Flying Fox Ventures

Exciting news for our portfolio company Presien and their selection into the John Deere Collaborator program. More AI-eyes on Big Green Machines to make our agri industry a safer place for everyone 👀 🤖 🚜 👏

Always love raise announcement day! Flying Fox Ventures has been a proud early investor in Safewill for a while and we’re delighted to be backing them again - as a small part of a large round with our friends at Reinventure Group, King River Capital and Carthona Capital. Congrats to the formidable Adam Lubofsky and his team. https://lnkd.in/gr3urnzk

Two of my favourite things: mine site safety and legal regulation. Don’t say I don’t know how to have a good time! Mandates for AI collision avoidance are on the horizon - and Presien has the solution.

It's Cut Through Venture data release day, and the The Australian Financial Review has noted that IPOs are becoming an increasingly rare form of exit. No surprise there. While an IPO can be a significant milestone for a large, fast-growing company, it’s not necessarily an exit in itself. As Rachael Neumann points out in the article, companies still in high-growth mode may need more patient capital to support long-term, bigger-bet strategies. But here’s the thing: for investors, patience can be overrated. There's a common misconception in venture that every fund needs to invest ‘from day one until forever’. In reality, there’s nothing wrong with an investment strategy that optimises for liquidity windows. It’s exactly how we operate at Flying Fox Ventures. Big funds that need to create billions in enterprise value must play the long game. Smaller funds, on the other hand, can deliver impressive multiples by selling to downstream investors much sooner. As the Australian venture ecosystem matures, it’s essential that we nurture a strong mix of both approaches—and everything in between. AFR article in comments (paywall).

At Flying Fox Ventures, we’ve always had a dual mission: find and back Australia’s (and the world’s!) best founders and build out the most powerful community of early stage investors.  In the past 4.5 years, we’ve helped over 400 people invest behind us; more than half of them writing their first startup cheque with us.  But as we reflect on our progress towards our mission to date, we feel confident that we’re delivering on the first part (hello Flying Fox portfolio: we heart you big time) but admittedly, have rested on our laurels on the second part.  Our investors are amazing - it’s true.  But save for a handful of new friends, we’ve been mostly a closed shop for the last few years.  The biggest compliment our investors can give us is to renew their trust in us and continue to invest year after year.  78% of our investors have invested beyond the annual cohort that they first joined.  We’re #humbled and #blessed.  But it means our annual cohorts are filled with pre-existing investors and we’ve often missed the opportunity to actively invite newcomers in.  In our attempt to stay ‘modest and demure’, we fear we projected a closed door. As we finish deploying our 4th signature cohort next week and gearing up to put our 5th cohort to work, we just want to say: you are welcome here. Come join us!  Tell your friends. Old hats, new timers - all good. It’s not too late and we love making new friends.  Reach out to me or Kylie Frazer and we’ll give you all the details.  (And yes, sorry, wholesale investors only) cc: Flying Fox Ventures Kylie Frazer

Gender issues are tough to talk about. Sometimes, it feels like shouting into the void, and frankly, I'm not a fan of noise. But I am a fan of experiments. My hope is that all the shouting this week will spark a few small changes. Let’s see in a year whether it made a difference—or if we’ve just unleashed a new set of unintended consequences.