My highlights for this week;
- me&u founder Stevan Premutico has decided to step down from the board to take a sabbatical before coming back with startup #3 (Stevan Premutico
)
Always exciting when a seasoned founder is announcing they’re going to go again. These are strong signals of a maturing ecosystem, and that this knowledge and experience is being retained in Australia.
- Square Peg is raising for a sixth fund, as well as a new “Opportunities Fund 3”, seeking a combined $840M (Startup Daily
)
VCs are continuing to raise new funds, will be interesting to see if any investment thesis change/evolve and if there’s any focus on increasing DEI at the founder level. Certainly with more capital from exits/secondaries there’s opportunity for the LP pool to be more diverse which is what is more likely to make real impact from a DEI lens.
- Melissa Widner, CEO of Lighter Capital, shares her insights into the the current landscape of female VC’s in Australia (LinkedIn
)
Out of 169 partners in Australian VCs, only 17% are female yet 43% of all non-partner investment professionals are female.
Certainly a lack of diversity of at the top, but the pipeline is looking healthy - as Melissa puts it in her article “Will this lead to greater gender equity at the partner level.. in five years, will women make up at least 43% of VC Partners?
- UQVentures introduces Ventures Hustle, an entrepreneurship challenge spearheaded by Luke Anear, founder of SafetyCulture, where students will have the chance to build and launch real businesses (UQVentures
)
Universities, in particular the Group of 8 in Australia, can be very research and theory heavy. It’s great to see a more embedded approach to industry led curriculum, especially when it’s legitimate entrepreneurs like Luke.
- 4 space projects at UniSA have received $18M as part of the $230m iLAuNCH program (Startup Daily
)
- The NSW government has launched the NSW Space+ Program with up to $500K in grants for space tech (Startup Daily
)
- Gilmour Space Technologies will kick off a new flight test service in Australia next year for commercial and defence customers with speeds above Mach 5 (Startup Daily
| BNA
)
- me&u founder Stevan Premutico has decided to step down from the board to take a sabbatical before coming back with startup #3 (Stevan Premutico
)
- Square Peg is raising for a sixth fund, as well as a new “Opportunities Fund 3”, seeking a combined $840M (Startup Daily
)
- Birchal cuts staff as part of 30% expense reduction (SmartCompany
)
- Blossom has reached $75M in funds under management, targeting $100M by the end of 2024 (Startup Daily
)
- JET Charge rolls out Australia's largest EV dealer charging network with Toyota (BNA
)
- Medtech EMVision unveils first responder device, which would allow paramedics to scan and send images to experts from the site of a suspected stroke (BNA
)
- Birchal has released its latest crowd-sourced funding (CSF) report which estimated the combined market cap of all successful CSF is $5.8B (BNA
)
- Australian VC funding up 12% to $1.8B according to KMPG’s VC Pulse Report (The Australian
)
- Synchron is incorporating ChatGPT into human brains to help those with paralysis communicate with others more freely (The Australian
)
- Up, the digital bank, is on track to hit 1 million customers in October (Capital Brief
)
- Melissa Widner, CEO of Lighter Capital, shares her insights into the the current landscape of female VC’s in Australia (LinkedIn
)
- Square Peg Investor Letter Half Year Report 30 June 2024 (Square Peg
)
- AFR Analysis on Square Peg’s returns (AFR
)
- Asseti wins Most Innovative PropTech of the year at the Proptech Association Australia Awards (Asseti
)
- Scott Belsky, Chief Strategy Officer of Adobe, will join the Atlassian Board of Directors from 1st August (Mike Cannon-Brookes
)
- UQVentures introduces Ventures Hustle, an entrepreneurship challenge spearheaded by Luke Anear, founder of SafetyCulture, where students will have the chance to build and launch real businesses (UQVentures
)
- Stables, the stablecoin payments startup, has announced its expansion to Europe in partnership with Mastercard (Cointelegraph
)
- Fundabl, the fintech which offers debt funding to startups, has raised $3.2M (Startup Daily
| BNA
| Capital Brief
)
- Cuttable, a first-of-its-kind automated digital advertising agency, has raised a $5.5M Seed round led by Square Peg with participation from Rampersand (SmartCompany
| AFR
| Jake White
)
- Order Editing, a Shopify app which lets customers make changes to their orders without emailing support, has raised an undisclosed amount from its customers in its first funding round (Hamish McKay
)
- PREVE, a pre-product startup looking to improve patient clinical outcomes, quality of life and healthspan through automation and AI, has raised a $550K pre-Seed round (Adam Beaupeurt
)
Co-Founder at Mighty Partners
3 个月Really appreciate the shout-out Haris! ??
Strategic Communications Advisor & Fractional CCO | Empowering Companies + HNWIs + Execs: Driving Awareness, Expansion, and Impact | Aspiring Intelligence Group Operator??D.C. / SLC
3 个月Intriguing updates. Significant milestones highlight the thriving startup ecosystem's resilience.
Restaurant Tech Entrepreneur I me&u founder I dimmi founder
3 个月Appreciated Haris Qureshi :)
Making physical therapy affordable and accessible to millions
3 个月Thanks for the love, Haris!