google files motion to dismiss Gannett's ad tech lawsuit (Axios)
Meta is back in the office three days a week, as WFH continues to die (The Verge)
EU ‘Gatekeeper’ List Has 5 American And No European Companies (Forbes)
Amazon prepares for court battle after standing firm against FTC (TheStreet)
HubSpot announces a range of new AI sales and marketing tools geared toward SMBs (VentureBeat)
Zoom’s CEO is suggesting that the US Federal Trade Commission should look into stopping Microsoft bundling Teams into Office as the EU has done (The Verge)
The fall of telehealth "unicorn" Babylon (Axios)
Australian Funding Rounds
Founder-led Audinate becomes a unicorn and completes $50M raise to bolster AV media tech Dante (BNA)
International Funding Highlights
Startup Mariana raises $175M for radiopharmaceutical drug research (BioPharma Dive)
AI reading coach startup Ello raises $15M to bolster child literacy (TechCrunch)
Kindo raises $7M for AI productivity platform for businesses (VentureBeat)
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