Rachael Neumann

✨ 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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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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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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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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This is a very interesting investment. While East Ventures is generally known to be sector agnostic and have a broad and diversified portfolio, investing in a seemingly non-tech and low-multiple sector is not a very VC-like behavior. Perhaps there is more to Har Har Chicken than just a food and retail play. The team is a strong one though, with the right elements of experience to bring this to scale. If we can have the likes of KFC or NeNe Chicken, why can't we have our own? But more importantly, this is another data point that VCs are trading high-risk growth for more stability and profitability. Given the need for VCs to play within the Power Law and generate returns within the fund cycle, Har Har Chicken needs to scale at least a 100x over the next few years to be worthy to sit in East Ventures' US$550m fund dedicated to Indonesia and South-east Asia. #venturebuilding #venturecapital ==================== Powering venture growth 💥 - Building 💯 SEA-founded ventures through Krux Asia, SEA's leading venture studio by SEA operators

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Recently I was asked for some input on running a startup accelerator. Since I don't live in NZ, and I now work in growth capital not VC, that freed me up to be pretty candid. Here's what I wrote: Aus and NZ are innovative nations by nature, yet the incubator and accelerator model has been a copy&paste of American/Cambridge and Israeli models that have done nothing to stem the 80% fail rate. Rather than address this systemic failure, we have normalised failure by saying “well startups are just inherently high risk” That’s partially true, they are like high performance motorcycles : deadly in the hands of a rider who does not know how to ride it. But there's a big caveat: that's only true if you don't train the rider (founder) VCs meanwhile simply go unicorn hunting and stack more companies in their portfolio so that the binomial equation has more chance of yielding a return rather than address systemic failure. And so the façade continues: 80% fail. Of the 20% who “succeed”: 80% scrape themselves over the finish line saying “never again”. The 20% of the 20% then get rockstar-entrepreneur gigs lecturing to novice entrepreneur about how to succeed by copying their “sacrifice everything” model, no knowledge is actually passed on, because they are not skilled in knowledge transfer, and not able to abstract out what caused them to succeed vs what causes other entrepreneurs in a different context to succeed. Compare that to what happens in sports: ex-players value the art of learning to pass on knowledge, going through a long apprenticeship before they emerge, sometimes a decade later, as a successful coach of others. By contrast, in the world of tech startups, we have no ecosystem-wide emphasis on skill development of the founder, or helping them cultivate the mindset and habits they will need to run a company, grow a company, pitch, sell, lead, and scale the next generation of leadership so that they don’t become the bottleneck to growth. In short, we have a culture of complete neglect of growing the most important assets: the founders, even though Bill Campbell transparently demonstrated in his coaching of Steve jobs, Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt that treating founders like high performance athletes and giving them real coaching, not light touch mentoring that you’d be chastised for giving a 5th grade soccer team, was the recipe for scaleable success. So if your accelerator simply seeks to answer the question “how would I treat my founders if they were high performance athletes I wanted to win on the global stage” it will be better than 99.5% of the world’s incubators and accelerators.

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Seeing the incredible Scale fundraising announcement today (major congrats to the Scale team!!), I think back to many of the common VC/expert objections in the early days of the company (~2017)... * Amazon Mechanical Turk will dominate the data labelling market. * There are many other existing startups who have been around for much longer. * It's a services business, not a product business. * Data for AI isn't a big market. * Self-driving / synthetic data will be solved in a year, and then there is no market. * First-time founder. Many people were shocked that I picked working at Scale over other options for these reasons! Interesting how many parallels you can perhaps draw to some startups today - important to keep an open mind.

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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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It’s been 6 months since Alo Yoga's parent company announced they were looking for capital at a $10B valuation. In my mind, this would have been a done deal, so I’m sitting here wondering why they haven’t announced a fundraise. I used data only available on Particl to break down the business of Alo to find out what's going on. https://lnkd.in/gYd8XNWc - The parent company did an estimated $1.6 billion in 2023 and they’re likely profitable. - Their growth has been explosive across eCommerce, ~75% YoY, and their sanctuaries, ~130% YoY, with a significant opportunity to expand. - They are a clearly positioned market leader and have cultivated a passionate community who are obsessed with the product that has extremely high sell-through. I'm a big believer that Alo hasn't even had their moment yet and this is a brand that will be here for the long haul. But I do think it's really interesting they haven't announced a fundraise. What do you think? Is there something I’m missing? #businessbreakdown #aloyoga #fundraising #venturecapital #startup #thebusinessoffashion

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New strategy to drive next phase of $130 billion ecosystem   Today, I’m thrilled to share LaunchVic's strategy to take Victoria’s $130 billion startup ecosystem to the next level. In developing the 2024 – 2028 strategy, we did a lot of work on the long-term vision for the Victorian Startup ecosystem.    While we know the sector has come a long way, the truth is there’s still a lot more potential for growth. To be globally competitive, and self-sustaining, we need more startups in the ecosystem, and we need more of them to succeed.   After eight years of supporting the ecosystem, we have a pretty good idea of what is working, so I am sure it will come as no surprise that our new strategy builds on our previous work.   Priorities for LaunchVic include continuing to: - Drive awareness and advocacy through events and campaigns;  - Helping founders and their teams start, grow and scale global businesses; and - Continuing to develop the private early-stage investor landscape.   Targeted grant rounds for pre-accelerators and accelerators will continue along with the successful 30X30 and CivVic Labs.   We will lead new initiatives, including programs specifically focused on supporting Victorian universities to boost startup creation, along with a new founder program called Basecamp set to launch in February to help seed to Series A founders make their first executive hires.    Victoria’s investment landscape will continue to be supported through grants for investor education programs, angel networks, and early-stage VC funds.   I am deeply grateful for the Victorian Government’s continued commitment to our work – essential for ecosystems that are maturing. Consistency is key – and their long-term support of our work is delivering tangible results.   Since being established in 2016 by the Victorian Government, LaunchVic has activated $1.1 billion in private capital, upskilled over 12,300 entrepreneurs, supported 1,477 startups through our core programs, and created 2,225 new jobs.    We have been incredibly lucky to have such an amazing board of directors led by the wonderful Leigh Jasper – who give up an extraordinary amount of their time and provide guidance and support that ultimately benefits the Victorian startup ecosystem.   I am also incredibly proud of the LaunchVic team who work tirelessly to deliver high quality and genuine ecosystem support. There’s no other agency in Australia who does what we do – and the growth metrics in Victoria show that having a dedicated agency is paying off.   It’s also an exciting time for Victoria’s startup community, and we look forward to working with our partners, investors, and founders who are similarly united in a desire for the same thing – to see startups succeed.    See the strategy here: https://lnkd.in/g7wFNg6f #LaunchVic #Startups #Innovation #Victoria #Ecosystem

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Does a serial founder lead to greater success in their next startup? 💡 I will be speaking on a panel at SXSW Sydney in October on "Founder DNA" alongside Michael Kron, Casey Flint and Richard Cooney and we've been brainstorming the qualities we look for in exceptional startup founders. The list is long, varied and not the same for two people (which makes it hard, I know!) and one of the topics I'd like to explore further is - does a serial founder lead to greater success in their next startup? First time entrepreneurs had a 21% success rate, entrepreneurs who had a failed startup previously had a 22% chance of succeeding in their next startup, and entrepreneurs who had succeeded before (defined as a company that goes public) succeeded 30% of the time. At first it seems that the team and being successful before makes a startup more likely to succeed later. However, the difference between the best performing group (30%) and the worst performing group (21%) was only 9% (30% - 21% = 9%). In other words, the team and experience could only account for around 9% of the variance in outcomes, meaning it didn't account for 91% of the variance. So, a lot smaller impact than people tend to think. Please share your thoughts in the comments! Thank you to Thomas Thurston for sharing this research with me. The original article can be found here https://lnkd.in/gqF3ZJfb #venturecapital #startups #founders Sprint Ventures

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First episode of 2025 from The Learning Corner by @ Precursor Ventures is out, and we covered three great articles that the team found interesting! Some of the highlights from the episode below: 💡 The shutdown and acquisition of Bench that occurred over the holidays sparked by an article from Natasha Mascarenhas at The Information where we talked about the impact of venture debt and covenants in a startup's journey. Sheel Mohnot shared a great POV on LinkedIn about this as well, be sure to check his post out! 💡 The latest size of Atlas' new fund XIV, a smaller vehicle than their prior fund, which Bruce Booth walks through the logic on in his blog LifeSciVC from a venture math perspective. Thank you to Jay Ripley for surfacing this one to the Precursor team! 💡 The dominance of startup funding that occurred in Silicon Valley over the course of 2024 written up by Julie Bort at TechCrunch, which you see me and Mia Farnham dive a bit deeper into in this clip. As large supporters of emerging ecosystems and hubs ourselves, we share how founders and teams can all benefit from experiencing the Bay area in ways that fit their journey ("field trips" encouraged!). Tune in on your platform of choice!: Apple: https://lnkd.in/eJ9K_yPG YouTube: https://lnkd.in/eg2YEQqK Spotify: https://lnkd.in/ezAcnmRJ The Learning Corner website powered by PodcastAI:https://lnkd.in/euifiGrC The Learning Corner IG: @learningcornerbyprecursor Links to the articles in the comments below!

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👀 Great read by The Mandarin journalist Julian Bajkowski about the Productivity Commission’s new research findings that $5B+ a year could be saved by better integrating digital technology into everyday practice, not to mention easing pressures on our heaving healthcare system. Bajkowski touches on the “adroit” defence of data silos by the medical profession. It is true that software vendors (primary and hospital focussed) all have their own way of doing things which frustrates the health information exchange and #interoperability. We've had first hand experience of this, having worked with pretty much every healthcare application available in Australia and New Zealand over the last decade - our Mantel Group health technologists have seen it all, the good, bad, and ugly. Alleviating this “clunky interoperability” as the Financial Review’s government editor Tom Burton calls it, doesn’t need to turn into a turf war, or dissolve into a case of picking winners. You don't want to back one horse in the acceleration of digital health. What you want is common standards. That’s what enables health information exchange. It also allows #innovation and #interoperability, both of which are vital to the sector’s sustainability. The Productivity Commission report refers to “sharpening incentives for software providers to make [health information exchange] more seamless” to encourage #interoperability. Countries like Singapore and the United States are well on the path to doing this effectively - some approaches use a regulatory stick, others are private enterprise lead. Both head in the same direction - a direction Australia will have to follow to transition to value-based models being adopted abroad, which reimburse providers for quality interventions as opposed to activity-based measures. An important consideration for the NSW Government's Special Commission of Inquiry into Healthcare Funding led by Richard Beasley SC for its work is to have longevity. 👉 Read Mantel Group’s submission on #interoperability in healthcare here: https://lnkd.in/g5zhMUnr 👉Read the Productivity Commission’s Leveraging digital technology in healthcare research report here: https://lnkd.in/gsjHgQHQ 👉Read Tom Burton's AFR story here (behind paywall): https://lnkd.in/g3-99xHj Paul Caon Mark Gillard Andrew Wayland Linda Connolly Samantha Scott

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I've had a deluge of email recently asking for help and advice on how to get into Venture Capital as an industry. People have asked about a variety of roles, (from starting their own firm or becoming a partner, to joining investment teams at a more junior level or working in 'operations' and 'platform' teams). I'm thrilled about this. Venture is growing as an asset class and it needs lots of new people with new perspectives and different types of background and experience to make it not just bigger but also better. However, trying to find time for one-on-one meetings to respond to this growing number of requests is now failing as my day job (of actually working in the industry!) hasn't gotten any easier! Rather than disappoint some people at random, I'm going to write a series of short LinkedIn posts on the stuff I generally say each week in the New Year and also answer any more specific questions in the comments below. Hopefully I won't bore those of you who have no interest and, if there are specific questions or topics you wanted me to address in this broad area, let me know via PM or below. Thank you!

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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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Great article which highlights the true diversity and value of the Deep Tech community led by Outset Ventures and housed within Future House. New Zealand is significantly better off by having such a unique privately run and funded facility. If you would like to be part of the community either as a supporter, investor, member or occupant please get in touch. The future is Deep Tech.

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Hard truth: "People will lie to you." As an entrepreneur why is feedback important and what kind of feedback should you be seeking? Check out the video below.

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I first met Nic back in 2015/2016 when I literally fell into tech and well before Emerge had raised its first fund. My journey into the venture ecosystem was driven by my first role on my return to the UK as CFO in an edtech venture using blended learning to deliver soft skills training to students outside this country. I learned a lot about the transformative opportunity that tech gives us during that period but even more about how broken education has been and continues to be in so many places. And how difficult it is for edtech ventures to be able to raise and scale given the fragmented customer journey, multiple gatekeeper and difficulty getting to substantial revenues in many cases. That is why it is so important that funds like Emerge exist. Funds that are deep specialists in education, with networks and relationships that can truly help founders in the space find and develop an edge. And never has that been more important as educators, students and parents try to navigate the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Massive congrats to Nic, Jan, Mario and the entire team on raising their second fund, cannot wait to see what's in store 🔥

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👇 Must read interview with our Co-Founder CEO Greg Jackson on how to navigate driving change in a highly regulated, but competitive market. Thinking carefully about these questions is not only fun (well, for me 🤓 ) - it's also vital. We need regulated markets to be disrupted...and in many areas we need disrupted markets to have more regulation (or indeed more competition). Well done to Form Ventures for bringing more of these debates to light and hopefully encouraging more leaders to speak up on the "how to".

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