Sachin Shah

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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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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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.

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🌟 Australian Startups 2023: A Year of Strategic Shifts and Emerging Opportunities 🚀 In 2023, the Australian startup landscape navigated a cautious investment climate, recording a total of 413 deals with an overall investment value of $3.5 billion. Despite a significant drop in deal value from previous years, there was a notable shift towards robust activity in the early stages of investment. Angel and Pre-Seed rounds not only resisted the broader downturn but actually increased, highlighting a vibrant seed funding environment that underpins a dynamic market for emerging technologies. This heightened competition at the entry-level indicates a strategic pivot within our ecosystem, investing in the foundational potential of new ventures. Such insights are crucial as we steer towards nurturing a resilient and innovative startup community ready to tackle future challenges. Dive deeper into the full analysis and explore how these shifts are shaping the future of Australian innovation. https://lnkd.in/gc4gNtGc #AustralianStartups #VentureCapital #StartupEcosystem #Innovation

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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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📢 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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Yesterday was my 5 year anniversary at Lightspeed! Some cool milestones the last 12 months include 2 early port cos hitting multiple $100Ms ARR and 2 portfolio companies doing m&a. But the really long feedback cycles in VC are brutal. Super humbling in how they divorce milestones and real achievements, inputs and outputs. It’s super easy to satiate yourself on the vanity metrics of VC. (Hot take: TVPI is vanity. Don’t get full early. You can’t eat markups. We all fear the zombie unicorn!). One of the biggest differences from operating imho. Half a decade in and still feel like I have so much to prove and learn. Which I really love. VC is a strange, beautiful craft. Full of contradictions: - You need to be founder friendly, but also drive difficult board conversations. - You want to have unique insights, but also not overthink it. - You want to be early, but not too early. - VC is really hard to do well, but not hard to do. - You can't help but pattern match, but the best investments break all patterns. I’ve said it before but VC is the endless game of introspection, getting to ground truths, constant learning and getting in trouble with exceptional people. Thanks to the incredible founders who trust me to be your partner. Always stay gracious. Here's to the next 5 years in VC!

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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.

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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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Canva raised a $6.6M Seed + a $15M Series A all pre-revenue So raising money isn’t about revenue ❌ In fact it was 3 years before Canva had any revenue… So what are VCs looking for then? They're looking for future revenue growth → once Canva started making money → they went from $0 to $105M in 4 years 🤯 Revenue is looking backwards... And raising is about VCs believing in your (future) ability to hit Venture Scale 🤩 Does (historical) traction help? Of course, it helps A LOT these days… There’s only a very few that’ll be able to raise with no revenue → usually because of the team → some crazy breakthrough → or some other X factor But on the flip side… Revenue doesn’t automatically equal funding 🤯 There’s a lot of startups out there right now with lots of revenue who are (or will) struggle to raise and I don’t think that gets talked about enough They were all sold this story → Growing 2-3x yoy = successful raise → $3M ARR = Series A And so they put their heads down, burn through their runway, hit those metrics to eventually pop their heads back up and realize only then that it’s not enough And now they’re almost out of runway 😞 At least that was my experience… We tripled then doubled revenue, we had big customers with thousands of users and finally crossed $5M, but then we struggled to raise our next round → but we had lots of revenue? 😤 What I didn’t realize was that revenue is a high level lagging indicator and VCs are looking for the leading indicators to future growth instead (note my company’s growth started to stall out shortly after $5M) It’s these leading indicators that’ll help them build conviction that you’ll be able to get on or stay on the $1M to $100M in 7 to 10 years venture scale curve → meaning after you hit $1M in revenues you need to… → grow at 10% mom for 24 months straight → and 6% mom for the next 3 years 🚀 But the problem is… Those leading indicators are complicated, different for each company, ICP, growth tactic and stage + sometimes take some gut & intuition on the VCs side (more on that in another post) So instead, VCs take the easy way out and say things like “you need more traction” (and most founders take that literally as - if I can get more users, more revenue and more growth I’ll be guaranteed my next raise) But now you know better 😃 Dig deeper and figure out what leading indicators you need to de-risk And use that as your roadmap 💪 -- ♻️ Repost to help a founder in your network Click 'visit my website' at the top of this post to register for my Seed to Series A session

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Early-stage startups are not defensible. They do not have a moat. No matter what their 'secret sauce' is. If they can build something in under 6 months with $1M, then so can the next team. What matters is execution over an extended period of time. Code can be copied. What can't is not limited to customers and users, audience, brand & reputation, intellectual property, organic traffic and so on. Anybody can spin up an Airbnb knockoff today - heck, there are 'marketplaces in a box' that you can literally use to get started today - but you can't spin up the value of having millions of listings and users, nor Airbnb's reputation for quality stays. That sh!t takes time to develop, and it's not something that a pre-seed, seed, or even Series A startup can do. So if you're an investor asking a pre-revenue, pre-seed stage startup how their product is defensible or what their moat is...don't...it's way too early to expect a moat... ask instead what their long-term strategy is when it comes to defensibility, and how they will out-execute their competition.

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A 92% increase in founder-advisor conversations on our platform says it all. Founders know scaling isn’t just about hard work—it’s about having the right people in their corner. I’ve seen the impact of experienced advisors have on startups: sharper strategies, clearer decisions and accelerated growth. If you’re ready to guide startups and make a difference, let’s connect 👉 https://lnkd.in/gBexuUVh #Startups #Founders #AdvisoryBoard #PortfolioCareer

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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.

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Managing runway in a capital-constrained environment? It's been a hot topic lately – and it's likely to stay that way. 🔥💰 Here’s how to navigate these choppy waters by Tom Gleeson Restructure deals strategically 📊 • Extract profit from every angle • Focus on revenue that truly matters Target profitable growth markets 🎯 • Pinpoint customers driving sustainable growth • Steer clear of the "growth at all costs" mindset Prioritise your team (most crucial!) 👥 • The tech sector has its ups and downs • At our core, we’re people-driven businesses Creating an environment that attracts and retains top talent is his main focus for the coming year. What’s your top strategy for managing runway in 2024? #TechLeadership #TalentRetention #StartupStrategy

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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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[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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The Venture Capital ‘Regatta’ is what is Replacing The VC Factory Model. The way VC works now is that there is a ‘start’ line for companies when you cross from early round financing into ‘series’ raises, A,B,C,D — but MOST of the actual race now takes place before the ‘gun’ — … just like in a sailing regatta half the race is won/ lost in tacking back and forth before the start line jockeying for position … and most of investing rather than being structured fixed ‘Seed,A,B,C,D’ is mini-nimble financing rounds before the A in a string of financing.. implications? Well as a seed investors you don’t think about what you do in a single round / bite… but instead in terms of ‘tacks’ back and forth as the company gets ready before the race even starts.

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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

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Hidden Trap Of Convertible Note and Liquidation Preference Multiples. Young entrepreneurs often get screwed by their angel investors on convertible notes and I know I can’t convince you not to do it so I’d like to offer one simple bit of advice to help you avoid getting screwed. 🤐 When you do a convertible note with a cap that converts into the next round of funding, one of the unintended consequences is that if you’re successful and raise at a larger price than your cap the early angels often get “multiple liquidation preferences” on their dollars in. Here’s how it works: 💡 - Let's say an angel invests $500,000 with a $5 million cap. That means they'll own at least 9% of your company if the conversion price exceeds the cap. If you raise funds at a lower price, their ownership goes up. - Now, with a regular 1x liquidation preference, they'd be entitled to $500,000 if you sell the company for less than $5 million. If you sell for more, they'd rather take their ownership percentage instead of that liquidation preference, which acts like a safety net. - Fast forward, You work your tail off for 18 months, securing a series of notes, and guess what? You're lucky enough to land $5M at $25M pre-money valuation. At this point, that early angel investor owns around 16.67% and probably still holds a 1x liquidation preference. - Now here's where the trickery starts: When the initial note converts, instead of snagging a $500,000 liquidation preference, they'd cash in a mind-boggling $2.5 million liquidation preference—a whopping 5x increase! If a VC pulled this move in an early-stage deal, their reputation would suffer, making it hard for them to work with other VCs or entrepreneurs. In VC financings, this term is clear, but on convertible notes, it happens subtly, catching entrepreneurs off guard – a silent and painful setback. So here’s what every entrepreneur should add immediately to any convertible note 😎 "If this note converts at a price higher than the cap that you have been given you agree that in the conversion of the note into equity you agree to allow your stock to be converted such that you will receive no more than a 1x non-participating liquidation preference plus any agreed interest." Papering this when it converts is super easy if the angel has already consented to it and they are not being cheated at all. They get their full investment as a 1x liquidation preference. And please don’t let any angel try to convince you they deserve more for the early risk. The early risk is why they get a cheaper price. 😁 You can also checked “liquidation preference overhang” by José Ancer article to read more about it. (Link in comments) 👉 Check out my free newsletter for more insights: https://lnkd.in/dKZQKHg2 . #startups #funding #VC #investors #founder #entrepreneurs #founders #entrepreneurship #startup #fundraising #termsheet #fund #venturecapital #angelinvestors #angelinvesting

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