Community connections: July events

It’s been a busy few weeks jam packed with community engagement and connection across all our communities. Our team has zipped around Australia and across the ditch to New Zealand to bring our communities together for incredible insights and education, action-packed adventure, and deep personal connections. From Heli-skiing in NZ to lunch at the ASX, to dinner focused on the thriving Space and Defence tech ecosystem in Brisbane, our events have been as varied and unique as our members.

Heli-Skiing | Queenstown, Aotearoa NZ
❄️🏂☃️ Enthralled by the setting, inspired by the company. That is the best way to describe the experience of our inaugural Innovation Bay Heli Ski adventure.

An intimate and eclectic group of IB members gathered in the small New Zealand town of Methven to enjoy 5 days of deep powder and perspective sharing. While the snow gods didn’t quite deliver the goods, the conversations and experiences exceeded all expectations.

Spanning the full spectrum of their collective life experiences the assembled group tackled topics from living your best life (best tip ➡️ know the 3 things that have to happen daily for you to have a great one, then do them!), to the secrets to successful professional partnerships (best tip ➡️ apparently enjoying two beers at the end of each day as a time to debrief and get things off your chest works a charm).

IC Dinner | Horizon | Brisbane
A huge thank you to everyone who joined us at this week’s dinner for our community of Angel investors, Horizon! Our Horizon Community Manager Eleanor Salt hosted our Angel Investors in Brisbane to focus on Australia’s fast-growing and vitally important space and defence ecosystem 🚀

What did we cover? 🤔
FOR INVESTORS 💸
↪ Why Australia’s defence and space ecosystem should be top of mind right now. With a number of dedicated defence focused tech funds, money is flowing to the sector.
↪ The challenges and opportunities of investing in defence while complying with ESG requirements
↪ How to evaluate potential investments: why going deep on founder diligence is paramount, and resilience and perseverance are key traits to look for.

FOR FOUNDERS💡
↪ How many of the problems Australian defence startups are solving for are unclear, making it a difficult area for founders
↪ Why it’s critical to design to manufacture at scale
↪ Why hierarchy decision making is one of the most important factors of a founder team

Team Culture Lunch & Learn | Summit + Canopy | Sydney
Our Senior Community Manager, Beata brought together our founder communities to a lunch and learn hosted in the AgriWebb offices in Surry Hills with a critical theme: Team Culture.

In today’s fast-paced world, with ever-changing trends and growing teams, it’s crucial to keep everyone motivated and ensure new hire’s are a perfect cultural fit. The takeaway? A strong team culture is the heartbeat of success, and a motivated team is the fuel for growth 🚀

Founder Lunch | Summit + Canopy | Brisbane

Lunch and Learn| Aurora Lunch | Melbourne

Team Culture Lunch & Learn | Summit + Canopy | Melbourne
For the second iteration of our Team Culture Lunch and Learn, our Senior Community Manager, Beata brought together our founder communities in Melbourne.

VC Lunch & Learn | Aurora | Sydney | Hosted in partnership with ASX

Our Aurora community were generously hosted the ASX HQ in Sydney for a uniquely insightful VC lunch and learn. The lunch brought 20 leading Australian VC funds together for a wide-ranging discussion, covering:
🌎 Global markets
🔭 Liquidity outlook and levers
⚖️ Portfolio management
💸 IPO outlook / listing parametres

As always happens when this community comes together, we left with some pretty epic learnings and takeaways. Thank you to everyone who came and contributed to the conversation 🙏

Powering the Future | Horizon + Aurora | Sydney
 🚀🌏🌱 We joined forces with our friends at Investible to host our VC and Angel communities at Sydney’s Greenhouse Tech Hub for an afternoon dedicated to POWERING THE FUTURE.

Attendees heard from two panels off founders, investors and industry experts – diving into how homegrown startups can maximise Australia’s relationship to our neighbours (and largest trading partner) in Asia, as well as the future of electrification for heavy industry. The insightful sessions were followed by networking 🥂

Elevate your Expertise with AI | Summit + Canopy | Sydney
Our Founder Community gathered for an inspiring AI workshop hosted both virtually and at Google Cloud’s stunning Sydney offices.

Designed to elevate skills and broaden their AI horizons our community members had an incredible experience delving into the latest trends and tools that will drive our innovation forward led by Ella Grier, renowned Machine Learning Customer Engineer. There’s nothing like pushing the boundaries of AI together! 🤖

These events are exclusively for Innovation Bay’s members. Want to explore membership? Apply to join here

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