ACS Ten13 Startup Catalyst Investor Mission on again - March 2020

Next year in the first week of March I will be escorting a group of Australian high net worth investors, angels and deal executives to Silicon Valley for what is becoming an annual event.

Whilst having sold River City Labs including Startup Catalyst to ACS over a year ago I have enjoyed watching what Andrew and Yohan have done and how their continued supported for IT centric startups in Australia re-affirms my decision to hand stewardship of RCL to ACS. A large part of the puzzle to tech startups is not just the people but the funding. Recently ACS announced a fund to follow through on this evolution. ACS have asked me to lead the next mission and I am more than happy to do so.

Engaged and enlightened investors are very important and that is what the Investor Mission tries to do. Over the years I have found the best learning delivered in person by somebody who has actually done it. If you are talking tech startup then the greatest concentration of that experience is in northern California, below you can see a list of the meetings we have secured in the past on the previous missions:

The mission for a 1 week, it is on from the 1st to the 6th of March 2020 in San Francisco. The following week is SaaStr so there might be a good reason to stay a week longer as well.

What we try to do is to get meetings with people that either do not exist in Australia due to the size and density of our market or the key names in the biggest parts of the eco-system. What this means is meeting with people like the VP at a16z responsible for C level hires in their portfolio group, the lead on a secondary stock fund that acquires positions from exiting staff and founders from growing startups, corporate VC powerhouses such as Microsoft, PayPal and SalesForce; a dedicated session with Jason Calacanis (who turned $25k in $100M in Uber); small boutique VC and larger ones (Accel, Lightspeed); Accelerators (YC, 500 StartUps); M&A firms specialising in tech startups exits and much much more. We also network, with local investors, entrepreneurs and as much of the investment related eco-system as possible.

Want to come long ? We would love to have, there are requirements - that you qualify as a sophisticated, professional or experienced investor as defined by ASIC (or you work as an executive for one of these). Take a look at this if you want further clarity on that definition. If you are good with that then please contact this email [email protected] or the website . On the mission I like to think we look after you pretty well with most things looked after except you getting to San Francisco - we even have an experienced EA with us to ensure we can all be as productive as possible; there will also be time for one on one meetings and we try to reserve a little each day on a sensible common timezone with Australia so we can all continue to do business.

I am really looking forward to going along. The previous missions have been a wonderful education and networking experience for me - not just in the people we meet in country but also the people that come on the trip. From our first mission the group even started a collective that has now grown into a business ready to list on the ASX (don't expect that of every trip and good luck on the IPO Founders First). We even found an investment on the last mission that is firing on all cylinders - ChipperCash.

What is Ten13 and what is the tie in with ACS ? Well as mentioned ACS now operated StartUp Catalyst with River City Labs. Ten13 is our new syndicated investment product of my family office (Transition Level Investment) that allows people to invest alongside my family office in all eligible deals we do (all Australian, New Zealand and most US deals). We call it deal by deal VC - we present you the investment opportunity after we have sourced and gotten to it term sheet stage and have it ready to invest. We put in real hurt money and investors are free to jump into the deal as well. We manage that investment and operate it as if it was a small VC fund in that we control and are in effect the shareholder on your behalf, we invest on the same terms as you. We invest in seed and Series A scale opportunities in tech startups with between $200k and $500k cheques, for more information please contact the Ten13 team at [email protected] or head to https://ten13.com.au/