Nicholas Ooi

This post is great for Startmate, but don't ignore the headline: "9 out of 10 times VC loses money". This is a truth a lot of startup founders just don't get... when you take VC, you think you've made it... but *most of the time* a VC writes a check it goes sideways. Getting VC is NOT a magnificent milestone... it's the start of a very risky journey. Think about that: your investor comes to your board meeting... and 8 or 9 out of every 10 board meetings they go to they know "this company ain't gonna make it". I'm not against VC's and I had a terrific VC in my company, but I don't think enough founders *understand* the realities of venture capital, *particularly* in Australia, where the whole ecosystem is quite immature and a long way behind the US. #VentureCapital #fundraising #VC #startups #founders

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[HIRING] Help me out here LinkedIn - looking for a legend who will help hundreds of founders ❤️ 💥 FOUNDERS ASSOCIATE #1 Find the most ambitious early-stage founders to invest in ANZ #2 Your tools: run Launch Club and Buildmate to help hundreds of founders start and grow their startups every year >> which feeds back into #1 Link in the comments! Give this a like or tag a legend 🔥

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Which international VC has invested most actively in NZ? Here's the slide we prepared recently for our Investor Masterclass. Let me know who I'm missing. Four more sessions coming up including: Valuation, Terms, Governance, and War Stories. Join the fun by registering here: https://lnkd.in/ghJJpdR4

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After six years of bootstrapping - I’m excited to share that Slice has raised a $17.5 million equity and debt round led by Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India & SEA) and Roadnight Capital. Our journey began over a decade ago - when I met my co-founder Yannick D. while working in a big bank's Collections and Hardship department. We spoke to numerous customers who had used credit cards to pay for a trip overseas - often for a family reunion or a cultural event. These customers wanted to be financially responsible, but because they had used a product with such a high interest rate, they were falling behind and feeling powerless. We wanted to create a product that would allow customers to book their flights, and then repay in manageable instalments before their trip. Our vision was to help customers access travel - while also helping them to budget sensibly and avoid financial hardship. In 2018, we launched our first product - PayLater Travel. In the beginning, we spoke to every customer on the phone - we manually made bookings, and paid upfront with our own credit cards (the irony!). Despite the janky product, our customers loved being able to lock in flight prices and having the ability to pay it off before they travel. We knew we were onto something! But behind the scenes, there have been plenty of unglamorous moments. When the pandemic hit in 2020, we lost 95% of our revenue overnight. We were terrified - but we were also too busy to feel sorry for ourselves. We hunkered down, made hundreds of calls to airlines, and ensured maximum refunds and credits for our customers. To survive COVID, we had to dig deep. Limping along wasn’t an option - unless we did something decisive, we’d slowly run out of cash.  With our backs against the wall, we decided to launch in the US. I had to sell my car and Yannick refinanced his home. In other words - we bet the farm. What happened next is… too long for a LinkedIN post! I’ve shared an expanded version of the story in our blog, Instalments by Slice (link in comments). Fast forward to 2024 - I feel deeply fortunate to have secured an additional $10 million debt facility from Roadnight Capital alongside a Seed investment led by Peak XV Partners. What's more - I feel blessed with a wonderful team, supportive friends, and to have helped 70,000 customers go on wonderful trips and create core memories. The best part - we’re only getting started! There are still millions of customers worldwide, falling into unsustainable debt and we’re here to do our part to change that! To read more about Slice and our first round of external funding, check out this article in The Australian Financial Review - #venturecapital #startup #fintech #funding #slice

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Board Meetings for Seed / A companies should be open discussions on ideas and strategy 🗣️ All investors should have read the Board Pack in advance (and it should be sent 48 hours+ in advance). Specific governance / finance questions can be asked in an email chain or WA group beforehand. When the Board starts, nail any votes required in first 5 mins. Core focus of Board should = 2-3 key things that the Founders want to have a deep dialogue on, where the other members can be the sounding board. "This is our idea around our new marketing campaign. These are our channels." "We've narrowed down these three candidates for x role." "Here is prototype for our new product feature launching next month." "Here's the template for our Sales playbook for moving up market." "We a/b tested these two acquisition channels and have some preliminary data." No need to spend half the Board meeting talking about financials, the Board Pack will show if you've overspent, the reasons why and can be discussed async beforehand.

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A little over five months ago, I wrote a post about the mission behind Electrifi Ventures (see link in comments), a Climate Tech-focused angel syndicate I’m running alongside GrowthStream, an advisory business in the energy transition space. By sharing my time and knowledge with both seasoned and aspiring investors, I aim to amplify our collective climate impact through angel investing. Fast forward to today, I am thrilled to share with you our incredible journey to being one of the largest independent Angel Syndicates, with over 250 Angel Investors / LP’s across ANZ! In less than a year since starting Electrifi Ventures, we are proud to have invested in seven industry-transforming climate startups, and we are backing these companies with conviction: Sicona Battery Technologies: a game changer for the uptake of Electric Vehicles, is a deep tech company creating advanced materials that improves the overall performance of lithium-ion batteries. Sicona believes it is able to increase charging speed by 40% and deliver 20% more range on EVs.  GOTERRA: an autonomous circular food waste management infrastructure that is integrated with existing systems to create enduring industry solutions.  Harvest B: a food technology business that develops and manufactures plant proteins with animal protein-like textures that are easier to consume and more affordable for everyone.  NRN - National Renewable Network: a connected network of solar and storage systems that radically changes the way renewable energy is delivered for energy retailers. Stealth DAC Innovator: an innovative technology that is removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, at scale, in a cost-effective way, via Direct Air Capture (DAC). Threadlet: an energy efficiency platform that aims to automatically identify SME energy usage and switch business energy accounts to the best energy rate provider for every venue, every month. 📣 Would love to invite anyone interested to learn more (or invest) in innovative solutions tackling the climate crisis to join the Electrifi Ventures angel syndicate (link in comments).

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[Startup News] Check out the latest tech trends happening in the global startup ecosystem and VC funding overview this week (Issue 132- June 9)🌍🚀 Top startup news to follow this week: 📌 Brandon Capital raises $180M fund to support Australia, New Zealand biotechs 📌Regeneron Launches $500M Venture Capital Fund Skewed Toward Biotech 📌Biotech’s road to recovery with 46% increase in Q1 venture funding 📌Women-Led Startups Grabbed 25 Percent of Venture Funding in 2023 📌Qatar’s Rasmal Ventures launches $100 million debut fund, hits $30 million as first close 📌Novel battery manufacturer EnerVenue is raising $515M, per filing 📌QARGOS raises $14M to digitize and decarbonize the trucking industry 📌Berlin-based Quantica increases Series A to €19.7 million to fuel growth of its additive manufacturing tech 📌Copenhagen-based early-stage VC BlackWood secures €14.7 million in 2nd closing of Fund I 📌Zurich-based Synthara Capital raises €10.5 million to expand the embedded computing market https://lnkd.in/e6gQrSQd via iFund Lab Narine Emdjian, MBA #startups #innovation #tech #technews #techtrends #venturecapital #artificialintelligence #newsletter #technology #biotech #healthcare #womenfounder #europe #europeanunion #founders #deeptech #cleantech #climatechange #battery #qatar #newzeland

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Why GP Carry Economics for Syndicates are Superior to Venture Funds Sharing #2 of 5 learnings Zachary Ginsburg posted via Last Money In Media yesterday on reflecting back after 500 SPVs completed. 500 SPVs is not a typo :) – “The carry economics are arguably far superior for Syndicate GPs than the carry economics for fund GPs. We previously put out an article discussing the economics of venture, and the reality is that while venture can be the best performing major asset class the returns are skewed to the top funds with the average fund barely returning 1x capital back. There is no major asset class that has dispersion of returns quite as high as venture capital. This underscores the benefits for Syndicate GPs. For one, it means the time to actually receive carry income can be extremely quickly. Despite starting Calm Ventures in 2020, we had one nice exit in 2021 (~10x outcome in 12 months). While the returns from that investment were only ~10% of the capital deployed to that point, we still received carry (over a half million dollars). In a traditional fund if you returned only ~10% of capital back, you would not be seeing a dollar in carry from that sale. To further underscore the GP benefit, as mentioned, around half of funds return <1x DPI. Meaning half of GPs aren’t seeing a dollar in carry from their funds. You can have a <1x fund in SPVs and still receive an enormous amount of carry distributions. To take the extreme case, let’s say we invest $1M each into 100 investments via SPVs over the course of 3 years - so $100M invested total. 99 of those investments go to zero and one 100x’s or returns $100M. While LPs in aggregate didn’t make any money (we received $100M in distributions and invested $100M), the GP actually makes almost $20M dollars (20% carry x $99M in returns on the single performing investment). It’s worth pointing out that while the carry economics are superior, the fee economics are substantially worse for Syndicate GPs, who often aren’t drawing any consistent income or salary.” Link to full post w/4 other key learning in comments. -- Powered by Sydecar and Forge, Last Money In Media is the most actionable venture capital newsletter. Written by Zachary Ginsburg and Alex Pattis, global syndicate leaders with 800+ SPVs closed.

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✨ Breaking: Melt Ventures Announces New Fund.- Melt Ventures Melt Ventures, a partner of the WAVC initiative, focuses on early-stage investments in sectors aligned with Western Australia’s innovation priorities. https://melt.ventures/ Please share to let other #Founders know For the ❤️ of Startups #Fusion42 #Startups #Venturecapital

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Many Aussie/Kiwi founders eventually face the decision of: what market should I go to next? Often, the answer they land on is the US. The key decision points then become: 1) when should I enter the US? 2) how should I break in? I spent the last 2 weeks with US VCs in San Francisco and New York, exploring those two questions and understanding what they've seen work and what they've seen fail. If you're in the early stages of building a venture scale business, I wrote the below as a simplified guide for thinking through those two decision points: https://lnkd.in/gY2JzByV

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📢 Want a crash course in angel investing and venture capital? If you're interested in learning more about angel investing and the world of venture capital, we're hosting an intro series on this topic across multiple sessions, kicking off today! Sign up details below 👇

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Complete list of all active pre-seed & seed lead investors in NZ below. Thank you to all those who helped fill in the gaps. Quite a few people have reached out and said it was helpful, which is great. Next, I am thinking of creating the list of pre-seed & seed investors in NZ who follow and fill in investment rounds. As the list will be quite long, help would be appreciated. Please add in the comments. Aera VC AgriZeroNZ Blackbird Brandon Capital Bridgewest Ventures NZ Cure Kids Ventures Ecliptic Even Capital GD1 (Global From Day One) Hillfarrance Venture Capital Icehouse Ventures Maker Partners Motion Capital Movac Nuance Connected Capital NZ Growth Capital Partners NZVC Outset Ventures Pacific Channel Phase One Ventures Punakaiki Fund Quidnet Ventures Soul Capital Sprout Agritech WNT Ventures

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What’s happening in healthtech? 💊🎉 💰The Vic Gov will invest $7.5M to fund researchers to create 50 new startups  run by Breakthrough Victoria 💻 Safewill, bagged $17M to expand services like digital wills, power of attorney, & probate assistance 🧘‍♀️ Pronto Pilates snagged $1.6M in crowdfunding, to disrupt reformer pilates with affordable, trainer-free classes 💼 Hostplus committed $125M to VC, backing startups through IP Group plc Innovation Fund 📜 Private companies will now have to upload health data to My Health Record thanks to the Health Legislation Amendment Bill 2024 🧪 Aussie women will soon have access to at-home chlamydia & gonorrhoea tests 🤖 Baymatob won ‘AI Innovator - Healthcare’ at the Aus AI Awards for its maternal health tech providing early warnings for complications 🧬 The Fed Gov launched Genomics Australia, a national body to lead & coordinate genomic research, with a $30M commitment over 4 years 💼 Aus's $15B National Reconstruction Fund begins investing in deep tech, allocating $300M to boost quantum, robotics, & clean energy innovation ~~~🌎 US & Beyond the Borders 🌎~~~ 💍 ŌURA raised $75M, reaching a US$5B+ valuation, partnering with Dexcom to integrate glucose monitoring data into its platform 🧠 Headspace laid off 13% of its staff & is transitioning all therapists from employed roles 📈 WHOOP adds psychedelics tracking to its Journal feature, letting users log ketamine, LSD, & psilocybin use ⚽ David Beckham codeveloped longevity supplement brand IM8 Health with biotech company Prenetics, launching a longevity drink 💻 Eli Lilly & Company, the global pharma, invests S$42M in Singapore to launch a Digital Health Innovation Hub 🛠️ Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers trained a surgical robot using imitation learning from surgery videos Keen for the links & delicious deets?? 🍩🙌 Take a gander at last week's newsletter in the comments below👇😊 --- PS - if you liked this and are keen to join >8700 legends getting health tech and innovation news dropped direct to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletter, What the Health, linked in the comments below! 💜 📩 #healthtech  #health  #healthcare  #digitalhealth  #medtech  #biotech

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This is nuts! Putting a barrier to exit through M&A will have profound downstream implications on startup funding, especially in AgriTech. The Australian Government are proposing that acquisitions by companies with turnover of $200 Million + will require regulatory approval. This policy will put Australia at a disadvantage, as it is yet another reason for the best companies and technologies to seek capital and exits overseas. This approach cuts the capital cycle for new innovation and has the opposite effect on promoting competition, as it creates a barrier for new solutions to access the full life cycle of funding and liquidity. I would argue that the acquisition of technology through M&A is actually what we need to incentivise, to make larger Australian companies more globally competitive.

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An interesting article about the venture capital industry and the challenges faced by founders who don't fit the mould. https://lnkd.in/gy3AQbqc Mythili Sankaran #nff #neythrifuturesfund #southasianwomenfounders #femalefounders #diversefounders #venturecapital

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How much equity should your company carve out for your people? Equity benchmarking data is notoriously difficult to get, especially for Australian startups, but we take a lot of influence from our US cousins. Carta has showed up with the goods and shared two key pieces of insight on startup equity. 1️⃣ ESOP pool size by stage of company 2️⃣ Pool size change over the last 2 years What are they seeing in 2024? 🌱 Seed companies • 21.8% (75th %ile) • 14.2% (50th %ile) • 10.1% (25th %ile) 🪴 Series A companies • 20.6% (75th %ile) • 15.3% (50th %ile) • 11.1% (25th %ile) 🌿 Series B companies • 21.2% (75th %ile) • 16.8% (50th %ile) • 13.0% (25th %ile) 🌲 Series C companies • 21.8% (75th %ile) • 17.7% (50th %ile) • 14.7% (25th %ile) How has this changed since 2022? Not a lot really. The median has stayed fairly stagnant, with a 1-1.5% variance, meaning total cap table has stayed largely unchanged for the average company. Top quartile Seed startups got way more generous in 2024, jumping from 19.8% of total cap table in 2022 to 21.8% in 2024 📈 Are early/riskier startups having work harder (issue more equity) to lure away talent from secure seeming companies? This trend reverses for more mature companies and the top quartile at Series C dropped from 22.9% of total cap table in 2021 to 21.8% 📉 Maybe this suggests they can get away with outlaying less equity because talent isn't going anywhere. Fascinating stuff. What is your take? — If you like this content, repost this to your network and follow me Matt McFarlane for more.

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🎊 Big News from Our Team at Titanium Ventures! 🎊 Today, we’re thrilled to share that we've evolved from Telstra Ventures to Titanium Ventures! Why Titanium? Because it captures the essence of who we are and aspires to be—a firm that supports exceptionally strong and resilient entrepreneurs, those who thrive under pressure. Titanium is not just a metal with the highest durability and strength-to-weight ratio; it represents the extraordinary capability and determination of the leaders we back—leaders who consistently punch way above their weight. Our commitment remains steadfast: to unearth and scale the most promising ventures in AI, digital, and software sectors. With 99 investments, including 12 IPOs, 17 unicorns and 42 liquidity events, we’re just getting started. Holding almost US$1B in funds under management and having returned US$678M to our investors, we are more driven than ever. This is more than a name change—it’s a reaffirmation of our promise to accelerate the extraordinary, fueling the growth of standout disruptors. We've been doing this for over a decade, and it's what our investors and founders expect us to do for many more to come. Here's to the next chapter in our journey with all of you! #VentureCapital #Innovation #Entrepreneurship #TitaniumVentures

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📣 Excited to wrap up 2024 by helping more Australian founders crack the US market - without learning everything the hard way! This Thursday, I'm joining forces with Jason Booth from TaxStudio to share the essentials of US expansion - from flip-ups to tax strategies that help support sustainable growth. It will be a power hour to help founders gain insights that could save years of trial and error. We'll break down the complexities into actionable steps, sharing experiences and practical tips. Join us if you're planning your US journey for 2025. Your future self will thank you! 🚀 Details in comments ⬇️ #Startups #Scaleups #GlobalExpansion #USMarket #2025Growth

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I'm very proud to see Crimson Education, founded by Jamie Beaton, Fangzhou Jiang, and Sharndré Kushor, cement its place in New Zealand's small stable of tech Unicorns. It's exciting to see an ANZ edtech focused on K - 12 education excel on a global stage. It's a proof point that the region can produce successful tech businesses beyond B2B SaaS. Crimson's journey has intersected with mine in curious ways. I remember spending the summer break with Jamie and Richard when they were applying to US universities; I must have proofread dozens of iterations of personal statements. I was then one of Crimson's first tutors in 2013, and recruited several others from ANU to support Crimson's expansion into tutoring HSC subjects. I remember having pizza with the team in Fangzhou's Unilodge dorm room, in between the information sessions they hosted for highschool students. From these humble beginnings, it's incredible to see Crimson grow into a world leader in college admissions consulting and online high school education - while accelerating to over $100m USD in annual turnover. At various times, I've heard Crimson cop criticism for creating a 'hack' for getting into elite universities. Having worked closely with a number of Crimson students - I think what Crimson really does is expand students' horizons, help them to hone in on what they're great at, and raise their ambition. Ever since he was 17 years old, Jamie has believed that the world could be his oyster. His optimism and energy is infectious; spending time with Jamie always raises my ambition too. It's marvelous to see him scale his superpower via the business he's built in Crimson Education. More about the raise in this article by Paul Smith -

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