Rita Yates

🌿 Final Day to Join X-Hemp's Mission: Capturing Carbon & Building a Better Future 🌿 Over $700k raised so far in an absolutely incredible performance by Andi Lucas and her passionate community! X-Hemp Pty Ltd's CSF campaign on Birchal closes TONIGHT! Don’t miss your chance to invest in a truly transformative business at the forefront of eco-friendly building materials. X-Hemp is Tasmania’s ONLY hemp fibre processing mill and one of only five in Australia. With strong first-mover advantage, they’ve already tripled the number of hempcrete homes built in Tassie, proving the demand for fire-and-flood-resistant, carbon-neutral building materials. Founded and operated by the trailblazing Andi Lucas, X-Hemp isn’t just building homes; they’re building a movement. Their innovative products like hempcrete, HempWood®, and HempWool® are tackling climate change from both sides of the construction supply chain. With contracts in hand, MOUs with U.S. partners, and a warehouse full of raw materials ready to convert into retail and B2B goods, they’re perfectly positioned for rapid growth. This is your last chance to be part of X-Hemp’s mission to replace traditional building materials with plant-based alternatives, while locking carbon into homes and delivering long-term environmental benefits. Invest now to help them scale their production, diversify their product range, and continue disrupting the building industry. Always consider the offer document and general CSF risk warning before investing. #EquityCrowdfunding #Innovation #Sustainability #Hempcrete #ClimateAction #FemaleFounders #CarbonNeutral #Startups #EcoFriendlyBuilding 🌏

11

5 Comments

12 deals before Christmas! A massive few weeks ahead here at Birchal And female founders getting it done. Congrats to Jay Curtin and the team at Got Bakey for closing their $180k raise last week. And thrilled to see Andi Lucas founder of X-Hemp Pty Ltd in The Australian over the weekend. Closing in on $500k raised, doing an amazing job! Other things that piqued our interest this week: IPO market thawing according to Simon Evans at The Australian Financial Review. Klarna announces its plans to list in NY and not London. Australian Business Growth Fund (ABGF) commissioned report released last week identifies $38b equity funding gap holding back growth businesses and Australian productivity. Lots happening over the next few weeks, check it out in the comments. #equitycrowdfunding #csf #investment #startups #australia #founders

45

2 Comments

We have two strongly-held values at Something New ✨ — reinforced at the start of each dinner. 1) confidentiality: this is all totally "off the record" .. we run these events under chatham house rules / cone of silence, safe space for folks who aren't yet "open" about their plans to leave and start something new (i.e. with current employer, colleagues) 🤫 👀 2) spirit of service: don't come in asking "what's in it for me" ... join us and ask "what can I do for someone else here." The chances the exact person you need (co-founder, early believer, etc) is in the room at that moment is ultimately fairly low... but the chances someone in that room knows someone outside it they can introduce you to are much higher. Rising tides lift all boats 💪 ✨

16

One of my Ten Commandments is 'Thou shall recognise as a leader, the people around, behind and in front of you are genuinely interested in your contribution' - it was great to get on the record with Kylie Charlton :) #impactinvesting #finance #bestadvice #strategy #communications #climate #esg #sales

1

2 Comments

Some stories are better than others! This one is top-shelf, and I'm very proud to have facilitated the success of the current incarnation of Australian Impact Investments digital presence (https://lnkd.in/gGatzzdw). I worked with Kylie and the team to review the company strategy. Then, I conducted stakeholder interviews, directed, filmed, and edited all of the video material, and combined it all by writing what you see on the website.  In parallel, I worked with Aii's brand and website developer to deliver the project and create this remarkable tool. Through it, when asked by their clients, Australia and the world's leading family offices, trusts, charities and private wealth managers can raise and respond to the question; Q. What impact is my money having? Despite what acronyms are in vogue or not, what aspect of social framing is politically expedient to use as a wedge for votes or not, or where regulation is at in a particular state or country, I guarantee you: Everyone I've met cares about the world and how their money shapes it. It can differ in application and according to an individual's values, though people do care! If you represent a significant family office, investment fund, or board, I love hearing about how you're positively impacting the world - so thank you for the comments, emails and messages and for working with me when we're best aligned! I look forward to hearing from you. #strategy #impact #investing #finance #business #growth #investorrelations #success

1

I’m always inspired seeing Australian consumer tech founders doing great things. Lucy Mort is no exception – as the co-founder and CEO of Sunroom, a consumer app that provides a space for women to earn money by creating content and connecting with their communities, Lucy has used product and design to create a space that feels unique, and caters to their specific community. Building a product that can sometimes confuse people (wait - I can only talk on Wednesday?!), I loved these product design insights from Lucy’s interview with Natasha Gillezeau: 📈 Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable: Pioneered by Raymond Loewy, product design should be innovative, whilst accessible and familiar. In essence, as advanced as your target customer is willing to accept. The iPhone is a great example of this, providing incremental changes over time, whilst maintaining enough of the previous design so that it is familiar. ⬇ Less is More: Build on the assumption that your users have no idea what your product is. The more features, the more complexity, the greater the barrier to adoption. Strip things back, listen to your users and your metrics, find your 1-2 key features driving value and stickiness and double down. 👌 Selective perfectionism: Work smarter. Some features will require significant A/B testing and iterating and others won’t. Have a framework to understand the demand, value and ROI you are creating to guide what will move the dial and where to invest your time. Via Missing Perspectives

35

3 Comments

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

It was a nice surprise to see Jacques Steenkamp from BusinessDesk NZ include some of my thoughts in a round-up of solid advice and ideas from 2024. He mentioned my list of 3 important things in life (behind a paywall so here they are): 1 - time with family and friends 2 - purposeful work (it's not about prestige, it's about making a positive contribution to our world) 3 - being generous with time Heading into 2025, what's most important for you in life? #ideas #advice #purpose

17

2 Comments

An excellent article on the increasingly complex role of directors and three key takeaways for directors to take into account new year. #boards #directors #governance

10

1 Comment

Huge news in the business and climate reporting space for those that missed it last week. Mandatory climate reporting is here! Our founder Catherine (Cat) Long shared her thoughts on what this means for business with Startup Daily #climateaction #netzero #reporting #esg #carbonfootprint #climaterisk #financialreporting

10

1 Comment

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

Another massive week at Birchal! Two new appointments to the Birchal leadership team: Crowdcube founder Darren Westlake joins as a strategic advisor to supercharge Australia's crowd-sourced funding industry. And Rod Bristow, former CEO of Investible and COO of CommSec joins Birchal as a non-executive director. We closed our first Birchal First Syndicate deal last week, for Dovetail Electric Aviation. Thanks to LaunchVic for the support. And two more Birchal First Syndicate deals set to open this week for cormagna and Volt Solar Tile. A swathe of new funds being raised, Scale Investors Pty Ltd, Athletic Ventures, Airtree, Hostplus and Artesian (Alternative Investments) all announcing new funds and keeping the startup press busy. Want to join Birchal as a shareholder? We just announced an upcoming CSF offer, check it out below Always consider the offer document and general CSF risk warning before investing. #investment #equitycrowdfunding #birchal #CSF #startups #founders #UK

81

25 Comments

There are some amazing, passionate, inspiring and smart Australian start-ups/scale-ups tackling some lofty climate challenges and now starting to take on the world. I was very inspired yesterday, as part of Climate Action Week Sydney, to see 6 awesome start-ups tackling different climate challenges and starting to venture overseas - thanks to James Stewart for putting the event on at Greenhouse. 5 years ago, imagining sitting in a room like this and seeing the progress of such companies was almost a pipedream. I'm looking forward to seeing the success of these six (I have a sneaking suspicion we'll be seeing their names in the news in the next six months) and to seeing more join them. GOTERRA - solving organic waste with innovative distributed insect robots MicroTau - reducing emissions for aviation with innovative shark-inspired tech NetNada - democratising carbon accounting and helping businesses reduce their footprints Hullbot - unique underwater drones to clean boats to reduce drag and fuel use AspiraDAC - modular solar-powered direct air capture for carbon WollemAI - sophisticated climate risk analysis for agriculture and finance Always Carbon - waste to biochar to capture carbon

34

6 Comments

A Climate Solutions opportunity roadmap

1

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

It was an honor to share insights on our Global Unicorn Investment Strategy on AFR. Since 2018, we've provided Australian investors access to top global tech unicorns like Airbnb, DJI, Klarna, and Stripe. In the AI era, we're observing significant transformations: AI performance is rapidly improving, costs are decreasing, and businesses and users are increasingly embracing AI, signaling a new era of productivity revolution. Since 2022, we've actively engaged in this space, witnessing the growth of companies like Databricks, Rich Data Corp, and OpenAI. Looking forward, we are committed to amplifying our efforts in this domain, eager to explore new applications and drive substantial economic value. #GlobalInvestment #TechUnicorns #AI #ProductivityRevolution

15

2 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

Federal budget 2024 💰 At Sprint Ventures our investment thematics are based on our mission to build a better future with a global macroeconomic focus, so annual budgets are fundamental in understanding growth industries bolstered with government funding. Sprint invests in HealthTech, Aged Care, Infrastructure and ClimateTech as well as AI and productivity. While the budget this year wasn’t revolutionary there are a few relevant initiatives: ▪️The Care economy was a key theme with focus on the Aged Care Royal Commission, NDIS and higher pay for workers. Mentions of digitisation is encouraging in strengthening these health industries. ▪️Focus on the Energy Transition particularly in critical minerals, hydrogen and renewables, which requires significant capital investment. It’s great to see the government stepping in with the capital to support the energy transition. As my friend Simon Thomsen correctly reported there’s not much for startups unfortunately. Some small business tax concessions but that’s it. Thanks to PwC for the invitation to your budget lunch, Richard Yetsenga for a great keynote and Oriel Morrison for her excellent interview of Richard. #federalbudget2024 #venturecapital #macroeconomicinvesting #buildabetterfuture

25

1 Comment

Going out with a bang as we near the close of 2024. Yesterday it was made public that we supported Purpose Capital to make history 🥳 as the first Impact Investment fund in New Zealand to have its practices verified against the global standard for integrating impact throughout the investment lifecycle. I was over the moon that a NZ company... The Lever Room was selected as the preferred partner to pioneer this independent verification, assessing the methodology against the best practice Principles for Impact Management framework. This work, overseen by the The Global Impact Investing Network—the leading industry body for impact investing globally—leverages our expertise in Impact Measurement and Management (IMM). I'm excited and hopeful about the project, as it seeks to enable $ capital deployment at scale but with investor confidence and integrity, ultimately driving collective outcomes to help solve global sustainability challenges. Purpose Capital is the first investor to join from NZ! 👏👏👏   👇 👇 Click the link to learn more on how Purpose Capital found engaging with us and to download your copy of the report https://lnkd.in/gag5JSxK “We feel a deep responsibility to insure we take a best practice approach to impact investing for the funds we manage and for the investment sector in New Zealand so that investors know if it's an impact investment, it “does what it says on the tin”. - Bill Murphy, Chief Executive, Purpose Capital 👉 Click to follow the Lever Room for more on measuring what matters 💚 🌏

98

31 Comments