💌 23rd July Weekly Retro of Australian Start-ups & Venture Capital

23rd July

G'day and welcome to Overnight Successes, the weekly newsletter that levels you up on Aussie start-ups.

Headlines:

✍️ Square Peg writes down Fund 1 and 2 by roughly 15%. Included in the write-down was a letter highlighting that valuations may still fall. On top of this, Square Peg will slow down its investment speed. Time will tell how this plays out in the market. (AFR)

🤙Blackbird launched a new website. Enter the world of Blackbird here. The new website has confirmed an Australian VC obsession with hands, more below in the Accredited Tweeters section.

If this was forwarded to you, please join investors from Startmate, Rampersand VC, x15, Blackbird, Superseed, Macquarie, Folklore, and Flying Fox keeping up to date with Aussie Start-ups here!

1. Start-up retro: Summarising the week's start-up raises with a smidge of context.

2. Venture Capital: New fund, who this?

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

4. Accredited Tweeters: Snippets from Twitter and linkedin!

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

Start-up Retro!

FinTech

🤘mx51 (Series 🐝)

News: Whitelabel payments platform mx51 allowing “bank grade” payments across various settings, has raised a $32.5M Series B. Led by an anonymous global fintech investor, the round included previous investors like Mastercard, Acorn Capital, Commencer Capital, Rampersand and Artesian. Mx51 has had an interesting background. It was spun out by Assembly Payments in 2020 and provides payment solutions to merchants. The tech is considered “open”, meaning the software can be integrated into retail systems, unlike the Commbanks branded system. The platform includes in-store, online and a dashboard system and the capital will be used to invest in the product offering and rapid expansion. In the last year alone, the headcount has doubled to 100 staff.

Read more about it: (Business News Australia)

Property

🏘️Futurerent

News: Rent now, pay later start-up Futurerent has added $9M led by OIF Ventures. The round also included BridgeLane Grou, Mulpha International Partners and Second Century Ventures. Futurerent allows landlords to get up to $100,000 in rent in advance while taking a 6% off the annual amount. Landlords are able to utilise this capital to complete renovations or invest in other assets before waiting for rental income to trickle in. With no losses so far and zero defaults on their loans, Futurerent was able to close the round within a month. Presently, around $2M a month is advanced to property investors. A typical customer will take a year's rent upfront and pay back that debt over a 3 year period. Finally, someone is helping the landlords.

Read more about it: (FinTech)

Retail (Buy Now, Refund Later)

💵 Refundid

News: The start-up making refunds on online purchases instant, Refundid, has raised $12M. Refundid gives shoppers a refund within 30 seconds, all before the customer has even returned the product. Shoppers get a full refund, but the retailer pays Refundid with an extra transaction fee bump of less than 5%. Sounds hard to believe. The retailer has longer payment terms, and Refundid is liable for the quality of the return. You break, you buy. Retailers love the product, with 80 majors signing up recently, as Refundid takes the risk on the quality of the return. Some of their clients, like Culture Kings or Adore Beauty, are more than happy to lose out on a small returns fee as some of their stock would be written off regardless. On the other side, customers are more likely to use a retailer that offers instant refunds which may increase purchase frequency and average order size.

Media & Publising

📰 Storipress

News: The alternative to WordPress plugin soup, Storipress, has raised a $500K pre-seed round from Statemate, Boson Ventures and Tim Duggan. Storipress is a no-code content management system that allows teams to work remotely, host their content and plan publishing cycles. Alex Pan, the founder is leveraging the thematic of companies entering the media space. The target audience for Storipress also includes local publishers who are struggling to adapt to the demand of modern readers. A big drawcard for publishers and writers is the content management system which does the heavy lifting that a service like Trello would do. On top of this, other integrations are a click away including Facebook, Twitter, Google Analytics and slack. The platform caps out at the enterprise level which promises to cut the tech spend of a media company by 90%.

Read more about it: (AFR)

Actual footage of me signing up for the Storipress Beta. More to come...

New Fund, Who this?

• Tidal Ventures, known for Airrobe, Shippit, Sonder and Carted has kicked off an $80M raise for its 3rd seed-stage fund. The fund aims to lead seed rounds writing $2M to $2.5M cheques. Tidal will continue to focus on product-led start-ups. (AFR)

• Five V Capital is hunting cheques from $250K to $12.5M from investors to launch their new $100M venture fund. The fund is looking to invest in series A and B rounds targeting B2B SaaS businesses. Previously, Five V has invested in Canva, QuadPay, and Cascade across 50 investments. (AFR)

• Archangel Ventures has raised a new venture capital fund of $25M within a few weeks. The fund's partners include Ben Armstrong Quentin Wallace and renowned angel investor Rayn Ong. Archangel has made 30 investments across 21 companies since opening its doors. (AFR)

Notice Board

•  Rampersands Giant Warm Intro back. Check it out for advice, pitch feedback or some networking. More info here.

Accredited Tweeters

(KaaS) Knowledge as a Service

• David Byrne performing "Psycho Killer" with a portable cassette tape player and an acoustic guitar during the beginning of Stop Making Sense, December 1983.

  • Theres not much to take out of this for a founder. To get very feep about it. Maybe think about how much is achievable as a single person.

• Sub11 interviewing founders for their first podcast.

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