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| Newsletter September 2026 |
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| | Silicon Valley doesn’t win because of the capital. It wins because of the scar tissue. I spent a decade there recruiting senior executives for venture-backed scale-ups, as a strategic partner to a16z and working alongside Sequoia, Accel, Greylock and others. Fifty-odd companies, from the inside, at the moment they were making their hardest calls. And the pattern I saw over and over wasn’t genius. It was that when a founder hit a wall, the person who’d already hit that same wall was a phone call away, and would take the call. Half the executives I placed were hired precisely because they’d made the mistake before, at someone else’s company, and wouldn’t make it again. Investing in second time founders, especially those who had failed the first time. |
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| The mistakes still get made in the Valley. They just get made once, and then they get passed on. Australia doesn’t have that yet. We’re a few generations into building tech companies, not ten, and we’re spread across a continent. The founder who made your exact mistake two years ago is probably in another city, and you may never meet them. So you make the call alone, at 11pm, and find out the hard way. This is the fifth year we’ve run Expedition, and what I’ve come to believe from watching that room is that the value was never the speakers or the setting. It’s fifty founders putting their scar tissue on the table for three days, and people who’ve been through it deciding to play it forward. One founder’s expensive mistake becomes another founder’s avoided one. That’s the thing I watched work in the Valley for ten years, and it’s the thing we’re building here. This edition is about the calls being made right now, in the market and in our community, and what they cost. Read it with your own next decision in mind. – Phaedon Stough, Founder & CEO, Innovation Bay |
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Didier Elzinga, CEO & Founder of Culture Amp spoke at Expedition25, and we asked him why events like Expedition matter. “Peer networks were critical to Culture Amp’s growth. Watching other great founders operate, I quickly noticed that the best of them were relentlessly curious. They would always ask, ‘How do you run your board meeting? How is your sales team organised? etc’ Even if they were ahead of where we were at. You can learn so much by putting your ego aside and learning from others. It is validating because you realise everyone else has the same problems you have but it is also liberating when you can see what success looks like and focus on implementing it in your own organisation.” – Didier Elzinga, CEO & Founder, Culture Amp |
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| Expedition 2026Didier Elzinga, CEO & Founder of Culture Amp spoke at Expedition25, and we asked him why events like Expedition matter. “Peer networks were critical to Culture Amp’s growth. Watching other great founders operate, I quickly noticed that the best of them were relentlessly curious. They would always ask, ‘How do you run your board meeting? How is your sales team organised? etc’ Even if they were ahead of where we were at. You can learn so much by putting your ego aside and learning from others. It is validating because you realise everyone else has the same problems you have but it is also liberating when you can see what success looks like and focus on implementing it in your own organisation.” – Didier Elzinga, CEO & Founder, Culture Amp |
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| | Expedition, year fiveThe cost of one wrong call has never been higher. AI has compressed everything. The market moves in weeks. A competitor can rebuild your product over a weekend. The calls in front of you now, what to bet on, what to defend, who to become, will define your next decade. Expedition is three days on the Gold Coast, 27 to 29 October, bringing together fifty founders to pressure-test the decisions that matter most alongside people who’ve made them at the highest level. This year’s speakers include: SafetyCulture — Luke Anear, Founder
Spicewell — Raina Kumra, Founder & CEO
Octopus Deploy — Paul Stovell, Founder & CEO
Eucalyptus — Alexey Mitko, Co-founder & CFO
Simpro — Curtis Thomson, Co-Founder
The B’Old Intern — Vijay Solanki, Human-Centred Strategist & Founder Coach |
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| What people leave Expedition with isn’t notes. It’s clarity on the one or two bets that matter right now, an honest read on whether the moat still holds, and a room of peers they can call at 11pm for the next ten years. One good decision pays for the room. |
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| | | Who’s joining Expedition 26:
Beyond EV — Alex Carvajal, Founder Bamboo — Blake Cassidy, CEO Complyr — Tony Brennan, Founder & CEO Bitwise Ag — Fiona Turner, CEO and Founder Vertex Cyber Security — Martin Boyd, CEO Safe Ag Systems — Katy Landt, CEO Unscripted Photographers — Cheryl Kitchener, Founder Biza Pty Ltd — Stuart Low, CEO Upflowy Pty Ltd — Guillaume Ang, Founder CEO CartonCloud — Vincent Fletcher, CPO JustFund — Craig Carroll, Chairman Mentorloop — Lucy Lloyd, CEO HowToo — Lisa Vincent, Founder/CEO Mass Dynamics — Paula Burton, CEO XY Sense — Alexander Birch, CEO ClearAI — Joshua Phillips, CEO and cofounder Wiise — Charlie Wood, CEO Partmax — Scott Elliott, Founder BOOM! Power — Alex Houlston, CEO & Co-Founder | Boxed 88 Pty Ltd — Niall Wells, Managing Director Care GP — Melvin Chen, Founder & CEO The Place — Mark Rossiter, CEO Synnch Pty Ltd — Andrew Antonopoulos, Founder MyPass Global — Matt Smith, CEO Verifiabl — Jojo Stewart, Technical Co-Founder Ocean Intelligence Limited — Joel Bowater, CEO Ocean Intelligence Limited — Gabriel Valente, CTO Neo Intelligence — Daniel Ouliaris, CEO Advanced — Alex Knight, Founder & CEO Veridooh — Jeremy Yang, CEO OzBrain — Darius Monsef, Founder & CEO Simply Stakeholders — Allison Hendricks, CEO Future Maintenance Technologies — Loic Ayoul, CEO SFM Agribusiness — David Wise, Managing Director Wagetap — Mitchell Stevens, Founder |
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| ARENA × Innovation Bay 2026 Renewables Startup ShowcaseAt our seventh ARENA x Innovation Bay Renewables Startup Showcase, we’re excited to announce our five finalists! Hello Again Solar — Dr Rong Deng, Founder
Solar panel recycling technology designed to keep today’s panels out of tomorrow’s landfill. RUX Energy — Dr Jehan Kenga, Founder & CEO
A hydrogen storage solution changing how low-carbon technologies get deployed. Gega Elements — Mo Assefi, Co-Founder & CEO
Low-emission technology to refine critical minerals including germanium and gallium. Voltavate — Amir Hooshang Taheri, Co-Founder & CEO
Nanofibre separators that make batteries safer, longer-lasting and more efficient to manufacture. BSPKL — Christina Houlihan, Co-Founder & CEO
Manufacturing high-performance catalyst coated membranes. Join us Wednesday 14 October, 6pm at Alpha Dining, Sydney. |
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| New Member UpdatesWe’re thrilled to welcome so many new members into our Innovation Bay community! |
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| | Joining the IB Founders are… |
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| | | Joining the IB Angels are… |
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| FUNDING & INVESTMENT MILESTONES |
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| Who raised, and from whom |
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| | The big threeHeidi Health — $475m package, $1.26b valuation.
Firmus Technologies — up to $7b ASX IPO, listing 22 October. Not priced.
Gilmour Space — seeking US$200–500m Series E extension. Not closed. Plus the latest growth rounds, seed and early-stage funding, government support, funds, exits and what we’re seeing locally and internationally. |
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| | What’s the call you’re sitting on right now? |
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| Hit reply and tell us. One line is enough. We’ll read every one, anonymise the themes, and publish what the community is actually deciding in next month’s edition. |
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| | | | | Australia’s venture ecosystem is facing mounting pressure to return capital to investors, and ASX is well positioned to help provide it. This recent Capital Brief article explores how ASX is working with VC firms to unlock liquidity and build a homegrown listing pathway. Featuring Innovation Bay co-founder Ian Gardiner, it also looks at Australia’s superannuation pool, index access, tech valuations and the upcoming pipeline across fintech, AI infrastructure, defence, medtech and biotech. > READ the Capital Brief Article |
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| | | | Through Innovation Bay’s partnership with Canaccord, founders and directors can gain access to its global research portal and insights from one of Australia’s leading small and mid-cap research teams. Covering more than 270 ASX-listed companies across enterprise software, digital infrastructure, biotechnology, defence and security, the platform helps private-company leaders follow public-market dynamics, valuation trends and emerging sector themes. Interested in complimentary access?
> CONTACT our team to discuss eligibility |
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| | | | Long-time Innovation Bay member Anthony Curtin and the team at Merton Lawyers recently brought together 50 venture capitalists and their portfolio founders at the Sydney Opera House for the Startup Board Conference 2026. With 35 speakers across 11 sessions, the day explored best-practice board governance, international scale and how founders and funders navigate M&A. > READ the Full Reflection |
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| INNOVATION BAY JOB BOARD & TALENT NETWORK |
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| | The board is bigger and busier than it was a month ago. It closed the period at 8,630 live roles, its highest point yet, on the back of 4,797 new postings, up 15% on August. More than 3,000 visits came through the board in the month, and the roles people opened most were the ones the community is scaling into: sales, customer, people and engineering seats, not just product. The month-on-month shift is clear enough to say plainly. Hardware and systems engineering roles are up a third, the biggest move of any function, and customer service and people roles are up 20% and 15%. That’s companies that have found the market and are now building the team to serve it. Finance, compliance and product postings all came back from their mid-year highs, down between 10% and 19%, which is what filled seats and leaner product teams look like from the outside. The mix underneath is steady: 56% technical, a quarter sales, finance and operations. What’s changing is the pace, and where the growth is. |
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| 8645live roles across
the network |
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| ~1,000new roles added
in past 4 weeks |
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| ~100new jobs per
working day |
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| Every role on this board belongs to someone in this community. If you know the right person for one of them, make the introduction. That’s how this works. Hiring? Get your open roles in front of the community. Looking? |
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