Co Ventures

Lets gooo! Shopfront has made it in the Top 30 Best Newcomers?for the Governor of Victoria Startup Awards ?? Thanks for adding us LaunchVic. Good luck to all the start ups included.

She’s live ?? Calling Operator Podcast meets Shipra Mahindra. Plug in.

Ditch the grind, embrace THE CLIMB. We're excited to launch 'The Climb', a raw and honest interview series with leaders who've mastered this superpower. They'll share how they've harnessed grit, vulnerability, and continuous learning to elevate themselves and their teams. Tomorrow, we'll start with ?? Michael Batko, CEO of Startmate, who leads Australasia's most ambitious startup accelerator and ecosystem. Batko shares how documenting leadership failures became his secret weapon and why scaling yourself matters more than scaling any single organization. Coming up in the series: Ailen Fee at Dandy Georgie Turner at Tidal Ventures Matt Hinds at Sauce AI Emily Robinson at Kic They'll share raw insights about: Building resilience through setbacks. Fostering cultures of continuous learning. Transforming vulnerability into leadership strength. Creating sustainable growth frameworks. Follow along to unlock leadership insights that truly move the needle. #CoLabCoaching #TheClimb #ExecutiveCoaching #Startup #Leadership #PersonalGrowth

Today's First Cheque Podcast ep is all about mastering fund cycles. This one is for emerging fund managers, first-time fund managers, and anyone considering raising a fund. We're talking about the meat and potatoes of raising a fund. Here's what no one tells you about VC fund cycles: –??Most funds take 12-18 months to raise. –??They deploy over 2-4 years (lately, more 4 than 2). –??The fund itself runs for 10-12 years. –??By year 7-8, they're hunting for exits. Here's the kicker: Fund managers start raising their next fund when they're about 75% deployed in their current one. Do the math. If you're raising for 18 months and deploying for 3 years, you're basically always fundraising. Welcome to VC. The VC world runs on vintages. And like wine, some years are better than others. And those splashy AFR headlines about "Fund X raising $100M"? That's usually the START of their raise, not the end. Cheryl Mack and I break this down in detail in our latest episode, including why 2021's "deploy in 2 years" strategy is ageing like milk. The episode links are below. ?????? First Cheque is dedicated to open-sourcing conversations with experienced investors globally. Our aim? To enhance the craft of early-stage investors, from those writing their first cheques to the veterans in the game. DayOne.FM | We’re for founders and operators Co Ventures Aussie Angels #FirstChequePodcast #EmergingFundManagers #VentureCapital Thanks to our sponsors: Vanta, Rocking Horse Group - R&D Advance Funding Galah Cyber.

"We'll wait for returns from our first investments to fund the next ones." I hear this from new angels and fund managers more than you'd think, and it might be the most dangerous assumption in early-stage investing. Here's why: Most startups take 7-12 years to exit, don't pay dividends (that money goes back into growth), and even the winners often need multiple rounds of funding. You need to be in the game when the good deals appear. Fun fact: Even Canva took 12 years and hasn't IPO'd. It's like planting a garden and expecting to eat from it next week. That's not how this works. Cheryl Mack and I discussed this common trap in our latest episode. The reality? If you're counting on near-term returns to fund future investments, you'll probably not be in the game long enough to see those returns. My advice? Plan your deployment like you're not seeing a cent back for a decade. Because you probably won't. Want the full breakdown? Tune into our latest First Cheque Podcast episode before a new one drops on Monday (links in comments). Not financial advice. Just a hard-earned perspective. #FirstChequePodcast DayOne.FM | We’re for founders and operators Co Ventures Aussie Angels

?? WebMD has a problem—because in just four weeks, we’ve already started beating them on SEO. Here is the why and the how ?? Starting with the WHY WebMD—and other incumbents—are facing a massive challenge with the rise of AI in knowledge generation. Their primary value proposition—generic, one-size-fits-all health information—is already less valuable than even the earlier LLM models. Their core SEO strategy is to rank for traffic, but in an AI search environment, ranks matter less and less. Helpful content retrieval is the new game to ace. But the real issue? Health knowledge is broken. Most platforms and trusted sources rely on slow, human-created content that is static and outdated, failing to reflect the latest research, expert insights, or patient experiences. And with the rise of LLMs, they are already providing fantastic summaries, personalized advice, but are still missing all the up-to-date pieces. Health knowledge is alive. Ask any person living with Long COVID. This knowledge is constantly evolving—from patient experiences to expert insights, from research papers to medical records. So, HOW are we Turnto taking on the WebMDs of the world? Last month, we took a giant leap towards building the home of health. We launched our AI-powered Q&A tool, publishing thousands of "answers" across four major diseases - sneak peak here: https://lnkd.in/gKQcsqJX Every day, 1 billion health questions are asked online—many now shifting to LLMs. But the real opportunity isn’t just in AI content generation. It’s in building with AI—using agents across LLMs to find, analyze, and generate the most up-to-date, high-quality insights from all voices: doctors, researchers, and patients; and uncover new data. Instead of generic, AI-generated summaries, we surface: ?? What an expert actually said last week about that condition. ?? What’s trending and emerging across patients in real time. ?? New research and theories that haven’t yet made it into static health pages. So, how is our experiment going? From zero web presence to: ? 3,000+ pages launched ? 240K+ impressions ? Outranking incumbents in the US for high-value longtail health searches ? 2.55-minute avg. session time and growing! And we are starting to win traffic from AI search traffic! One of the best parts is we can now scale this experiment to new conditions in a matter of hours. This is just the beginning, and we’re lucky to be working alongside the talented Sasha Gusain Head of SEO Canva as we build the home of health—for every patient, every condition. This space is changing fast. A a16z Bio + Health article by Julie Yoo Daisy Wolf last year predicting the next WebMD and the massive market opportunity around it; and as we are building this all in real time we are getting so much closer and more possible. What do you think about the future of health knowledge? Or how agents are changing ways we solve problems? ??