Startup Virtual Event Library
Access expert insights on demand with this comprehensive guide to Innovation Bay’s virtual events.
At the start of 2020, Innovation Bay had grand plans for a year full of exciting retreats, community breakfasts, founder dinners, pitch events, community coffee programs and lots more engaging, interactive in-person events. Just as we were ramping up at the start of the year, the pandemic hit and our schedule was practically wiped clean.
Much like the scrappy, resourceful startup founders we exist to support, we rethought our strategy and took the whole show online. Since March, we’ve hosted 30 virtual Innovation Bay events for nearly 5,000 attendees! A large chunk of these attendees are founders and many are new to Innovation Bay. We’ve practically doubled our community and hope that we have provided valuable inspiration and expert insights to the ecosystem in an uncertain time. Thank you to our dozens of panellists who were gracious enough to share their wisdom with us and the thousands of virtual attendees that joined our online sessions.
As we prepare to shift back to in-person events, we’d like to call attention to the treasure trove of event recordings we have stored on our YouTube channel. These sessions contain hours of timeless advice and insights from Australia’s top investors and founders. Below is a comprehensive guide to some of the best, most enduring online events we’ve hosted with links to the recordings on YouTube grouped into 5 categories: Angel Investing, Fundraising, Founder Support, Function Focus, and Sector Deep Dives. We hope this library of events will serve as a resource that all of our friends in the ecosystem can tap when trying to learn more about a particular topic.
1. Angel Investing
Best Way to Build an Angel Investment Portfolio
Three experienced investors share some best practices around building angel investment portfolios, such as how to start a portfolio, how much to invest in your portfolio, and how many startups to engage.
Featuring Trevor Folsom (Investible), Ariane Barker (Scale Investors), and Luke Fay (Artesian).
Angel & Seed Investing
A panel of top angel investors shares their honest assessment about what the year ahead looks like for early-stage investment and tips for founders looking to engage with angel investors.
Featuring Alan Jones (Remarkable), Andrea Gardiner (Jelix Ventures), Kylie Frazer (Eleanor Venture), Matt Allen (Pick & Shovel) and Stew Glynn (Transition Level Investments & TEN13).
2. Fundraising
How to Master the Art of Bootstrapping
Australia has a history of successful entrepreneurs who bootstrapped and created global companies; Atlassian bootstrapped for 8 years. Three founders who are succeeding in their bootstrapped journey, and one investor who is offering a different model of funding share the pros and cons of bootstrapping.
Featuring James Cuda (Savage Interactive), Lachlan Donald (Buildkite), Noelle Smit (Teamgage) and Matt Allen (Pick & Shovel).
Who Sets Valuation and Deal Terms?
In this helpful session, a founder and investor share their takes on how to negotiate term sheets.
Featuring Rory San Miguel (Propeller Aero) and Melissa Widner (Lighter Capital).
What Should Founder Investor Relationships Look Like?
Two investors each bring along a founder from their portfolios to share their advice for cultivating a successful founder-investor relationship.
Featuring James Cameron (AirTree Ventures), Nick Crocker (Blackbird Ventures), Nathan Walsh (Athena), and Phoebe Gardner (Beyond Ag).
VC x Founder: Tempus x Healthmatch & Swoop Aero
Our VC x Founder series explores a unique relationship not often publicly shared. Hear a VC and two founders from portfolio companies chat challenges, relationships, and growth.
Featuring Alister Coleman (Tempus Partners), Manuri Gunawardena (HealthMatch) and Eric Peck (Swoop Aero).
VC Ask Me Anything
Fundraising is consistently the most-requested topic from founders. Our community submitted their most burning questions that they’ve always wanted to ask an investor and 3 VCs respond.
Featuring Hannah Field (Tempus Partners), Ulric Ferner (Right Click Capital) and Grant McCarthy (Tidal Ventures).
3. Founder Support
How to Build Your Best Board
Boards can help establish a baseline for the success of a young business and bring the collective experience and expertise to guide the startup. The challenge is that startup boards require a different approach and face unique responsibilities and challenges. 3 exceptional panellists share their advice for ensuring diversity on your board, where to find board members and understanding the roles and responsibilities of your board.
Featuring Katherine McConnell (Brighte), Peter James (Droneshield) and Kaarjal Prasad (KPMG Australia).
Life On the Other Side: Founders Who Exited
Three entrepreneurs who walked the founders’ journey and grew their startups to successful exit discuss their journey as a founder, the experience of exiting, and importance of giving back and ensuring a supportive growing startup ecosystem.
Featuring Wendell Keuneman (Tidal), Olivia Humphrey (Kanopy) and Dean McEvoy (Spreets).
Leading Through Uncertainty
Level-headed, calm leadership has never been more important, but how do you effectively make decisions, communicate them clearly, & ensure the health & wellbeing of yourself & your team when everything is constantly shifting around you?
Featuring Nick Crocker (Blackbird), Jane Martino (Smiling Mind), Craig Davis (Sendle) and Amanda Price (KPMG High Growth Ventures).
4. Function Focus
Marketing & Sales: How to acquire more customers
No matter how good your idea or product is, finding and growing your customer base is one of the hardest challenges for any startup. Knowing how to use data to understand your customer, the right channels to reach them, how to reduce acquisition costs, and develop scalable, repeatable models will help you reach and scale your customers. Three customer acquisition champions share their growth principles and customer acquisition tactics.
Featuring Anna Cheng (Brighte), James Cattermole (Hexigo Fitness) and Peter Mycock (Partnerize).
Recruitment: Why a downturn is the best time to hire your A-team
Finding the right people to execute a vision and grow a business remains one of the enduring challenges of any founder. The current market instability has created a once in a decade opportunity to access a pool of talent like never before. To discuss how to take advantage of this moment we’ve invited experts who are on the front line of hiring for some Australia’s biggest tech startups;
Featuring Francisco Morales (Canva), Nell Hardie (Reinventure) and Tova Angsuwat (Google).
5. Sector Deep Dives
Impact Startups: The power of purpose
The rise of purpose-driven businesses is driving change and making a measurable difference to society and the environment. 3 entrepreneurs and a leading impact investor discuss how they use their mission as magnet for customers and talent, how they balance the dual purpose of impact and making money, and how they measure impact.
Featuring Joshua Ross (Humanitix), Jurie Rossouw (Driven), Kirstin Hunter (Future Super) and Rachel Yang (Giant Leap Fund).
Retail: The rise of ecommerce
Without a doubt, the future of retail is ecommerce. Australia is currently the 10th largest commerce market globally by revenue, and is growing year on year, with 8 out of 10 Australians currently shopping online and 1 out of 10 items being purchased online. An expert ecommerce panel answers your questions about the current state of Australian ecommerce and where it’s heading.
Featuring Martin Hosking (Redbubble), Kate Morris (Adore Beauty) and Shaun Broughton (Shopify).
Space tech: When will Australia be in space?
The cost to create and launch rockets and satellites has decreased substantially over the last 10 years and as a result, we’ve seen a boom in homegrown Space-tech startups. We have officially entered Space 2.0; a new global frontier for low-cost commercial space services. So what does this mean for Australia? What can Space-based tech be used for? What industries will utilise it? When will we see a rocket launched from Australia? An expert panel answers these questions and more.
Featuring Adam Gilmour (Gilmour Space Technologies), Flavia Tata Nardini (Fleet), Martin Duursma (Main Sequence Ventures) and Steve Marshall (South Australia Premier).
Cybersecurity: How secure are we?
Cybersecurity is a vital part of the digital world and its importance has been dramatically underscored by recent cyberattacks on Australian government and businesses. Four leaders in cybersecurity discuss why this emerging field is so important in Australia and how we can help it grow.
Featuring Casey Ellis (bugcrowd), James Cameron (AirTree Ventures), Jessica Glenn (OneShift & Skilld) and Mike Baukes (UpGuard).
Edtech: Has the way we learned changed forever?
Three founders who are each improving the online learning experience for teachers, employers and their staff and entrepreneurs uncover the key challenges edtech can help solve.
Featuring Andrew Barnes (GO1), Hannah Field (Tempus Partners), Murray Hurps (UTS) and Tim Power (Inquisitive).
Health Tech: Companies changing the patient experience
Technology is at the heart of the new patient-centric future for healthcare. Three companies who are changing the patient experience join us to discuss the ins and outs of the health tech sector like protecting patient data, government support and regulation changes and moving clients from pen and paper to the cloud.
Featuring David Cannington (Nuheara), Elliot Smith (Maxwell Plus), Kelly Constable (OneVentures) and Silvia Pfeiffer (Coviu).
Agtech: How do we feed 10 billion people by 2050?
How do we move to a more sustainable global diet? What changes need to be made in the supply chain for food tech? How similar to meat are these substitutes? What should we do with all the food waste created? Are we seeing a change in consumer purchasing trends? These questions and more are answered by an expert agtech panel.
Featuring Sam Wong (Blackbird Ventures), Shama Sukul Lee (Sunfed), Olympia Yager (Goterra) and Rolf Weber (Marley Spoon Australia).
Renewables: Can Australia become the renewable energy capital of the world?
4 renewable energy experts discuss whether moving to 100% renewables is possible, the role renewable energy exports could play in Australia’s future economy, what we can learn from current world leaders in sustainability, Denmark and Sweden, and how the startup ecosystem can support the shift to renewable energy.
Featuring Jeremy Kwong-Law (Grok Ventures), Darren Miller (ARENA), Simon Holmes à Court (Energy Transition Hub) and Kristin Vaughan (CEFC).