Folklore Ventures

Calling all Aussie founders and angels – Folklore and Cut Through Venture have started another year of collating the largest, crowd sourced data set on startup funding in Australia, to be released in February next year. Have your say on current funding allocation, and emerging trends that will shape the ecosystem. Sign up to access the survey: https://lnkd.in/g--RwcgX.

Good fun to be a part of the AWS Startup Founder & Investor Connect panel on Monday. I liked that a good portion of the time was devoted to questions from the audience (almost entirely of founders), as opposed to just listening to the panel wax lyrical - great thinking Lauren Capelin! One conversation thread that stuck with me was regarding the pretty common feeling amongst the audience in not truly knowing why an investor has said "no". My thoughts on this at the time (which thankfully still hold), are that there is basically zero downside, and a lot of upside, to be found in using a portion of the first call with an investor to get their on-the-spot take as to what excites and creates uncertainty for them regarding what they know so far about the company. At the least, you'll get a good insight into how they think / what they hold important / how much thought has gone into this etc. Requisite pics below. Thanks to everyone who has reached out since!

Congratulations to recent graduates of the Angel Investing Program at AGSM @ UNSW Business School. 👏 👏 👏 I had the pleasure of sitting in on a fireside chat between Beste Onay and Alister Coleman - focused on Folklore Ventures' 'First cheque to forever' investing framework. The audience heard more about Al's journey (from founder to Folklore.) As well as getting an unfiltered look at the rationale behind his investing rigor, and some thoughts on emerging markets that should shape future investment decisions. Thanks again for organising Beste Onay, UNSW Founders, UNSW, UNSW Angels, Rita Wu.

Supercharge your career with the role of a lifetime. Here are a few opportunities at our growing portfolio companies – Finance Manager @ Ansarada (Aus): https://lnkd.in/guV98MF3 Senior Software Engineer @ Auror (NZ): https://lnkd.in/gK_bYGpg Sales Development Representative @ Komodo (NZ): https://lnkd.in/gWJaxX2M Product Marketing Manager - DataSync @ Wonde (UK): https://lnkd.in/gCGxudUG Engineering roles @ Strong Compute (US): https://lnkd.in/gmgKChvn View the full list of roles available: https://lnkd.in/gG-Wutfd

We are very proud of the Auror team and CEO Phil Thomson for leading this milestone round. With its incredible growth and impact, Auror is one of the great software companies in the making. This round represents Folklore Ventures' 4th investment into Auror over 6 years and we wholeheartedly welcome Axon and W23 Global and their partnership.

Congratulations to the Auror team and Phil Thomson on their recent Series C raise. This marks Folklore's 4th investment into Auror's retail crime intelligence software over 6 years. The Auror team continues to grow its market share, now servicing more than half of Australia’s retailers. Marking Auror as one of ANZs greatest software companies in the making.

Had a lot of fun last week at InvestFest, hosted by Cohort Innovation Space Was great to see the thriving startup ecosystem on the Gold Coast as founders and investors came together + had a blast chatting with Alezeia Brown, Sid Kasbekar and Nick Capell about the broader landscape and our thoughts heading into 2025. Needless to say, I'm excited to see the next generation of incredible businesses that emerge out of the Goldie Big shoutout to Dren Xërxa, Georgia Wyllie and the team at CoSpaces for pulling together this great event

Hear William Pamment of SimConverse speak to how AI revolutionises healthcare training, read Strong Compute's strategy to optimising GitHub actions and access what the Folklore team have recently bookmarked –

Here’s where to find some of our Folks over the next few weeks – – 7th November (Bris): Sachin Samarawickrama is presenting at #InvestFest, hosted at Cohort Innovation Space, on investment trends and insights founders can use to fundraise in 2025. – 14th November (Syd): Rochelle Ritchie is attending a closed event on employer branding at the Canva office. – 14th November (Melb): Chris Comino will be in Melbourne. – 15th November (Syd): Alister Coleman is hosting a closed AMA discussion, with a group participating in the latest UNSW Founders course. – 21st November (Syd): Rochelle Ritchie is attending a panel discussion on 'A tale of customer delight gone right'. – 25th November (Syd): Mitchell Bissinger is sharing insight on lessons learnt from scale up, Eucalyptus, as part of an event hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Sachin Samarawickrama is also attending.

Portfolio update – here's an update from a few of our portfolio companies: Visionary Machines – Some of the team, including Sonny Foster, Nick Gibbs and Enver Eyiam, recently returned from Washington DC, where they joined the Australian Pavilion at the Association of United States Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting and Exposition 2024. After recently exhibiting at the #LandForces2024 Conference with the Chief of Army, where they displayed the Vanguard ISR toolkit in partnership with Supacat Asia Pacific. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gcNRDBx7 Wonde – Congratulations to Wonde on celebrating usage across 60+ countries and 30,000+ schools. Some of the team, including Barry van Oudtshoorn, recently attended #JNUC in Nashville. In the past few weeks, the team has also taken part in the #Edutech conference, hosted regular partner check ins and an in person meetup at Harrogate to discuss everything #MyLogin. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gSvAzPtR Auror – The Auror team recently returned from IACP 2024, where they connected with law enforcement partners, and Retail Risk - where they hosted multiple sessions on the Retail Crime Intelligence movement. As well as announcing a new partnership with the Illinois Organized Retail Crime Association (ILORCA). Read more: https://lnkd.in/gXf33tSR Crypto Tax Calculator – Recently celebrated a new partnership with eToro, as well as expanding the team and hiring for a range of roles. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gJZ2qj9x Strong Compute – The team recently hosted 2 AI Chess Hackathons promoting Strong Compute's 'Instant Super Computer', one in Sydney and SF respectively. As well as releasing a new blog post on how they've made Github actions 2-10x faster.   Ben Sand, founder and CEO of Strong Compute, spoke with Folklore LPs at our Annual Summit last week, on how the company is building on-demand compute infrastructure to service the Fortune 2000. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gZi3Zn_p SimConverse - Congratulations to the SimConverse team and cofounders, William Pamment and Aiden Roberts, on their inclusion in The Australians Top 100 Innovators List. William Pamment also featured on a podcast recently, explaining how SimConverse optimises healthcare training with AI and what this means for the future of patient care. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gAp4d2rt