Max Meyer’s Post

How do I get investment from Blackbird? There are many paths: 1/ Rick Baker met Melanie Perkins at Canva on the bank of the Swan River at a Perth conference. Rick shared his dream of starting a VC fund, and Mel divulged her vision for Canva (or as it was called then, Canvas Chef). A moment of serendipity. 2/ Michael Fox (a 2x Blackbird founder) introduced Rick Baker to Luke Anear at SafetyCulture who was building a digital checklist solution in Townsville with traction at some of the world’s largest enterprises with no salespeople. Opportunities can arise from trusted referrals, but not always. 3/ Elise Jenkins and Ben Woodington at Opto.bio were among the thousands of website applications we review and personally respond to. We were engrossed by their vision to treat incurable cancers with implantable neural interfaces. A few calls later, and Michael Tolo was in their corner. 4/ 🐘 Nicholas Crocker met Tim Doyle at Eucalyptus through Steve Smith (Aussie cricketer) on Angel List. They organised lunch and talked about the economics of French vs Japanese restaurants and a pre-seed investment into Eucalyptus was born. 5/ As a 17 year old, Liam Millward at Instant cold emailed us and it would lead to a pre-seed investment into one of Blackbird’s fastest-growing companies today. 6/ Neala Fulia at MoreGoodDays joined our Giants program in 2021 and blew everyone away with her pace of progress. We led her seed round to make chronic pain treatment accessible and affordable. Giants has been the single best path to get early-stage investment from Blackbird. We’ve made 11 investments in a very short space of time including into companies like Cotiss, Sauce AI and Build Club. If you’re a founder right at the very beginning, your path to Blackbird starts with a Giants application. Are you our 12th investment? Applications close 2nd March. https://lnkd.in/gR5JxeRQ