😱 Rayn Ong

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

171

8 Comments

[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 🔥

175

19 Comments

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

395

82 Comments

The ANZ Startup Capital Raise Retro Powered by Overnight Success. $58.3M deployed across ANZ. The full digest below includes discounts on community events and more. 👇 Veyor Digital raises $2.75M Series A to expand its logistics scheduling software into the U.S. market. NextWork (NZ 🥝) secures $2.3 Pre-Seed to build a learning platform to get more people into tech jobs. Check them out for a free AWS certification. Foremind finds a $400K follow-on investment for its mobile-friendly worker wellbeing platform. RayGen shines with $51M Series D to scale photovoltaic solar module system Kindling. raises $500K pre-seed to empower niche content creators to monetise CoraMetix secures $500K at $2.25M valuation to create durable 3D printed heart valve Outread raises $750K to revolutionise academic research using A.I. Deeligence lands $1M pre-seed to help legal firms streamline work with A.I.

78

11 Comments

Venture-backed founders sign up for a binary outcome: Go Big or Go Home. Which is why it is so puzzling to see so many of these founders pivot away from growth to "sustainable" low-growth profitability, according to Tim Doyle, founder of Eucalyptus. Low-growth, sub-scale venture-backed companies have no future -- even if they are able to turn a small profit. Don't waste your life force building a zombie company! -- It was heaps of fun getting some of Tim's hot takes in today's BONUS episode of The Startup Podcast, with me and Chris Saad.

40

8 Comments

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.

33

9 Comments

Over the next two weeks I'll be interviewing many of Australia's top Investors such as... 🦄 Airtree 🦄Rampersand 🦄Scale Investors Pty Ltd 🦄Tribe Global Ventures and a handful more :) 💯 Off the back of that, I'll be running a virtual workshop about using the benchmarks we find with those Investors to reverse engineer your milestones and set yourself up for successful future fundraising. If you want to come along here's the link (Ideal for early-stage startups thinking of a future raise)!: https://lnkd.in/g7bucad8 🧠 What you'll learn: Discover how to set and achieve key milestones to position yourself for future funding. 📊 Learn to use milestone updates to build gradual, meaningful connections with investors, rather than a high-pressure pitch. 🤝

25

2 Comments

Decoding VC speak is often tough - many founders will hear a combo of “Come back to us when you have more revenue” or “Let me know once you have a lead investor” Much of this means “Tell me when it’s safe enough for me to make a decision because someone else has done the hard work” I talk about this and more in an article for our friends at Startup Daily https://lnkd.in/gnFvGFy8

44

6 Comments

⏰There is a Tick Tock pulse in fundraising and sales⏱️ If Tick is fundraising, Tock is sales. ❌ The problem is most founders go Tick Tick Tick > Tock Tock Tock ❗️Now the next Tick will be much harder because your valuation has now priced in all that past revenue (fair) but without a clear line of sight to future revenues that drive venture-scale growth. 🕥This can prolong the fundraising process as investors wait to see your next batch of contracts come in. 💡One solution is to fundraise after signing a contract but before servicing it. In other words, pre-A/B rounds. It’s a short window but this is the Tick Tock pulse that works incredibly well if you get it right. Here’s the narrative: 1️⃣We have $x in signed contracts and will have to service them over the next 12 months 2️⃣We’re raising now so we can focus on pleasing our customers when the time comes. 3️⃣For this peace of mind, we’re willing to take a 20% discount on our next round valuation given the contracts are already signed. 4️⃣Of course, you are welcomed to join after we’ve closed the revenues. We might be raising at 20% discount to the following round by then. 💡As an added benefit, founders get to focus on one thing at a time - fundraising > sales > fundraising > sales (Tick Tock Tick Tock!) ➡️As with most things I share, works for B2B deep tech. I think? 🧐 💸Don’t try this at home (consumer tech).

32

2 Comments

Warwick D. raises an old chestnut in his post below we hear all too often often. But is it fair? I have now personally met with over 200 founders in the past year and spent considerable time with each of them. 195 of them fall short in some or all of the following typical areas: 1) validated market opportunity. Is it a problem paying customers actually want fixed and what compelling evidence do you have to support this. 2) either poorly constructed, untested or non existent Commercialisation strategy. That is, the GTM strategy, pricing, product roadmap that supported the GTM. Most are generic unfocused strategies. 3) they have built what should be correctly called a POC and not an MVP. 4) and worse in my view, few can articulate what core metrics will drive accelerated growth for their business and why. I could go on, but the fact that so many are weak in these areas doesn’t help with their prospects for raising capital from investors. While I can’t speak for other VC’s, we build conviction by weighing in on those opportunities we like and where we think we can help in these key areas. It’s also a chance to see how well we might work with a founder prior to any possible investment. My own experience is that all too often little value is provided in meetings by investors to founders. We seek to be different by trying to impart value in each meeting, including asking the hard questions or pointing out our view of the likely challenges that lay ahead that their strategy should address. Being a founder is tough and being challenged isn’t always welcomed. But as I have been saying for decades to my teams, we can’t do anything with praise but we can with negative or challenging feedback. This is all to often where the pots of gold can be found! What do you think? #founders #capitalraising #venturecapital

2

As an angel investor, I’ve made over 50 early-stage investments across the UK, US, and beyond. Now, as a Partner at Antler in Australia, I’ve experienced firsthand the shifts between angel and VC investing - and these findings have transformed my approach to supporting founders. I share 5 surprising lessons I learned that about angel vs. VC funding that I wish every founder knew in the article below. From the unexpected empathy VCs have (yes, we pitch too!) to why VCs reserve capital for follow-on funding and how market size can make or break a venture-backed business. Thinking about joining our February '25 residency and/or raising your first round? This is an inside look at the mindsets and strategies VCs use when investing, offering takeaways to help you get funded. 👉 Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/g_jStAWS

58

1 Comment

Mark "Z" Zmarzly 🦄 substack brings all the startups to his yard. And the startups are like, it's better than yours. And Mark's like "Damn right it's better than yours ... I can teach you, but I have to charge." Good thing he's got access to plenty Amazon Web Services (AWS) credits. See you in Melbourne at Intersekt next Wednesday and the AWS Financial Services Symposium in Sydney on Thursday. #AWSStartups #CloudInnovation #StartupEcosystem #AWSActivate #ScalableSolutions #TechForStartups #CloudForStartups #AWSGrowth #BuildOnAWS #StartupSuccess #AWSPartners #CloudFirst #FounderSupport #StartupJourney #TechInnovation #AWSCloud #ScaleWithAWS #StartupResources #AWSFunding #EntrepreneurSupport #AWSStartupsAccelerator

4

The co-founder and CEO from one of Australia's leading VC firm told me last year "𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂'𝘃𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲, 𝘆𝗼𝘂'𝘃𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝘂𝗽 𝗶𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲." The CEO is Rohan W. and the VC is Skalata. Since then I've thought about the relationship between confidence and competence. Both are vital. And can't afford to lose either. How to increase both Confidence and Competence: 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗹𝘆 Read biographies, history, philosophy, economics. Get a base level of how the world works. You'll never gain enough experience on your own. Books allow you to live a thousands lives in one. Learn from others. *Avoid books with the "F" word in the title and bright covers. 𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝘆 Your first pitch will be lousy. Your first draft will be rubbish. Your first of anything will be well below your standard. Stumble your way through things. Review your learnings and refine your process. Get a little better each time. 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸 Write yourself a weekly update. I have a folder with over 120 weekly updates that touch on all things sales, marketing, product, finances, operations, triumphs and tragedies. I share these with our investors and co-founder. When re-reading these you'll look back and realise how far you've come. 80/20 𝗥𝘂𝗹𝗲 Use the 80/20 principle when approaching new skills. All skills can be boiled down to fundamentals. What are the top 20% of the fundamentals you need to master to develop 80% off the skills. Focus on and nail those few things. 𝗗𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 Keep things simple, the more complicated you make things the messier they will become. Nietzsche said: they muddy the water to make it seem deep. Focusing on the 80/20 principle helps with this. 𝗥𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 Find someone who's been-there-done-that. Your "Plus" (from my post last week) who can walk you through the darkness. More importantly they can highlight what you're doing well and where you need to improve. This will solidify your confidence and increase your competence. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 Each new skill increases your competence. The feeling of knowing how to do something fuels confidence. These two stack upon each other. Keep the momentum. - If you found this helpful, give it a reshare and follow me for more startup, entrepreneurship, and founder advice.

45

13 Comments

📢 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 👇

22

Meet Cheryl Kellond 💎, a 3X founder, having previously built Bia sport, the #1 rated fitness wearable on Amazon, and Apostrophe, which she scaled to $10M in ARR. Now she's building Play Money!, an investment platform enabling everyday angels to build a diversified startup portfolio without making angel investing a full-time job. Cheryl and I share a passion for unlocking angel dollars to get more capital to underrepresented founders, so I couldn't be more excited to highlight her and what she's building! In this episode we chat about: 💫 How and why she started investing with just $1.5-$2.5K checks 💫 The most common mistakes angel investors make 💫 Raising $20M during her career from investors like M13 💫 + so much more Check out our full conversation here: https://lnkd.in/gpNbjzSm #invest #venturecapital #startups #vc

109

21 Comments

Do you work with Startups or Scaleups? When our Founders, Startup / Scaleup Leaders, or Startup Employees join Aussie Founders Club's free membership on Frontcover, they then unlock exclusive offers for products and services. On the list, we currently have offers from companies like: Rapha: 6 months FREE on their recruitment system Heatseeker: A 30% disount on their subscription which gives you access to tools for generating value propositions, conducting live competitor audits, and running in-market experiments Mayfly Ventures: A free 45 minute Product Strategy Session HubSpot: Discounted access to Hubspot for Startups which opens you up to MANY MANY offers for startups BetaTrends: A 25% discount on their analytics subscription Granton: A free 30 minute consult to discuss eligible grants for your startup ScoreApp: 50% off your first month (I love Scoreapp) Informly: 10% off your Idea Validation report (I've used this - their reports are incredible) Also offers from my own businesses: Kairos: Offering exclusive AFC rates for your first hire placed through Kairos Mployd: Discounts on services for startup employees looking for work I've got many more in the works but if this sounds like something you and your business wants to get across, getting you in front of your target market and supporting them with an exclusive offer - you can! Fill out our EOI form and we will be in touch - link here: https://lnkd.in/gWqN32cb

26

3 Comments

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

3

IMO it's pretty crazy for a founder to demand a minimum check size of $50k early days. Most people's appetite for venture is around 5% of their NW. If they are taking venture even remotely seriously they'll need to make 30 bets (100 is what they should be doing). So calling $50k means you're suggesting they have $1.5m for venture and they then have a NW of $30m... Founders should cop the admin of smaller checks from people who are more strategically aligned and proactive angels more often.

35

10 Comments

This just keeps getting better and better 😍 ... As a recovering perfectionist, the scrappy early days of building something from 0 to 1 are highly uncomfortable for me. Add in the variable of about ~14 other people you need to work with to pull something off, and you've just taken that discomfort level from 10 to 100. But I'm learning to love it - this process of being OK with something evolving over time, learning and improving as you go and I'm growing a lot as a person as a result (if I can say so myself...!). I am SO proud and grateful for the amazing team of volunteer correspondents we've gathered to bring together Pulse Check (the new monthly newsletter from Overnight Success). They've been super patient and flexible as we've worked through the scrappy bits of pulling it together and now we're all seeing the rewards in the form of not only more subscribers (we'll crack 400 this month! 🤞 ), but also genuinely valuable, engaging content people are loving! 🎉 . If you haven't already, check out this month's edition and you'll find these gems... 💎 Kirstin Hunter & Preethi Mohan launching the first ever Investor Leaderboard for our 'Funding the Balance' initiative. Gav Parry offering a super insightful perspective on the role of tech innovation in the music industry. Lea Rausch's insights about Aussie startups going global, as gleaned from chats with Gecko.rent founder Ben Kennedy and Maxine Minter of Co Ventures. Berenice Chong putting a spotlight on the new Curtin University Venture Studio. Andrew Harding talking about Main Sequence's investment into the fascinating world of sustainable apparel dyeing via Xefco. Erin Howell answering the question - WTF is the Bitcoin halving...? Dickie Currer giving the 101 on how Australia's innovation ecosystem stacks up globally. Leila Oliveira with tips from Bae Juice founder Tim O'Sullivan on lessons from their recent fundraising round. Holly Clark explaining why agritech innovation is so challenging, feat insights from Olympia Yarger at the recent FutureAg Expo. AND Anna Mackenzie sharing her ever-insightful and perfectly articulated case for 'optimising for creativity' (and ideas on how to do it!). Phew..! It's a lot of amazing content all in one edition! 🤓 Check it out 👇 🚀

32

11 Comments