This week we cover the latest funding news and discuss hot topics like the impact of the Victorian COVID-19 outbreak on the startup sector, India and potentially the US banning Tik Tok, venture reports on funding throughout the pandemic, and Tesla’s surge in valuation. We also talk about Who Gives a Crap’s $6M donation to charity in the wake of TP panic-buying, the government’s investment in cybersecurity, toxic workplace culture, and the classification of Huawei and ZTE as “National security threats” by the US.

We cover funding news, the acquisition of self-driving startup ZOOX by Amazon, the federal government’s big investment in cyber security, Atlassian’s announcement of brand new headquarters at the Sydney Innovation and Technology Precinct, Canva’s latest $8.6 billion valuation, the future of coworking, and Sydney’s dropping in the startup ecosystem ranking.

am Chandler is the Founder and CEO of Nitro, a software company developing commercial software used to create, edit, sign, and secure Portable Document Format files and digital documents. Nitro is Australian-founded and is now listed on the ASX and headquartered in downtown San Francisco, with offices in Melbourne, Australia; Dublin, Ireland; and London, England.

We cover the latest funding news and discuss the Black Lives Matter movement and how tech companies have responded, such as IBM’s decision to stop selling facial recognition software to police. We also discuss startup job losses and revenue hits as reported by VC firms, what type of help startups will need post-Job Keeper, and the recent rapid progress of telehealth due to COVID.

Leigh Jasper is the co-founder and CEO of Aconex, the world’s most widely used cloud collaboration platform for construction, engineering and infrastructure projects. Aconex was acquired by Oracle in 2018 for $1.6B. Leigh started the business back in 2000 with school friend Rob Philpot, after working at McKinsey & Company where he consulted for clients in the financial services, media and information technology sectors.

Fred Schebesta is a serial entrepreneur, best known for co-founding finder.com, one of the world’s leading comparison websites. Before launching Finder, he started Freestyle Media, a successful digital marketing agency, while at university. In 2007, Freestyle was sold to a public company and the funds were used to start Finder.com. Fred, with his co-founder Frank Restuccia, have grown Finder organically without funding to $100M+ revenue, 1,000+ products on the platform, 83 countries, and 360 employees around the world.

Topics discussed include the latest funding news, Amazon’s acquisition of Zoox, the SpaceX launch, the drop in startup valuations, and the boom in quantum computing. Listen in for thoughtful commentary on relevant startup and technology headlines by a fantastic panel.

Dan Phillips has spent most of his career building up Macquarie Capital’s Venture Capital Group. Somewhat of a well-kept secret in the Australian startup ecosystem, in the past 25 years the Venture Capital Group has done 36 deals and deployed almost $600 million dollars of capital into some fantastic companies. The group has 11 companies currently in the portfolio.

We discuss the flurry of new investments these past few weeks including; Doctor Anywhere, Judo Bank Qwilr, The Yield, and Verteva. We also cover Nura’s long awaited Loops hitting the market, Atlassian acquisition of Halp, the UK’s first week of zero coal power, and Twitter’s announcement that employees can work from home forever.

Jeremy Liew was named by the Sydney Morning Herald as Silicon Valley’s “Most powerful Aussie”. One look at his track record, and it’s no surprise why. Hailing from Perth, Jeremy is a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. After spending the ‘90s and early 2000s working for web pioneers such as Netscape, AOL, CitySearch, and Interactive Corp, Jeremy joined Lightspeed in 2006 to help the firm, which traditionally was B2B-focused, expand to the consumer.

Will superannuation funds continue to back Aussies VCs, the launch of the Governments COVIDSafe app and do we trust them with our data, how Elon Musk wiped $14bn of Tesla’s stock with one tweet, and why founders like Jeff Bezos and RedBubble’s Martin Hoskings stepping back in to take the reins in a crisis.

Jaime Bott is a partner at Sequoia Capital, managing their Talent Advisory function. She leads a talent team of 14 who help Sequoia’s portfolio companies hire amazing talent, assemble a recruiting function, and build a board. Since Jaime started at Sequoia in 2010, talent evolved into an essential function for VC firms. 10 years ago there were less than 5 people in the Bay Area working for venture firms in a talent function; now there are at least 280 venture talent partners around the world.