This Week in Australian Startups - Issue #25, 22nd June 2023

Jun 21, 2023

Someone told me that moving houses was ranked as the second most painful experience according to some report. Whilst I can’t speak to the validity of this report, speaking from personal experience over the last 2 weeks, I can definitely attest to that - and apologise for no update last week as I was deep in unpacking boxes with the house move.

This ~~week~~ fortnight in Australian startups has seen plenty of raises and lots of headlines across the globe, Reddit taking most front pages of the internet with its changes in API pricing and access - I’ve linked to in this weeks newsletter. But as promised, here’s my take on Apple’s Vision Pro.

In true Apple fashion, my take is not coming first and hot off the press, but when I am ready. That’s how Apple does things, they usually aren’t trying to be first to market - but to capture the market with a compelling product. Two weeks ago at its WWDC Apple introduced the Apple Vision Pro, and not one mention of AR or VR in the 9:21 minute video announcement but very carefully positioned as Spatial Computing.

Whilst I wasn’t there (not that I was invited either…), Nilay Patel (Editor of the Verge) and Ben Thompson (Stratechery) were and their takes are worth reading here and here.

Meta seemed to have hired Google’s PR team that was in charge of their response to Microsoft and OpenAI, as they knee-jerked themselves into announcing the Meta Quest 3 a few days before Apple’s WWDC, starting at $499 USD compared to Apple’s Vision Pro at $3,499. Zuckerberg’s thoughts on internal memo also leaked.

Apple and Meta are at two ends of the VR spectrum. Meta is going after mass market adoption while Apple is going after the high end consumer and will likely eventually work its way down as it’s done with the iPhone. I don’t think it’s fair to compare them - one is going after a social/multi-player experience whilst the other is going after the single player experience. One challenge for Meta is that they are taking on arguably the best hardware manufacturer on the planet in Apple.

Apple has also done an exceptional job at playing the privacy angle in the last several years and has earned customer trust, Meta has not. It’s telling that the Vision Pro has 12 cameras on it and no one is kicking up a fuss - when Meta launched Facebook Portal there were strong opinions about letting Meta have even a single camera in your living room.

It would also be naive to underestimate Apple, and they haven’t been working on this for some time with a clear strategy in place. They’ve announced it at WWDC, 6 months ahead of the actual launch to allow developers to build for it - and just announced the availability of the VisionOS SDK.

Most interestingly is that one of the biggest call outs in Ben Thompson’s take is the experience of watching an NBA game and how realistic this was, as close to sitting courtside as possible. It’s not a coincidence that Apple has worldwide rights to the MLS, and if you’ve been reading the news you’ll know that Messi has just signed for Inter Miami - it’s been widely reported he’s likely going to be receiving a cut of new subscriptions to Apple TV’s MLS Season Pass.

Could we see a MLS Season Pass designed for the Vision Pro, where you can watch Messi every week as if you were in the dugout? Who knows, but there’s likely to be plenty of people that would fork out the $3,499 USD for the privilege.

Ultimately, the biggest clear use case is for productivity. High end MacBook Pro’s costs far in excess of the Vision Pro price tag. For many professionals there’ll be an easy justification to purchase it should it deliver on the promises shown in WWDC.

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Australian Funding Rounds

Broadband traffic analytics startup Canopus Networks tops up Series A with $4.5 million to improve gaming lags (Startup Daily)
Battery materials startup Sicona charges up with $22 million Series A (Startup Daily)
“TikTok-style” edtech platform Frntlne laps up $4.6 million for global expansion (SmartCompany)
Macquarie Uni spinout HydGene Renewables raises $6 million (Startup Daily)
Pet food startup Lyka raises $25 million in follow-on funding pushing Series B to $55 million (SmartCompany)
Insurer nib takes third bite of online scripts startup Midnight Health, pledging $24 million for 77% stake (Startup Daily)
No bull!@#$: Number 8 Bio lands $1.8 million for animal feed that reduces cow farts (SmartCompany)
Digital footy startup One Future Football backed by soccer stars raises $3 million (Startup Daily)
Perth startup WeVolt raises $2 million for app bringing the shared economy to EV chargers (SmartCompany)
Bootstrapped to 800,000 users, online programming community JDoodle lands $3.2M in funding (TechCrunch)
Tech startup Aquila’s $3m seed round to progress vision for wireless energy transmission (Business News Australia)
Reask Announces $6.55M Total Funding to Enter US & Expand Its Extreme Weather Risk Modeling to All Those Who Need It (PR Newswire)

International Funding Highlights

OpenAI rival Cohere raises a fresh $270 million to bring generative AI to the enterprise (VentureBeat)
Voice AI startup ElevenLabs raises $19m from a16z, Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross (Sifted)
France's Mistral AI blows in with a $113M seed round at a $260M valuation to take on OpenAI (TechCrunch)
Payments provider Volt scores £47m Series B round (UKTN)
Rose Rocket, whose platform helps transportation companies communicate, raises $38M (TechCrunch)

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This Week in Australian Startups

This Week in Australian Startups - Issue #25, 22nd June 2023

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