Last Week in Australian Startups #86, 23rd September 2024

This weekend I attended the ‘Anyone can AI Bootcamp’ run by Build Club and hosted by Annie Liao ???? and Vincent Koc .

The day required a $100 commitment, that you get refunded when you ship a project and complete the course.

We kicked off at 10am, and the room was packed at least ~100 people turning up. There was a really wide variety of backgrounds from students to people 10-20 years into their professional careers.

The day was split into to main parts - the first going through two courses hosted on Build Club’s new platform. The first course showed you how to build your own no-code EA using tools like Gumloop and the second got you to build your own AI chatbot using Langflow.

The new platform was really smooth to use, and reminded me on going through my AWS onboarding and completing hours of courses on A Cloud Guru (now acquired by Pluralsight).

The second portion of the day was all about building and working on your own AI projects in a really supportive environment. Something Build Club has been doing for some time now with it’s coworking days here in Sydney weekly and also all around the world in its other chapters.

We ended the day with some live demos of what people had built, which was really incredible to see that in just a couple of hours what was possible. Some of the fully functioning tools people had made included;

• Getting a list of all items on special from supermarkets
• Creating an itinerary for children on school holidays, based on their interests and activities in a local radius
• A lead gen tool that identifies small businesses that could benefit from an improved website

Saturday was the first group to go through a very much 101 in building with AI, with Build Club planning to run more of these and further extend with more courses for advanced learners too.

My biggest takeaways;

• There’s still so much I don’t know about how to maximise the use of AI in my daily life and work - a couple of investment on the weekend has probably saved me 10-15 hours per week already
• The commercial opportunity for business to leverage AI is still massive, but there’s the classic trap of finding time in your day job to optimise your own workflows - a day like today would be awesome for corporates with specific use cases they could tackle
• Build Club already has international presence with chapters across the world including major hubs like San Francisco - there’s a massive opportunity for them to do something really special here in being the place people go to learn and build with AI

I also got this neat certificate of completion

Top News

• Monochrome Corporation acquires Spek Technologies to enhance financial data management (Australian FinTech)
• Australia’s new social media bill ‘worryingly poor’ (The Australian)
• HEO taps BlackSky for space imaging boost (InnovationAus)
• JOLT launches in Canada with plans to grow EV fast-charge network to 5,000 locations (BNA)
• Meta defends its use of Australian users’ data to train AI without express consent, arguing that only publicly available data was used (InnovationAus)
• Bain Capital preps first-round bid for K1’s Elmo Software (AFR)
• Culture Amp co-founder Rod Hamilton joins Rampersand (Capital Brief)
• Deep-tech investment fund Powerhouse Ventures is seeking to acquire fellow Brisbane company Aliwa Funds Management (BNA)
• Quantum Brilliance will help deliver the world’s first mobile quantum computer for Germany’s cyber innovation agency in a joint $58M deal (InnovationAus)
• Tim Reed’s Potentia Capital snaps up Tokyo HR software start-up (AFR)
• CBA explores replacing local call centre staff with AI (AFR)
• Access4 acquires Channel UC for cloud comms scale (ARN)
• Advanced Navigation and Gilmour Space Technologies have signed agreements with Korea’s Hanwha Aerospace to advance the broader strategic interests for Australia and Korea within the space sector (BNA)
• ASIC hits pause button on startup services provider Scalare’s $8M backdoor listing plans (Startup Daily)
• NSW teachers will gain access to a GenAI tool that can save them up to an hour per week by helping with lesson planning, resource creation, and administrative tasks (InnovationAus)
• The WA government has launched a new $30M "Western Australian Venture Capital (WAVC)" initiative to support and grow the local startup ecosystem by attracting more venture capital investment to the state (Startup News)
• Australia's biggest radiology chain I-MED let start-up Harrison.ai use its patient scans to train AI. There's no public information showing patients consented. (Crickey)
• Dominic Pym, Judy Anderson-Firth and Brian Collins have launched a fintech fund, fin.amp (Euphemia)
• Sprint Ventures announces its raising for Sprint Fund III (Sprint Ventures)
• Nexl is acquiring Databall, a legal data platform that transforms data into insights (Nexl)
• 9 companies have received a share of $11.4M in grants from the Industry Growth Program (Business.gov.au | Michael Batko)

Funding Rounds

• Kismet, the healthtech startup that helps you automatically create a shortlist of verified service providers, has raised a further $20M towards it’s Seed round from Prosus Ventures and Airtree Ventures (SmartCompany | AFR)
• Ensombl, a digital platform for financial advice professionals, has raised an undisclosed amount from Vital Business Partners (Financial Newswire)
• Willed, an online platform for will-writing and end-of-life planning, has raised $3M from Seven West Media (Inside Ageing | The Australian)
• Rise, a blockchain company focused on scaling Ethereum by increasing transaction speed and reducing latency, has raised a $3.2M Seed round led by Finality Capital (CoinMarketCap)
• Primary, a treasury management platform which gives businesses the security of big banks while offering significantly higher yields on your deposits, has raised a $3.5 Seed round from Carthona Capital (Ben Buckingham | AFR)
• Nbryo, which is developing technology to enable a new breeding system to transform beef and dairy production, has raised an undisclosed amount from Mandalay Venture Partners (InnovationAus)
• Naturo (Haelen Technology), which is developing technologies to reinvent food production, has raised an undisclosed amount from Mandalay Venture Partners (InnovationAus)
• Mary Technology, an end-to-end document drafting solution that turns any number of documents into detailed chronologies within minutes, has raised a $920K Pre-Seed round from Empress Capital and Sam Nickless the CEO of Gilbert + Tobin (Artificial Lawyer)
• Raiz, an app which lets you invest spare change into a diversified portfolio, has raised $938K in a Share Purchase Plan on the ASX (Australian FinTech)
• East Forged, which makes a cold brew nitro tea, has raised $1.5M from GMAA, which is the VC arm of Vietnamese agribusiness TTC AgriS (SmartCompany)
• Drift Labs, which is aiming to be the Robinhood of crypto, has raised a $25M Series B round led by Multicoin Capital (Fortune)