This week our panel talks about some of the massive acquisitions and rounds recently raised in the Australian ecosystem, including the $2b acquisition of A Cloud Guru, the $1.7b acquisition of MessageMedia, and new funds from Tenacious Ventures and Investible.

Australian VC over the last decade, workplace comms startup Pyn’s $8m seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz (the firm’s first Aussie investment), and what Anil Sabharwal, Google’s Australia-based star product leader, is up to next.

Andrew Nunn is Co-Founder, Chairman and Executive Director of JBS&G Australia—one of Australia’s largest privately-owned environmental consulting companies. Andrew also acts as Director for several companies focussed on property development, private equity investments, and entertainment opportunities. In partnership with his wife Alexandra Dimos, he founded the Nunn Dimos Foundation, a philanthropic fund focussed on supporting key social and arts causes in South Australia.

Our panel discusses the open letter regarding climate change Aussie tech leaders penned to the government, whether or not founders should heed Scott Farquhar warning against bootstrapping, the recent plunge in Bitcoin and SafetyCulture’s latest funding round.

Warrick Cramer was most recently the CEO of Vodafone’s Global Centre for Innovation in Europe, known as Tomorrow Street – a joint venture between Vodafone and the Government of Luxembourg to scale late-stage start-ups, assisting them to reach key global markets and make real change. Warrick sits on the board of a Silicon Valley based venture capital fund and is a Non-Executive Director for Advance.org.

Our panel discusses Main Sequence Ventures’ new $250m deep tech fund, the huge $221m raise by Brisbane-based Octopus Deploy, a $34m raise by seaweed livestock feed supplement maker Sea Forest and the Ingenuity helicopter flight on Mars.

Peter Dunne is one of Australia’s leading venture capital and private equity lawyers, specialising in private capital raisings and M&A. Peter has advised on multibillion-dollar transactions, including acquisitions, buy-outs, disposals, joint ventures and recapitalisations, involving some of Australia’s largest public and private organisations; his clients include Atlassian, Canva, Deputy, Culture Amp, Linktree, BigCommerce, Campaign Monitor, Expert 360, SafteyCulture, Tyro, Zoox…the list goes on.

Our panel discusses Canva’s position as one of the fastest-growing private technology companies in history off of the heels of their latest round of funding and the impact of Coinbase’s IPO, both in the local VC market and on the future of cryptocurrency. We also talk about the shifting role of media, including Twitter’s potential acquisition of Clubhouse, Substack’s new focus on local news, and the rise of newsletters and paywalls. Some other topics include superannuation software and Peloton’s arrival in Australia.

Nick Carter is the is one of Australia’s leading energy experts; he is currently Senior Vice President of Energy Tech and Solutions at Macquarie in Australia where works across a range of areas from energy storage to renewable energy. He is an engineer by trade and has worked around the world for companies like Toyota, General Motors and Tesla. Nick has a real passion for electric vehicles (EVs) and this episode heavily focuses on the future of electronic vehicles in Australia.

Our panel goes deep on the upcoming WeWork SPAC deal that will take the company public, as well as why Airwallex turned down a SPAC offer of their own. In the wake of a major cyberattack on Channel 9, panellists discuss the state of cybersecurity in Australia. The panel also discusses the tech industry’s reaction to Christian Porter’s appointment Industry, Science and Technology portfolio, as well as what the arrival of Second Quarter Ventures, Australia’s first secondary fund means for the startup ecosystem.

David Warren is a co-founder and non-executive director of ASX200 software company Altium. David grew up in the suburbs of Launceston, Tasmania and attended the University of Tasmania (UTAS) where he studied physics and astronomy as an undergraduate, honours and postgraduate student in the late 1970s and early 80s. David recently gifted $2.6 million to UTAS to set up an endowed chair in the field of astrophysics.

In this edition, we talk about recently-announced funds in Australia, including LaunchVic’s $10m sidecar fund to support women-led startups and Investible’s new $50m fund. Piggybacking off of the announcement of LaunchVic’s fund, the panel deep dives into the lack of funding for women-led startups in Australia and what needs to be done to address it. The panel also discusses the Roblox IPO, Vend acquisition by Lightspeed, CBA launching a BNPL competitor to AfterPay, Stripe’s doubling of their valuation. Lastly, NFTs are on the table again as we discuss a $23m raise by OpenSea from Andreessen Horowitz.