Ben Armstrong

🇦🇺 The State of the Australian VC Market Heading into 2025 📈 🗓 Date: 28th November | ⏰ Time: 12pm-1pm AEDT 🎟 Tickets on sale now! After a challenging few years in the startup funding landscape—with reduced funding rounds and extended runways—we’re beginning to see promising signs of market recovery. Recent boosts in US investment and steady local deals under $50M could signal positive changes on the horizon. Join us along with our expert panel from Aussie Angels, Tractor Ventures, Rampersand, and Five Capital as we share insights into market trends and what investors are watching closely for in the year ahead. We’ll end with a live Q&A, so bring your questions and get the inside track on what to expect in 2025! Don’t miss out—tickets on sale now! #VCMarket #Investment #AusStartups https://hubs.li/Q02XsdTb0

15

1 Comment

At the Launch Vic Awards Nights, there was a lot of talk about the VC’s in our ecosystem, and quite a bit of mention of Angel Syndicates, but no mention of Venture Studios. In fact when people ask me what I do, I often have to explain what a Venture Studio is. So let me make the Venture Studio pitch. Firstly, what is a Venture Studio? Venture Studios give life to startups in two main ways. 1. Ideas are incubated and validated within the Venture Studio, once validated, the team finds the external resources/ people needed to bring the idea to life. 2. External founders brings ideas to Venture Studios, in which the Venture Studio provides services and resources to the founder in exchange for equity. So who is a Venture Studio good for? High Quality Founders, with scalable ideas: The success of a Venture Studio relies on the success of the startups they work with so naturally Venture Studios are looking for the highest quality founders / startups. Early stage founders who are missing a technical partner: During the early days of your startup, if you don’t have a technical partner, you generally require investment or you need to take significant financial risk to fund your MVP build. While most investors won’t want to invest until you have a functional MVP, this is the exact stage many Venture Studio’s like to play in. Why choose a Venture Studio over a development agency? Your developers will have skin in the game The app development process often goes wrong, because building apps is hard. If things go wrong, it’s easy for relationships to sour, and shortcuts to be made. Since Venture Studio’s success is so heavily tied into the success of their startups, by choosing a Venture Studio you have the peace of mind that your developers are so heavily incentivised to deliver an awesome product. Support beyond development Again because the success of the Venture Studios are so heavily tied to the success of the startup, it’s in the our best interest to ensure you are supported beyond your product build. So when it comes to GTM, capital raising and beyond, we aim to provide support and introductions where we. De-risk your financial position So this is the obvious benefit, get to launch without paying or paying a lot less. All of this is not to say, VC’s, Angel’s, Dev Shops all don’t play an important role in this ecosystem, I just feel the Venture Studio voice needs to be heard a bit louder.

22

2 Comments

Startup founders and supporters Startup Muster the only comprehensive survey of Australian startups and their supporters. The survey reaches throughout the ecosystem to count every person that contributes to supporting founders and startups 🎉 Calling all diverse founders - we need you and your voices and experiences to be seen and heard 📣 We can’t measure what we can’t see and we can’t change what we don’t know - this survey is so important ✊🏼 Fill in the survey today 📝https://startupmuster.com #startup #diversity #entrepreneur #founder #culturaldiversity String Nguyen Mikaela Jade FTSE Dor Akech Achiek Nirary Dacho 🌏 Usman Iftikhar UNSW Founders UTS Startups

7

I'm a big fan of what Paul Stovell has created. I was fortunate to be in the audience at Something Tech. for this live podcast with Paul and Rohit Bhargava. Paul offers a no BS discussion on how he has built Octopus Deploy but he also talks about the craft of software development and the mindset of developers (demonstrated in the exert below). Leaning into understanding developers and what motivates them to do great work is something I am big a proponent of. If you want to grow and foster great software creation, including process, authenticity and ultimately shipping your product to market in time and within budget then get to know your developers and what drives and motivates them. Another thing that Paul and I agree on is small/ lean development teams- more developers does not equal better and faster software delivery.

25

2 Comments

It’s a huge day for the Grw AI team - we just raised our record NZ $2.4 million pre-seed (which apparently is the largest in NZ’s history 🚀 ). We're solving a critical challenge: scaling world-class 1:1 performance coaching for sales teams, empowering every organization to drive exceptional results. A big thank you to our amazing investors who are backing this vision. The round was led by Charles Hudson at Precursor Ventures in San Francisco, with participation from Incisive Ventures in Seattle (led by serial entrepreneur Martin Tobias), and Investible in Australia (Jayden Basha and Nicholas Oi). We also have support from an incredible group of US-based angel investors including: ⚬ Lauren Vaccarello - CMO at WEKA, former CMO at Salesloft and Talend ⚬ David Brock - Founder & CEO of Partners In EXCELLENCE ⚬ Shari Levitin - Founder & CEO of Shari Levitin Group ⚬ Woodson Martin - Former EVP of Salesforce AppExchange ⚬ David Schellhase - Former General Counsel at Salesforce, Slack, Groupon ⚬ Colin Wiel - Co-founded multiple unicorns, including Invitation Homes ⚬ Peter Kazanjy - Founder of Atrium and Modern Sales Pros ⚬ Scott Persinger - Founder of Supercog AI, founder CloudConnect, ex Stripe ⚬ Brian Bar - CEO & Founder of Victory Lap ⚬ Aaron Smith - Founder of Morphability Pty Ltd, ex sales leader, Sydney based ⚬ Michael Kelly - CRO of Wherewolf , one of Grw AI's customers We started Grw AI because we're passionate about coaching and the impact it can have on career and life outcomes - Alistair, Dan and I have all been fortunate to have been on the receiving end of incredible coaching throughout our careers - and we’re excited to scale impactful coaching out to millions of salespeople. We launched in April this year and have over 20+ companies in the US and ANZ seeing uplifts in sales performance from Grw AI (as high as 400% month-on-month). Our customers range from growth companies like Relab and Staffing Engine all the way up to large public companies in the US. This fundraise will enable us to set up an HQ in San Francisco, and to expand our engineering team in New Zealand. Here is the link to the full raise announcement: https://lnkd.in/gXNNggV2 Finally, a huge shoutout to those who have supported us on our journey so far. From our incredible advisors - David Brock, Lauren Vaccarello, 🇦🇺 Manik Surtani, 🏄‍♂️ Scott Leese, Shari Levitin, Scott Freeman and Linda Jenkinson, to our very first customers Glen Jones, Matt Dichter and of course to all of our other customers driving sales performance with Grw AI today. We owe a heartfelt thanks to all of you who have supported us on this journey - far too many to name here, but each and every contribution is deeply appreciated 🙏 We are so excited for what's next on our journey together! This is only the beginning.

560

308 Comments

The Australian VC landscape is thriving, but gender disparity still casts a long shadow. As revealed by Cut Through Venture's Cut Through Quarterly Q3 report, women-led startups are gaining traction but face an uphill battle as they mature through funding rounds, with participation dropping dramatically from 50% at pre-seed to just 14% at Series A. In our latest Antler article, we explore how persistent barriers are widening the funding gap and why it’s critical to support women founders from day zero - supporting them from the start and providing continued backing throughout their journey. https://lnkd.in/gZds-cyk We're dedicated to pushing forward for a more inclusive and resilient ecosystem and invite all ambitious founders to join our February 2025 residency in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.

21

We can’t manage what we don’t measure and we can’t grow what we don’t fund. While the sucking sound of Aus super and VC investment going to US companies is becoming deafening, the Australian Business Growth Fund backing an ambitious cohort of innovator companies has flown under the radar. If Aus has a sovereign future, as opposed to vassal state dependence writ large and irreversible, we need 10 more commercially and globally funds to acknowledge a long forgotten asset class.

9

I have written about the journey to Vivara in an article on #CaffeineDaily https://lnkd.in/g8GDw_hA

26

There's a limited number of venture capital firms with over 300 companies in the portfolio, and of those, an even more limited number who have over 3,000 investors making up a large and diverse network of Kiwis (around the world) who want to back New Zealand startups. These days, we also have a nice mix of financial institutions, KiwSaver funds, family offices and other institutional investors backing our larger flagship funds. This week we caught up as a team to hear directly from our investors (large and small) and from our startups (new and old) on what we can do better. There's definitely some homework for our humble tech team and much to my relief, most of the feedback on investor reporting and founder network effects lined up nicely with our product roadmap. We'll be rolling out some big changes to the platform coming soon to improve the investor, founder and startup operator experience. My favourite insight was that the more time a founder or investor spends with us (and with the wider network), the more they like us. So good things will continue to happen from more time in the market and from bringing people together. This week was a good reminder of how privileged we are to do truly world-class work from a remote island in the middle of nowhere, with world-class founders, world-class investors and a team who cook a mean taco.

162

2 Comments

Venture firms in $10m raise for fact-checking software This Melbourne team (picture) run a profitable business that provides fact-checking software. They have now raised $10.84 million in venture capital to scale up the business. Read more about this, and much more about private equity and venture capital, at: https://lnkd.in/gE-aPUTb #venturecapital #privateequity

2

Did you know that Australia is the home of 2.3% of the world's tech unicorns ($1b plus valuation companies). Deep tech is clear strength of Australia and it is why Japanese corporates are looking at Australia. The Australian Japan Business Cooperation Committee (AJBCC) is lifting the lid on what is driving Japanese businesses and Australian startups. If you are interested, then this webinar could be for you. Richard Andrews, Cristina Merino Ishizuka, Jonathan Raju, Annie Jiang, Emily Doran, Takero Izuhara, Tim Mclennan, Ken Jefferd, Invest Victoria

26

2 Comments

Raising capital this year? 💰 Here’s a simple directory of Australia’s top VC Firms. ____ Raising capital is hard enough as it is. The startup ecosystem in Australasia has BOOMED over the last decade. Yet information still remains fragmented. If you’re looking to raise capital, this one is for you! ⬇ A simple directory. Highlighting the leading venture capital firms in Australia. Featuring investment leaders like: • Airtree • Blackbird • Square Peg • Skalata • Artesian (Alternative Investments) • Carthona Capital • Rampersand • Skip Capital • H2 Ventures • Sapien Ventures • Main Sequence and more… ____ Have we missed anyone? 🔗 Link to the full directory in the comments! #venturecapital #techstartups #austech #nztech ____ I’m Scott Kennedy, from Edition - Design & Technology Studio. We help pre-launch startups and growing tech companies scale. Repost ♻  if someone in your network might benefit!

149

23 Comments

How much does a company waste on duplicated / unused technology? According to a report* NZ businesses are wasting $334M / year technology they don't use. For small business for $900 of spend, $600 of that was going to waste and when you scale.... phew.... it's not pretty! And while a 2022 report, I don't think this has got better. At STATE3 we see this a lot. A proliferation of similar technology all doing a similar job or technology subscriptions which were brought and used once if at all... why have one SaaS subscription / portal / CRM / app when you can have 6 that do the same thing and that are possibly never used! The reasons are pretty straight forward: Poor Processes IT Investment - The business goes off roading and buys something on a credit card without due diligence or engaging with the digital / technology team first. Shadow IT - total frustration with the processes in-house so someone gets a bright idea and buys something.... Mergers & Acquisitions - a company acquires another and they keep everything separate and ta dah! There will be others. In hard economic times, the belts get tightened so it makes perfect sense to aim for where the bloat is... in the spend that is duplicated or not used. And this means taking some steps, such as.... * Figure out what you have (Technology / capabilities audit) * Find out if its actually being used (surveying usage (if possible) * Standardise Technology Offerings via a menu of options * Move to a 'user pays' model * Undertake the very unsexy approach of strengthening technology Governance by making people accountable and responsible. We can help with this by showing you what you have, how integrated it is with the rest of your stack and what the TCO is. When you know what you have, you can optimise decision making and ditch the risk. #digitaltransformation #businessstrategy #success #state3enterprise * Report: https://lnkd.in/gRxU_7mC

29

10 Comments

Our latest market update has arrived, and you won't want to miss it. Why 2025 is the ideal time to purchase a business in New Zealand and explore insights into the thriving business market, tips for smooth business integration, and expert advice on post-sale actions. Don't hesitate—read the full update now and take the first step on your entrepreneurial journey! Link in bio #marketupdate #june

2

From starting a business to scaling an existing one find everything you need in one app. The easiest way to get your start up Set Up and your books in order fast.  What can the app do? 🤔 Set Up: 🚀 Sort out your business formation and tax registrations  🚀 Website Domain and Business Email hosting all in one place 🚀 Create a website and logo  🚀 For you out with a CBD office address where your mail will be sent so you protect your home address that you work from 🚀 Sort you business insurance for you Scale Up: 💸 Manage your Income tax and GST 💸 Connect your personal and business bank accounts in minutes 💸 Generate professional Quotes and Invoices 💸 Ensure your metrics save with cutting edge accounting complete with a balance sheet, P&L and chart of accounts All the above paired with expert support from real accountants and tax specialists at a cheaper price than the competition- how can you say no? Don’t struggle alone. See what we can do for you 📈:

1

Can’t decide on the best technology approach for your business? Steal this blueprint generated by AWS Professional Services for ASIC (Australian Securities and Investments Commission). The proof of concept report (link in comments) outlines the trial comparing the quality of long document summarization between humans and AI. While humans won with a large margin, the preferred model tested (Llama 2) is already two generations behind - but the methodology is valuable for businesses managing rapid technology advancements. It covers: -Evaluating a business function. -Creating and following evaluation rubric. -Documenting test conditions that make it easier to replicate or modify in the future. -Recording lessons learned. -Limiting scope and timeline to arrive at a conclusion on a tight schedule. -Dealing with the speed of technology changes. Designating some time for research and development is essential to take advantage of new opportunities. Creating a tight-scale proof of concept helps to reduce investment and potential downsides. Are you ready to apply this approach to your next tech decision? 

Aligning incentives with your preferred outcomes The Australian Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, was quoted this morning as being open to a review of the R&D tax credit scheme Australia uses to reward companies for undertaking 'risky', early stage product research and development. The aim of the scheme is to make these efforts less financial uncertain, and encourage Australian innovation and invention*. The article cited examples of companies from the gaming industry - think slot machines ('pokies') - claiming a tax break for coming up with new ways for people to gamble. Gambling is simply one example of how the current R&D tax credit scheme provides incentives for activities that we might otherwise, as a nation and a society, choose not to encourage. R&D tax credits can be paid out to any organisation working on product research, regardless of the product. Australia recently agreed to a 2030 deadline for a transition to a circular economy, with work going on at Federal and state levels currently exploring exactly what that might mean. Whenever I've had the chance, I've highlighted the importance of using government levers like the R&D tax credit scheme to encourage the development of the types of products we want to see - long-lasting, repairable, modular, able to be disassembled, recyclable, and free of toxic materials - and to stop rewarding companies developing products that meet none of these criteria. A similar argument can be made about the new Future Made in Australia fund - aimed at encouraging domestic manufacturing capability. The fund currently has little or no controls in place to stop government grants going towards companies producing undesirable products. We'll potentially be directly funding the creation of products we are otherwise trying to phase out. This is a good example of where a systems lens can provide a really useful perspective on the design of a policy framework, including recognising when it is no longer fit for purpose. #strategicdesign #systemsdesign #policy * Arguably, the period when Australia was at its most inventive and productive was when the corporate tax rate was much, much higher than it is today, encouraging businesses to reinvest surplus income. That's potentially a post for another day.

24

4 Comments