💌 Aussie start-up & Venture Capital Retro! 17th of September

G'day and welcome to Overnight Success, the weekly newsletter that levels you up on Aussie Start-ups. GM to the 11 new subscribers who join 308 other legends learning about Aussie start-ups.

Headlines:

• MYOB acquires free HR platform Flare HR.

  • A quarter of all new employees in Australia are onboarded by Flare.

  • Flare have had been a great Aussie success story. Heres a quick summary of their fundraising. Flare offer a free HR software and their busines model relys on affiliate marketing. Quite a unique offering!

    • 2017: $7M raised, led by Reinventure

    • 2018: $21M Series B led by Point72 Ventures

    • 2020: $22M Series C led by MYOB

    • 2022: Acquired by MYOB

• Canva releases Visual Work Suit challenging the product suits of Google, Adobe and Microsoft. (Techcrunch)

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

2. Aussie Raisins: Aussie start-ups looking to raise some cash!

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

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

5. Accredited Tweeters: Snippets from Twitter!

6. (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!

EV & Autonomous Cars

🚗 Applied EV raises $21M at a $170M valuation

News: News: The start-up behind Digital Backbone, the control logic for fully autonomous vehicles, has raised $21M. The cash comes in two tranches with St Baker Energy and Innovation Fund making a significant investment. Suzuki, the large Japanese auto manufacturer has taken a strategic position with Applied EV. This continues their relationship which began in 2015. How does Applied EV help? Car manufacturers gain new features for their cars with reductions in hardware complexity. In short, the deployment and manufacturing of autonomous driving technology are cheaper and easier. Looking at hardware. Applied EV has also designed electronic components and a modular vehicle platform. The modular platform, for example, can take the form of a van or flat surface, depending on needs.

Read more about it: (Start-up daily)

AgTech

🪴 Lleaf Raises $3.5M to make plants grow better.

News: Lleaf, creates light absorbing and emitting plastics that can improve the health and yield of plants. The plastics increase crop yields by an average of 20%. The round was led by two Danish investment firms ALFA Ventures and 2 Degrees. The University of NSW added cash as the founders developed the technology at UNSW. Both founders hail from an industrial chemistry background and have been developing the tech since 2016. Lleaf plastics have created several different diffusers, each a different colour. Each colour emits a different colour band which aids particular plant attributes. Similar to how certain crystals have particular healing attributes. Leaf 660, which in simple terms, looks blue, emits light rays between 640 - 750nm. This range of light increases growth rates and helps control fruiting and flowering. It’s quite an interesting idea, and if you want to learn more, take a Lleaflet here. The business model is fairly simple, growers can purchase the plastic at a square meter price with discounts

Read more about it: (hortidaily)

Cybersecurity

🔐 Internet2.0 raises a $5M at $50M valuation

News: Web2 start-up, Internet 2.0, has secured $5M worth of capital led by Ellerston Capital and Bondi Partners’ 1941 Fund. The Canberra-based firm specialises in “military-grade” cybersecurity. According to their site, government agencies in Australia and the US utilise the product. The cash will be used to expand the team and further develop its product. With eyes firmly on further expansion in the US. The proprietary technology is delivered either on-premises or via the cloud. Its technology was developed by cybersecurity experts. These folks generally have experience in the military and intelligence services. Interestingly, the last three internal blog posts all talk about the data risks and collection capabilities of TikTok.

Read more about it: (AFR)

HealthTech

🥼 HealthMatch raises a $10M Series C

News: The start-up behind a platform that connects patients with upcoming clinical trials, has raised $10M. The round was led by Folklore Ventures. HealthMatch has had a bumpy ride. in 2019, HealthMatch raised a $6M Series A which was followed in 2020 by an $18M Series B, both led by Square Peg. In June this year, the founders made the difficult decision to lay off half the team. It appears the start-up is on the up now, the patient base has increased 10x since its last raise with over 1 million on that platform. Users can create a profile on the website and select their conditions. The platform will then match users with relevant clinical trials if available. HealthMatch is quite like Evirma who raised $3M last week. A key difference between the companies is Evrima looks to utilise a GP network. Folklore has backed the company since its Seed round in 2018, which you love to see.

Read more about it: (Start-up daily)

Workforce Intelligence

🧑‍💼🧑‍💼 Reejig raises big $ from many investors.

News: Reejig, a now San Francisco-based start-up that can trace its roots to Sydney, has raised a round led by Salesforce Ventures. Reejig helps underrepresented communities unlock their potential through career opportunities. The idea is framed neatly as Zero Wasted Potential. The platform itself utilises AI to help a business gain visibility of the skills of it’s workforce. From here, talent can be found within an organisation rather than external which can reduce recruitment costs. Current clients include AWS, the Woolworths Group, KPMG and John Holland. Since raising a seed round in 2020 from Right Click Capital, Reejig has grown significantly. The latest round could be considered a strategic investment from Salesforce Ventures. Unfortunately, exact dollar amounts aren't yet public.

Read more about it: (Mirage News)

Workforce Wellness

ℹ️ Sonder closes oversubscribed $35M round led by Blackbird

News: Organisational wellbeing and safety support platform, Sonder, has closed a $35M Series B. Blackbird led the round with support from SecondQuater and SEEK. Previously, Tidal Ventures led rounds in 2019 and 2021. The service includes a self-help library, contactable experts and a team for medical emergencies. Linking all of this together is an anonymised data package that produces dashboards for decision-makers and HR teams. Sonder comes to aid in a generally underserved market where a significant proportion of teams may be suffering in silence. Sonder's current clients include big names like PwC, Woolworths, NSW Government and Alliance. Blackbirds founder and partner, Niki Scevak will take a seat on the board as the company targets growth. Niki is actually the Overnight Success’ favourite Blackbird partner!

Read more about it: (AFR)

Aussie Raisins

• Vudoo, a Martech business developing video-based e-commerce technology, is looking to raise $7M from investors. (AFR)

  • The magic of the platform is the ability to purchase a product without leaving the video you’re watching.

  • Bookies are probably licking their lips at the potential opportunity to add transactions to live video and sport. Help us.

New Fund, Who's this?

• Telstra Ventures hits $500M for its third fund. (Start-up Daily)

  • The fund will focus on all the C buzzwords, cloud, cyber, crypto, climate, creators and consumers.

  • Telstra Venture is based in San Francisco and has made 88 investments.

  • Portco’s include DocuSign, Snap, Whispir. 17 of the 88 have become unicorns. 5 have become decacorns. Not bad!

  • Within the past 10 years, Telstra Ventures has returned $800M to its LPs and now has roughly $1.3B under management.

Notice Board

• We're looking for sponsors! Check out the info pack here to get your idea or business in front of hundreds of Aussie investors and founders.

• $9M of fresh capital is about to hit the market via VicLaunch partnering with content creators who are building angel networks already. It's actually an awesome initiative that gets more start-ups off the ground and brings diversity at a scale we haven't seen before. Read more here.

  • Cut Through Angels

  • The Climate Angel Network

  • The Playbook Angel Network

Accredited Tweeters

(KaaS) Knowledge as a Service

• The benchmarks do Airtree Ventures use when analysing a B2B SaaS company. Blog post.

• The leaky bucket concept and why you should talk to customers pre-launch.. 2min video by Gabriel Weinberg of DuckDuckGo.

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