💌 Aussie start-up & Venture Capital Retro! 10th of September

G'day and welcome to Overnight Success, the weekly newsletter that levels you up on Aussie Start-ups. GM to the 32 new subscribers who join 308 other legends learning about Aussie start-ups. Thanks to Cut Through Venture for the shoutout! A friendly reminder, the referral program is now live with a custom corduroy hat available for anyone who refers 20 friends.

Headlines: 

• Cut Through Venture’s August summary suggests there is nearly half the amount of funding being deployed compared to this time last year.

  • August 2022, $225M Deployed

  • August 2021, $443M Deployed

  • This may be explained by some start-ups and funds being a little quieter at the moment. Some investments may be bridging rounds or down rounds on previous raises.

• Koala, the Australian mattress company, is testing the waters for a potential IPO. (AFR)

• Skedulo lays off 31 staff (8%) due to market conditions. (The Australian)

The Cut Through Venture August Update

1. Start-up Retro: Australia's start-up raises with a smidge of context.

2. New Fund, Who's this? New VC Funds!

3. Notice Board: Signposting key events and opportunities in the ecosystem.

4. Accredited Tweeters: Snippets from Twitter!

5. (KaaS) Knowledge as a Service: Articles to make you smarter. Or share with co-workers to make them think you’re smart.

Start-up Retro! 

Semiconductors

✨ Morse Micro

News: The largest semiconductor Australia has to offer, Morse Micro, has raised $140M. The series B was led by Japanese Chip maker MegaChips ($100M) with help from a slew of Aussie VCs and Angels. Investors included Blackbird, Main Sequence, Clean Energy Finance Corp, Skip Capital, Uniseed, and SpringCapital. Among the angels were ex-PM Malcolm & Lucy Turnbull plus Rayn Ong! Morse Micro specialises in a particular type of microchip, the Wi-Fi HaLow. Leaning on Australia's proud history of Aussie John O’Sullivan inventing wifi. Morse Micro takes wifi to the next level with long-range and low-powered connectivity. In particular, Wi-Fi HaLow is tailored to meet the IoT market. The MegaChips investment will enable MM to grow its team and invest in R&D. Strategic benefits include distribution networks, sales support and regional scale.

Read more about it:  (Morse Micro Press Release)

Transport & Flying Vehicles

🚁AMSL Aero

News: AMSL Aero, the start-up behind the world’s most efficient electric vertical take of and Landing aircraft (eVTOL), has raised $23M. The cash, tagged as a Series B, comes from St Baker Energy Innovation Fund, Hostplus Telstra Super and IP Group. Amongst this was $3M grant from the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC). AMSL Aero is led by (and named after) a power couple husband and wife team. Siobhan Lyndon is a former google director while Andrew More worked at Yamaha Australia as an aeronautical engineer. AMSL has created a funky-looking electric aircraft, the Vertiia, which can travel up to 250ks. Swapping out the power source to hydrogen gives a range of 1000kms which will get you comfortably from Dubbo (NSW) to Emerald (QLD). The Vertiia will begin flight testing later this year with some approvals from the Civil Aviation and Safety Authority. The business case includes working with the Australian Department of Defence and air medical organisation Careflight. Vertiia is attractive to these organisations as it can land easily vertically. This matters in regional areas where there is no flight infrastructure. Currently, outback communities rely on highways to double as emergency runways.

Read more about it: (Business News Australia)

HealthTech

🥼 Evrima

News: The Sydney-based start-up that helps pharmaceutical companies run clinical trials, Evrima, has raised $3M. The round was led by Artesian with BridgeLane Capital and Wavemaker Partners joining in. Clinical trials are notoriously hard to find candidates for with 80% of studies being delayed with no suitable patients. Evirma looks to solve the supply side of clinical trials by allowing patients and GPs to register interest. If you’re feeling especially guinea-piggish, check out the list of current trials here. The platform also offers a project management tool specialised for researchers to stay on top of trials. Essentially, Evirma is running a 3-way marketplace between participants, doctors and researchers/pharma. Each will benefit differently. Participants receive medical care covered by the trial. Doctors get their patients referred to treatments not otherwise available. Researchers can then progress their trials faster. The female-founded start-up will utilise this cash to double the headcount with 10 roles in the next 6 months and target new biotech companies.

Read more about it: (AFR)

e-sports & Metaverse

🏏 Behaviol

News: Former Sri Lankan cricket star, Kumar Sagakkara, with the aid of a group of Aussie entrepreneurs has raised $3.7M to start a sporting metaverse. Behaviol, will be an esports platform that allows players to train and play in matches. All within the metaverse. Utilising his cricketing background and pull, the first game, Meta11. will be based on cricket. The seed funding was led by international investors HangarX with several Aussie angles following along. Behaviol will utilise the blockchain's un-fungibleness to keep players honest. With skills and traits that can be improved by players who own them. Owners can also leverage their players to generate earnings through player trading and sponsorships. An element of the model is an in-house streaming service where fans can watch their favourite e-cricket team. Cricket has a massive audience, with over 2.5B fans across 180 countries, it could be the perfect testbed for metaverse gaming.

Read more about it: (AFR)

MedTech

🧪Nutromics

News: Melbourne-based wearable diagnostic platform, Nutromics, has secured $20.5M in funding. The round was led by Dexcom with VU Ventures and Artesian Investments closing out. Dexcom is a US-based medical device company most well-known for continuous glucose monitoring devices. Artesian has backed Nutromics previously with 4 separate investments. The height of which was leading a $5.7M round in 2021. Nutromics are developing a platform that utilises a single patch that measures various diagnostic information. Diagnostic information could include drug monitoring or biological markets for kidney disease. Co-founder and CEO, Peter Vranes, described the technology as a “lab-on-a-patch”. The cash will be deployed in R&D across Australia and the US with a clinical trial underway with Monash University. Nutromics co-founders hope to secure support to build a manufacturing facility in Australia. It will be interesting to see if Nutromics look to target the consumer market like their US counterpart Levelshealth. While the companies have different uses, there seem to be clear tailwinds in the personalised health and optimisation markets. Nutromics was also part of the Victorian Government's 30x30’ program.

Read more about it: (Start-up Daily)

Blockchain / Game Development

🎮Bounti

News: Bounti, a crowd testing platform for video games that utilises blockchain technology to reward testers, has secured $190K from Antler Australia. Bounti will help developers find testers which can often be expensive and time-consuming. Leveraging the transactional nature of web3, Bounti will reward testers fast and cost-effectively. The funding will enable the founding team to create the testing environment and go live with an MVP. While the team is currently focusing on the game development market, a larger opportunity may exist. Developers in different markets like web, mobile and e-commerce could all benefit from a cheaper and faster testing network.

Want to read more about it? This is hot off the press with Overnight Success being the first to publish. Woo 

New Fund, Who's this?

• OIF Ventures closes its third fund with an oversubscribed round. (Start-up Daily)

  • The $140M fund was originally intended to be $100M but extra demand allowed 40% growth. 

  • OIF’s first fund returned 45% IRR while Fund II went one better with an 89% IRR.

Notice Board

• OIF Ventures is hiring a Investment Analyst in Sydney, check it out here.

Accredited Tweeters

(KaaS) Knowledge as a Service

• Why Founders Are Afraid To Talk About Exit Strategies by Touraj Parang in the Harvard Business Review.

  • Parang nicely summarises why founders may shy from talking about exit strategies and gives good insight into why a founder should have a few alternative exit pathways. Like Tyson famously said everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

• Blackbird VC has a youtube channel. This youtube channel also hosts all their Giants content!

  • If you've thought about entering giants or applied and missed out just head over to youtube! It's all here.

  • They've also uploaded their old sunrise interviews like this with Melanie Perkins ~ It might be worth a sub if you missed out on tickets to Sunrise Aotearoa.

• The Economist on the Mullet's Resurgence in Australia. Not exactly start-up related but fun to read!

Have I missed something? Just want to say hi? I love emails so send one over!

• 🦤 Find me on Twitter

• 👔 Holler on Linkedin

• 💌 Email