Phoebe Harrop

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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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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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. 🤝

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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

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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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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

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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 👇 🚀

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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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We're launching Nectarine on Product Hunt today! If you want to help us out, head over to our launch page and check it out! Link here: https://lnkd.in/gcqx7tzv For the last 1.5 years or so, Vivi, Shane, and I have been working on a new company called Nectarine (hello nectarine). We officially incorporated about a year ago, and launched in February. We've been bootstrapping Nectarine so far. That means we didn't borrow or raise money to start the business. Instead we are simply "living below our means" and trying to grow the business with the revenue we make along the way. While true (or even generous), the $1.76/hour thing is really in jest. In reality, I'd consider our first year of starting Nectarine to be an unmitigated success. Starting a tech company with lots of legal and regulatory overhead is a very hard task. It's even harder when it's a two-sided marketplace (investors and advisors) with a relatively narrow profit margin. Getting a fully working product up and running, SEC registration, 20 fantastic advisors on the platform, and still turning (a small) profit with zero funding is something I'm immensely proud of. @vivitron and @moneywithshane deserve a massive amount of credit because they've been working their tails off. While getting to this point is a huge milestone, we obviously are barely at the starting line. In order to turn Nectarine into a successful business we have lots of work ahead of us on the marketing, technology, recruiting, product, and more. BUT, the future is hopefully bright. Much of our expenses have been one-time legal costs relating to compliance and registration. And while we've been working on it for 1.5 years, we've only been generating meaningful revenue for about 4 months. If we can continue to grow, we have an opportunity to scale to a level where we have meaningful profit and can maybe even take home a paycheck! As always, reminding you to build wealth by following the two PFC rules: 1.) Live below your means and 2.) Invest early and often. -Jeremy p.s. Thanks to sankeymatic.com for the chart! #nectarine #producthunt #sankeychart #startups #business

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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

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Fintech players are shaking up the savings game with high-interest accounts that could outdo your traditional bank! 🏦💰 Ready to see how they stack up? 👀 Let us know what you think below ⬇️

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Moving day at GTMfund. Bittersweet to say goodbye to our first office. I still remember pitching Max on the idea of bringing the team together after first launching it fully remotely. The early days of getting the fund off the ground were not easy and it felt like we needed to bring people together to keep up the insane pace. Personally I think it’s one of the best things we’ve done for our growth. Something as small as getting to the office early and realizing Paul Irving has already been here for two hours helping founders, or Sophie Buonassisi coming into my office all excited with a new content strategy she wants to deploy, or Amit Aloni fired up after finishing a deal memo or booking a new meeting with an endowment/family office. Those were the little things that kept the fire going. I genuinely think it’s impossible to burn out if you’re building with people that genuinely care about each other and the work they are doing. It doesn’t drain your cup, it fills it up. There’s a constant debate for remote vs. in-office and there’s certainly pros and cons for both but I’m now firmly in the camp that in the early days, the need to rally behind each other is so huge and it’s just easier to do that in-person. We’ll sadly be saying goodbye to our cool brick walls but on to a bigger and better space with more room to grow. Just getting started…

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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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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

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🗣 "It's certainly an exciting time for the Aussie startup space particularly as you get the AfterPay exits and...the Atlassian success etcetera." ⬆️ You probably know Dominic Pym for founding Up, Australia's fastest-growing digital bank. With 2 other exits and a portfolio of 100+ startup investments to date, his list of accomplishments runs far longer. 🚗  Now investing through his Family Office, Euphemia, Dom is focused on underrepresented founders doing social good. 📺 Sophie Robertson chatted about early-stage investing with Dom, from the perspective of a multiple-time founder. With early positions in AfterPay, Twitter and Tesla, Dom has an eye for early innovation. Full transcript, video, and summary in the comments ⤵ 👼 Want to become an investor like Dom and receive angel investment opportunities straight to your inbox? Join TEN13: https://lnkd.in/gEMRJfqk (wholesale investors only)

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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

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My focus these last few weeks has been on two things 1. Hosting more things- bringing people together, creating luck and serendipity  2. Applying for more things By the end of the week hope to apply for Emergent Ventures Grant program With Business Podcast by Roohi These last few months have been thinking what could really move the needle and drive growth for BizPodRoohi And it all boils down to capital infusion 1) Capital to hire/ add people, pay the existing ones on the team Like thumbnail designing, video editing and clips, community person, someone to handle the newsletter  2. Capital to host more in person podcasts, events  Applying for more things has zero downside, and could be life changing 

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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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When the boss is all ears... and paws Josh just briefed the top team member on the latest ANZ updates:  - $2,000 cashback is still available!  - ANZ is offering up to 95% LVR with no LMI for ultra-low-risk postcodes (even over $2M).  - They’re also doing 97% LVR for investors, including interest-only and construction loans. If the boss approves, maybe you should too! Reach out to learn more. #EfficientCapitalSolutions #DogBoss #ANZUpdates 

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