Phaedon’s Monthly Review – April

“People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time, they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stringy” – Seneca. 

April, what a month. April has been a tricky one, a mixed bag. Personally, it’s been tough. One of my son’s friends’ father passed away. While I was  not super close to them, I knew them and liked them and spent hours connecting with them over basketball games, watching our kids play. I have another friend who is suffering through a very aggressive form of brain cancer. And another boy I coached last year going through a super aggressive type of leukemia at the age of 9. Life is tough, unforgiving and random.  Sometimes we don’t get to choose the path, but rather have to manage with what we have been given.  I’m sorry to start this monthly post on such a note, but what it does for me is it reiterates how precious the gift of life is. I do feel so lucky most days, getting to chat to so many people doing amazing things. I also appreciate and recognise that this market has been super tough for a lot of people, specifically founders.  So I wanted to pause and ask, are you ok? 

Innovation Bay is all about providing an environment for people to connect, to build relationships, to support each other. I like to think that on our founder’s side we provide meaningful and tactical insights on how to scale faster, how to drive personal and business performance, but more importantly, we provide a social network that supports founders through the ups and downs. Because there are many. 

Innovation Bay is about building communities, providing a network of support for founders navigating the highs and lows of entrepreneurship. Our founder community forums (8-15 people) embody the Dunbar number principle, fostering tight-knit groups akin to “good friends,” where support is readily available. According to the theory, the tightest circle has just five people – loved ones. That’s followed by successive layers of 15 (good friends), 50 (friends), 150 (meaningful contacts), 500 (acquaintances) and 1500 (people you can recognise). But on average, each person has only 1.5 connections that really matter. 

Did you know that having close friends correlates with life longevity? Our aim is to cultivate these meaningful connections, offering a support system for all members. So, pause for a moment and ask yourself, “Are you okay?” We’re here for you.

Above is one of the reasons why we are so excited about our Inspire event on 22-23 May in Sydney – our full community event will see 200 of the brightest minds in the startup ecosystem come together at Sydney’s ACO for our inaugural, future-focused event Inspire. It’ll provide a platform for us to tap into the collective wisdom of our members, partners and supporters, for a crowd sourced collage of what the future will hold across the next 5-10 years. 

Inspire is really a reflection of what Innovation Bay is; a community of passionate people coming together to connect, learn and share bread. You don’t want to miss out! Read on for how to get your hands on a ticket if you’re not an Innovation Bay member. Here’s a few more reasons to attend: 

• The audience will be exceptional, made up of ANZ’s leading venture capitalist, angel investors, founders and ecosystem builder. 
• The environment is intimate, capped at 220, it is designed to allow attendee’s to build real connections. 
• The topics amd format will be like no other tech event in ANZ – intimate, honest, unique. 
• The forum is going to include a series of great debates to help us get back to challenging conversations and appreciating different perspectives.

Inspire is really a reflection of what Innovation Bay is; a community of passionate people coming together to connect, learn and share bread. You don’t want to miss out! If you’re a member, you will have received a link to register. DO IT! If you’re not a member but eager to attend, we have opened up just a handful of spots to join us. Express your interest HERE and our team will be in touch.

In more news, we’re fast approaching our membership half way mark. We are intentionally capping membership at 600. This is a super exciting milestone for us. So what else is news at Innovation Bay?    

• We are recruiting for a Growth Manager to help us identify and select new members. if you have experience in working in a growth team, we’d love to hear from you.  
• We launched our very first pre IPO forum in Summit for founders who have a valuation of around $250M. A few thank you – to the team at ASX for supporting this initiative; to the amazing Steve Vamos for coming along and speaking to the group; and to our friends at Canacord for participating. 
• We launched a new COO group, similar to how we structure our Summit and Canopy forum that has been designed for COO’s of scale up’s who want to come learn from each other and come into a supportive and connected environment. 
• We are saying goodbye to our Head of Marketing, Ella Petite. Ella has been the engine behind our entire marketing and communications function for more than 2 years. I wanted to thank Ella for everything she has done over for Innovation Bay and wish her all the best in setting up her own advisory and consulting business! 
• Welcomed a bunch of new members in April – WELCOME! Here are just a couple that we profiled – Mithali Purohit, Iain McDonald, Justin Tomlinson, Keith Pitt. 
• We are launching a book club and a running club. Why not? 
• For our major adventure this year we will be heading to the NT in September.  I am very excited by this and even more excited that the NT government is investing $1-2B over the next decade. If you’re a founder there are a bunch of very attractive grants to have a look at. 
• We still have a couple of spots available on our first ever Heli Ski trip to NZ. If you’re a member and interested, run, don’t walk. 
• We officially kicked off our ARENA 2024 event.  If you are a renewable energy startup looking for funding, connections, publicity, customers and talent, then talk to us about presenting at our November event in Sydney.  This is all about showcasing the four most exciting renewable energy startups in the country to a gala dinner of 100+ investors.  It will be special.  Link to apply is HERE
• Deputy has now reached a $1.1B valuation! I can remember when we had Steve Shelley come to an IB dinner way back when…what an amazing founder. Steve’s previous business was in the air travel baggage business. We’ve also been super lucky to get Ashik Ahmed on podcast and at our dinners, amazing leader.  And what an awesome allstar board they have with Alison Deans and Howard Leibman to name just a couple. It’s so awesome to see the success of Deputy, well done! 

Let’s move into the market…In addition to the returns on Canva, there has also been liquidity with the sale of Accelo and secondary in Bugcrowd among others. This affects employees in those companies who get a return on their shares and early investors. Why is this so significant…maybe even a key turning point in our industry.  

• We haven’t seen the sort of liquidity event like this in Australia start up history.  Yes we’ve had successful IPOs and tech acquisitions that have created liquidity for founders and investors.  But nothing like what Canva is doing, in terms of scale. 
• While many who have been exposed to this event will be paying down their  mortgages or maybe upgrading, most will be allocating a % of that capital for redeployment into early stage tech, either into funds, to supporting the creation of their own startups or directly into companies.  
• And once again, many will be at Inspire many ex employee’s to start up their own companies…..

This is the fuel that accelerates our industry. There is nothing like a major liquidity event to provide returns and confidence in a market. It’s going to be a very interesting 6 months ahead.  Could 2024 be the golden age of early stage investing before valuations become tricky? 

Let’s take a quick look at a handful of funds made in April – a short but active month. 

• Tability closes an over subscribed round (Innovation Bay) 
• Veyor Digital raises $2.75M in a pre-Series A funding round led by Sydney VC Investible for US market expansion. (Startup Daily)
• Sophie Purdom‘s Planeteer Capital leads a $5.3m seed round, her first international investment. (Startup Daily)
• Bygen raises $2.6m in Series A, backed by Breakthrough Victoria and VCs like Alberts Impact Ventures. (Startup Daily)
• MGA Thermal, who presented at our ARENA event,  secures $5.7m for thermal energy storage system, with backing from existing and new investors, totalling $28.8m in funding. (Smart Company)
• Vitadrop secures $3.17m in pledges for upcoming capital raise on VentureCrowd. (Capital Brief)
• Former Canva, Eucalyptus exec launches Oodle media strategy startup. (Startup Daily)
• Investible CEO secures US$150m ($232.88m) funding for climate-focused technology start-up investments Southeast Asia. (AFR)
• VC firm Andreesen Horowitz has completed a US$7.2b fundraise. (The Information)
• Three Australian space tech startups secured $18m in funding from the Australian government’s International Space Investment India Projects program. (Startup Daily)
• The federal and Queensland governments invest $940m in PsiQuantum, a US-based quantum startup aiming to build the first useful quantum computer by 2030. (Startup Daily)
• Sydney startup Xefco raises $10.5m in Seed extension funding, led by Main Sequence Ventures and supported by Virescent Ventures and Breakthrough Victoria. (Startup Daily)

Ok, I’m starting something new and love to hear from you out there. Here are some recommendations of interesting news, tools, insights and thoughts I’ve come across in the past month: 

• AI Tool: Threado AI* – helping customer support teams resolve 2x queries in half the time.
• Positive News: Rwanda is on track to light up every household
• WTF? The first ever Jet Pack grand prix. I want one.
• Book: Indistractable by Nir Eyal.
  Really enjoying this read, very simple, easy to read with some great insights that you can apply immediately. 
• Interesting Tech News: Australia Can Achieve Close to 100% Reneables with Todays Technology – Are We Up For the Challenge? 
• Great Video: The Annual White House Correspondents Dinner. For me this is democracy at work, being able to look at the funny side of politics makes us all  more human.  (sorry in advance to those who feel we are talking about politics too much of late) but this is awesome if you haven’t watched it lately  
• Podcast: Invest Like The Best with Patrick O’Shaughnessy. Dunbars law and optimising human connections, something we are all about.  In fact we have based our optimal members numbers of Dunbars number.  
• Prediction for May: 
  • Inspire will be awesome and have a waitlist list of 500 people wanting to attend 
  • It will be the biggest funding month in the last year 

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