|
The Next Evolution of Innovation Bay |
|
|
For over 20 years, Innovation Bay has been the room where founders tell the real story — not the polished version, the one that actually happened. Now we’re turning two decades of that hard-won wisdom into something new: the Founder Operating System. A living, AI-based architecture, built to answer the questions that really matter, starting with the big one: how do you build a $100M ARR company? The hard part is that there’s no single playbook. A $100M company can be built a hundred different ways, and every founder journey is its own. Generic AI gives you generic answers. The real work isn’t the information; it’s matching real, lived experience to your exact situation. |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
And that’s the bit no one else can do. This isn’t a document, nor is it a static library getting older by the day. It’s a living thing, fed by the 50+ founder sessions we run every single year, captured live, getting smarter and richer every time we sit down. We run them under Chatham House rules, with no investors in the room so founders tell the truth, not the version they’d put in a pitch. That candour is what makes the knowledge so valuable and impossible for anyone else to replicate. You can’t scrape it. You can’t buy it. It only comes from 20+ years of trust, thousands of founders and investors who’ve built and backed companies right here, sharing what really happened, not the theory. Knowledge becomes relationships. Relationships become action. That’s the moat.
We’re organising it around four pillars: Leadership, Scale, Product, Capital.
Our purpose is simple. To drive scale into the ecosystem, and help founders make better decisions, faster. This is the next evolution of everything we’ve built over 20 years. Come build it with us.
— The Innovation Bay team |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| | |
| Venture Down Under 2026
Venture Down Under is almost here. We’re excited to see you at the Sheraton Grand Mirage Resort on the Gold Coast from Tuesday 4 to Thursday 6 August for 3 days of learning, real connection, and plenty of fun. |
|
| | A glimpse of who you’ll see and hear from across the three days:
Dr Larry Marshall
Former CEO of CSIRO. Nat Cook
A closing keynote from Olympic champion. Alexey Mitko
Eucalyptus — inside a ~A$1.6B exit. Zeligate, Southern RNA, Beyond The Clinic, Biome Centric & FleetGuru
Simpro A live startup showcase.
Plus our partners at HSBC, KPMG and Invest Gold Coast.
Two sessions we’re especially excited about during VDU are:
Day 1 (Tuesday 4 August), 2:30–4:30 PM: Building the VC Playbook of the Future A hands-on scenario-planning lab. The room works through the real forces reshaping venture: liquidity, AI, capital concentration and regulation in small teams, then regroups to build a shared playbook for what comes next.
Day 2 (Wednesday 5 August): The AI Convergence Lab: A Look Towards 2030 A forward look at how AI is rewriting what it means to build, through the lens of two leading founders and a leading voice on AI. From there, the room splits into four working streams, each drawing on high-level voices from across the investment and startup ecosystems. Choose your lens and go deep.
See you at the Gold Coast! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| HorizonIn Horizon, the dominant theme right now is health and fashion tech. |
|
| | We’re seeing wearables and recovery hardware becoming a solid trend among both startups and the competing giants like Whoop, the Fitbit and most recently Garmin’s CIRQUA. Additionally, a wave of AI-powered fashion design tools that let anyone spin up a full clothing pack in minutes, no design background required. We’re excited to share that Horizon is on the verge of closing a deal with EO Lab, a hardware company building sports performance wearables for elite athletes! More details to follow once the round closes. On the fashion side, we are seeing a new generation of design tools that are compressing what used to take a studio team weeks into a same-day workflow, opening up apparel design to a much broader base of independent creators and small brands. This is seen on a global scale with reverse.fashion, based in Berlin, it applies AI to automate sorting and digitization of discarded textiles to support circular-economy logistics. The company closed a seven-figure pre-seed round led by High-Tech Gründerfonds on July 10, 2026. Very excited for what’s next! Matt | Horizon Team |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| Founders – Our Online Workshop Sessions
At the start of the month, our founder community heard from Mike Baukes, CEO and Co-Founder of UpGuard, on his recent US$75M raise. Here are 3 insights that stuck with us: |
|
| | 1. Smart money isn’t what you’d expect.
The best investors stayed quiet and trusted the operator, checking in only occasionally. The real risk isn’t a bad investor: it’s getting orphaned in a large portfolio when you’re “okay but not exceptional.” 2. Know your numbers better than anyone else in the room.
Know your numbers: Maintaining an increasing GRR above 90%, an NRR above 100% and a growth rate above 40%, whilst maintaining a FCF margin of +-10% allows you to make real-time decisions on hiring and spending. Understanding these economics is what truly unlocked growth 3. Run your fundraise like a competitive process, not a favour.
Mike ran a banker selection across 7 banks at once and cut two the moment he found competitors already working with them. He chose a bulge bracket bank deliberately, since mid-tier banks tap out around $150 to $500M while bulge bracket can carry a company through to IPO. We’ve got plenty more sessions lined up for our founder community, both online and in-person. In August, topics range from what investors actually look for in a pitch deck, to the key steps to mastering sales when selling your product or service to customers. Beyond that, we’ve got sessions covering people and hiring, leadership, GTM, and capital raising, and more. Regardless of your stage or industry, there’s something here for you. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| | Daniel Lohrmann – Bonded Matter |
|
| At Innovation Bay, our founders are serial builders, even 1–2 companies in, they’re still hungry to build more. The best part is usually when the next business looks nothing like the previous one. Our IB Summit community member Daniel Lohrmann is the founder of growth consulting company Ikaros and alongside it, he’s building Bonded Matter: a modern fine jewellery brand using lab-grown diamonds and gemstones, 18K gold and platinum, made to order with a lifetime warranty on every piece. Every purchase offsets a tonne of CO₂ through native Australian reforestation. One runs on systems, the other on craft. Same instinct driving both. We love celebrating growth here, whatever direction it takes. Check out Bonded Matter here. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| INNOVATION BAY JOB BOARD & TALENT NETWORK |
|
| Are you looking for your next role in startups or venture? |
|
| | Check out the IB job board, a growing hub for opportunities across the ecosystem. You can also join the Talent Network, where founders and investors in the IB community can discover and hire you directly. Our job board has 8,300+ open roles right now, with 4,240+ new ones posted in the last month across engineering, sales, finance, data, product and more. |
|
| |
|
|
|
| | Member UpdatesWe’re so excited to welcome new members into the VC community here at Innovation Bay. Here’s who’s joined us this month: |
|
|
| Jason FieldingVoice Capital |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| Manon DenisonGandel Invest |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| | | |
|
|
|
| | | | | KC VenturesOur partners at KC Ventures are launching a new podcast for founders. Each episode sits down with a founder to unpack the lessons they wish they’d known on day one. First up on their podcast is Cibby Pulikkaseril, Founder at Zabidou, on fundraising, timing, and what closing a round really feels like. Interested in listening to the entire podcast?
Watch the entire podcast →
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| | | AshurstOn how “Made by Humans” is the new unique selling point. As AI content floods every industry, brands are flipping the script — marketing themselves as “human-made.” But there’s no agreed definition of “AI-free,” and competing labels (from self-certified stamps to trade-marked schemes like Proudly Human) risk confusing consumers more than reassuring them. For founders, it’s fast becoming a real branding and IP question, not just a niche debate. If you’re interested in understanding how, in a world of AI hype, “Made by Humans” is becoming a selling point, read the full article below.
Read the full article → |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| | | Canaccord GenuityUpdate & Exclusive Conference Invitation Canaccord is Australia’s #1 enterprise content management player. They are widely known for backing founders and growth companies across pre-IPO raises, IPOs, placements, block trades, and institutional financings. Now they’re opening doors to the IB community for their annual growth conference:
46th Annual Growth Conference — Boston, 10–13 August 2026 400+ global growth companies, institutional investors from around the world, and direct access via 1:1s and investor dinners. If you are keen to attend, reach out to the IB team, and we’ll get you connected! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| | 🔥 Deal Heat: 5 Raises To Keep a Track On |
|
| | 1. AdvanCell just wrote Australian biotech history: US$315M.The biggest cheque ever cut for a private Aussie biotech, and investors fought to get in (oversubscribed, then upsized — the VC equivalent of a queue around the block). Brisbane-to-Boston outfit is chasing down prostate cancer with targeted alpha therapy. Watch this space: Phase 3 is next. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| | 2. Firmus turned a father into a billionaire: overnight.~US$720M from Nvidia + A$750M from Blackstone. A$2.9B round. A$15.5B valuation. An ASX listing on the horizon in November. Oh, and it made co-founder Oliver Curtis’s dad a paper billionaire in the process. Sydney AI infrastructure is having a moment. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| | 3. Myricx cashed out for US$2B+: and nobody saw it coming.Novartis just paid one of the biggest sums in history for a pre-clinical biotech — before it’s even hit human trials at scale. Massive win for early believer Brandon Capital, whose LPs (Hostplus, HESTA, Aware Super, CSL, QIC) are about to see some very happy numbers. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| | 4. MAKO is literally shark-skin tech for planes — A$28M.Yes, really. “Flightfilm” mimics shark skin to cut aircraft drag and save ~4% on fuel. Delta’s already testing it, the US Air Force has flown it. Sydney deep-tech doing very cool, very weird, very fundable things. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| | 5. Southern Launch is building Australia’s own spaceports — A$25M.
The team behind the country’s first commercial rocket launch and first commercial spacecraft re-entry just raised to expand two South Australian spaceports. Space is no longer a US/China story — it’s a South Australia story too. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| Upcoming Innovation Bay Events |
|
| Playbook Session: Raising Capital & Crafting Pitches that Land with Steve Allan (Third Horizon) Tuesday 11 August · 10:00–11:15am AEST · Online IB Founder Bay Session (Sydney) — with Camilla Thompson (BiohackMe) & Patrick Collins (DAMSecure)
Tuesday 18 August · Sydney |
|
|
| Table for 20 Wednesday 19 August · Sydney
Playbook Session: Sell like a Founder, Scale like a Company — with Paul Stovell (Octopus Deploy)
Wednesday 26 August · 10:00–11:15am AEST · Online |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| | Stripe x Startup Battlefield Australia — Tuesday, 19 August, Sydney
Eight founders. One night. A shot at Startup Battlefield 200 in San Francisco. Antler Australia Residency — Monday, 17 August, Sydney/Melbourne/Brisbane
Full time, in person, ~2,000 applicants vying for a spot. Cohort kicks off. |
|
|
| Canaccord Genuity Growth Conference — 10–13 August, Boston
400+ global growth companies, institutional investors from around the world. A rare seat at the table. Intersekt 2026 — 3–4 September, Melbourne
Australia’s largest fintech festival. 1000+ attendees, top industry voices, unmissable energy.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| | |
|
