This Week in Australian Startups #35, 3rd September 2023
This Week in Australian Startups #35, 3rd September 2023
Canva celebrated their 10th birthday, and has certainly come a long way. On their company blog Canva shared a timeline of highlights in this journey from launching with 50,000 users to 10 years later having 135M monthly users. That’s some pretty special growth, not to mention the roughly $1.5B in ARR they also have.
Most people, analysts and VCs did not see the potential in Canva 10 years ago. Famously co-founder Melanie Perkins had been rejected by investors over 100 times.
Fast forward to today, and in many ways it seems like they’re just getting started. Yes they’ve built the platform for anyone to design beautiful graphics from individuals, small businesses all the way to large enterprises. Their biggest competition was Photoshop and now they’re going after Google and Microsoft after launching Canva Docs last year - a suite of tools that will allow users to write and collaborate on word documents, presentations, whiteboards, create websites and visualise data. Earlier this year they also added AI enhancements to core products allowing users to generate images and text.
It’s not unusual for tech companies to start out with a core SaaS offering and slowly expand either through horizontilisation (same product, new audience) or verticalisation (new product, same audience). More and more SaaS companies are becoming platform companies as they look to build more products to capture on their core audience. The best example that comes to mind for me is HubSpot which started out as a marketing automation platform, but now has products for sales, service/support, CMS/website and operations teams. For the full year ending 2022 HubSpots ARR was $1.7B growing 33% YoY.
With Canva only starting its verticilisation journey in the last 12 months, already with $1.5B ARR it’s certainly not a stretch to consider it could become significantly larger than HubSpot with the intentional strategy to become the Canvas to run your business (pun intended).
Top News
Australia
Fleet Space names Isa Notermans as new Chief People Officer following Series C funding (APDR)
Tank Stream Labs launches massive ‘Startup 2 Scaleup’ conference (Startup Daily)
Rampersand-backed entertainment booking platform Muso rebrands as Surreal ahead of Series A (Startup Daily)
Brisbane’s River City Labs is backing 20 women tech founders with a new mentoring program (Startup Daily)
Proptech PEXA diversifies into climate resilience market and acquires Sydney startup Land Insight (StartUp ScaleUp)
Data-driven buyers agency InvestorKit commits $1.65m to innovation and AI (StartUp ScaleUp)
Australia’s future depends on systems, not silos (InnovationAus)
50 Australian Inventions Changing the World (The Australian)
Samsara Eco is building Australia’s first ‘infinite recycling’ research and development facility (The Australian)
Robyn Denholm chair of Tesla and the Tech Council of Australia, and an operating partner at Blackbird is emerging as one of the nation’s keenest financial backers of female-led tech businesses. (The Australian)
Amazon under fire for its parliamentary testimony, which a union says is ‘shocking’ (The Australian)
Gig economy stoush shows government’s trouble fixing tech ‘disruption’ (AFR)
Appen plunges as losses widen amid AI gamble (AFR)
Tech workers take $20,000-plus pay cuts as fired talent floods market (AFR)
NextDC plans nearly $1b spend on data centres as AI wave looms (AFR)
Move aside WeWork, start-ups like Mutinex, Earlywork and Payble are making their own share offices (AFR)
Once valued at $500m, Till Payments is teetering on the brink (AFR)
Bardee, the startup which transforms food waste into protein and fertiliser with insects, is being investigated by the Fair Work Ombudsman (AFR)
Desygner, the bootstrapped graphic design platform is gearing up to take on Canva (BNA)
Airtasker defies drop in tasks posted to drive revenue to new heights (BNA)
How Showpo founder Jane Lu trusted her gut to keep 100 per cent of a $100m revenue business (BNA)
Zip Co sees emerging opportunities in Australia’s BNPL shake-up as losses slashed to $414m (BNA)
How VCs and startups really feel about the Big Four accounting firms (Capital Brief)
‘The next Google’: Early investor’s high hopes for Canva (The Australian)
Around the World
In a surprise tie-up, Shopify merchants will be able to offer Amazon’s ‘Buy with Prime’ option (TechCrunch)
X wants permission to start collecting your biometric data and employment history (The Verge)
Y Combinator removes Indian startup from batch over ‘irregularities’ (TechCrunch)
Lawsuit alleges no due diligence in Amazon’s Project Kuiper launch contracts to Blue Origin, ULA (TechCrunch)
OpenAI launches a ChatGPT plan for enterprise customers (TechCrunch)
The fall of Babylon: Failed telehealth startup once valued at $2B goes bankrupt, sold for parts (TechCrunch)
Shopify’s Stock Jumps After Deal With Amazon (The Messenger)
Meta Rejects Canada’s Peace Offering Over Online News Fight (The Messenger)
Meta allegedly considering ad-free, paid version of its EU apps (Mashable)
Google’s AI-powered note-taking app is the messy beginning of something great (The Verge)
Microsoft to unbundle Teams in Europe in bid to avoid EU antitrust fine (Engadget)
Amazon issues a hard-nosed warning to workers (TheStreet)
Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: “It’s probably not going to work out” (The Verge)
Arm’s IPO will tell us how much AI hype matters (The Verge)
ESPN in partnership talks with Amazon, could become most expensive sports streamer (TheStreet)
Australian Funding Rounds
Fremantle Seaweed, the startup aiming to combat climate change with the power of macroalgae, has recently been awarded a grant of $4M by the WA government to expand their operation from proof-of-concept to a fully commercial site (The Fish Site)
RayGen, has been awarded a $10M grant by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to improve technology design, lower production costs, and undertake studies in support of a project being deployed in Victoria (InnovationAus)
Listing Loop, the Melbourne based proptech, has closed the first tranche of its Series A with $2.1M (Startup Daily | AFR)
Pearler, the startup that uses AI to automate the handling of business questionnaires likes tenders, has raised $330K in pre-seed funding from the South Australia Venture Capital Fund (Business Daily Media)
International Funding Highlights
Lightspeed backs Markato, a marketplace that helps independent brands break into Asia (TechCrunch)
Apollo.io, a full-stack sales tech platform, bags $100M at a $1.6B valuation (TechCrunch)
Tesla Cofounder’s Redwood Raises Over $1 Billion To Boost EV Battery Materials Business (Forbes)
Eyeing to help companies sell more, US-based Mediafly raises $80M (TFN)
Veterinary software company TeleVet rebrands as Otto amid $43M in fresh funding (TechCrunch)
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