Our call for Investment in Startups in 2002.... 16 years on... the time has come!! from Ivan Kaye ..read more

Mexican food chain Guzman y Gomez has raised $134.5 million in at a valuation of  $1.73 billion.  Founded by by Steven Marks and Robert Hazan in 2006 - from a single store in Newtown , the chain now has more than 200 stores in Australia, Singapore, Japan and the US. With Global Sales of $758.8M (including franchisees) – it has grown by over  29% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) since 2014. Existing investors, Aware Super and TDM Growth Partners, have been supported by  Cooper Investors,  Hyperion Asset Management,  Firetrail Investment ..read more

Blackbird has netted  $800m payday from its  Canva share sale.  "If you find yourself in a privileged enough position to take such a risk, the bets that pay off biggest, are the bets you take before anyone else is ready to." Great quote from VC veteran Alan Jones The transaction, which valued Canva at $US26 billion, allowed staff and early investors to sell their shares, turning some employees into millionaires and generating big returns for superannuation funds that tipped money into the local tech company!  For Blackbird’s 2012 fund, which participated in Canva’s e ..read more

After nearly going bust during Covid, Deputy has joined Canva, Go1, Pet Circle , Linktree and SafetyCulture - achieving   unicorn with an investment  of $37m at a $1.1b valuation from Express Employment Professionals, a global staffing and labour hire company who was a customer of Deputy. This has made founder Ashik Ahmed a happy man together with investors Square Peg, EVP, and US investors IVP and OpenView. In 2018, Deputy raised  $111 million led by US investor IVP, which valued the company at $423 million.  What Deputy does  ..read more

Founders of Israeli cybersecurity business, BioCatch, Avi Turgeman and the late Benny Rosenbaum get paid out as Macquarie buys $32 million, Sapphire Ventures $70m and Permira Growth Opportunities $40 million at a valuation of slightly more than $1 billion. What biocatch does  BioCatch founded in 2011, specializes in software development for identifying and preventing bank fraud and money laundering. BioCatch  numbers  BioCatch is currently led by CEO Gadi Mazor, employs 280 people, half of whom are based in Israel.  The recent surge in the company's val ..read more

Australian venture capital firm OneVentures has hit a landmark moment, with the official closure of its first fund, providing strong returns to its backers, including the federal government, which provided half the money for the fund back in 2010. This is a significant moment for the local technology industry as it marks the first major fund of the post dotcom era to officially wrap up and return good money to investors.  The return currently stands at four times the money invested, and could rise higher!! Source AFR https://www.afr.com/technology/this-vc-firm-has-hit-a-landmark-and ..read more

Adelle Moynihan’s  work over the last five months at Bupa, building Bupa Ventures, has come to life through launch in the The Australian Financial Review ?    Yes, it takes a minute to build a corporate venture fund, and I have learnt that's for good reason. Behind the scenes, the Ventures team has been aligning Bupa's robust capabilities to be able to deliver value beyond capital to the health techs we fund.    In the words of CEO Nick Stone    "That's the hardest thing for any start-up, getting a customer base. We can offer a readymade one as well as a very ..read more

  What is the Small Business Export Loan? The Export Finance Australia’s Small Business Export Loan  provides small to medium export businesses with loans ranging from between $20,000 - $350,000  to cover up to 80% of the costs to secure an export contract or purchase order with an overseas buyer,  funding for export market development,  equipment finance and  general working capital The loan is an unsecured, government-backed loan solution with an easy online application and fast approvals for businesses with a turnover of more than $250K. The loans are desig ..read more

2023 was a big year for SONGTRADR the music licensing platform founded by the musical genius   PAUL WILTSHIRE (in Picture ) Songtradr raised $109 million in 2023  at a valuation of $879 million. Investors included   Epic Games — the same company that sold the D2C music sales platform Bandcamp to Songtradr last month  WiseTech’s Richard White Perennial and  Argo. Investors in Songtradr include the  St Baker family office,  Regal Funds Management, and  Aware Super. What Songtradr does  Songtradr is like a B2B version of ..read more

After 7 years of R&D, VentureCrowd portfolio company Morse Micro is on track to produce “hundreds of millions of semiconductor chips” in the next few years, chips that have 10 times the range of conventional Wi-Fi technology and last many years on a single battery! ?  VentureCrowd investors sit alongside high profile venture capital investors including Malcolm Turnbull, Lucy Turnbull AO, Blackbird, The CSIRO's Main Sequence, and superannuation funds HESTA, Hostplus & UniSuper demonstrating once again that crowdfunding is growing up. ?  No longer limited to mum & d ..read more