💌 Aussie start-up & Venture Capital Retro! 24th of September

G'day and welcome to Overnight Success, the weekly newsletter that levels you up on Aussie Start-ups. GM to the 21 new subscribers who join 329 other legends learning about Aussie start-ups.

Happy grand-final day! This week was a short week for Australia, and especially short of Victorians. As such, today’s newsletter is a little shorter than normal. The New York Times published yesterday that a 4-day work week gives little loss in productivity - food for thought! Enjoy!

Headlines:

• 💀 Optus hacked exposing the data of 9 million Australians. (The Guardian)

• 🚀 Gilmour Space will launch a caravan into space in 2024. (Start-up Daily)

  • A caravan in this case is sadly not a Jayco. The caravan will include customer payloads such as CubeSats, microsats and other small spacecraft.

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

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

3. Accredited Tweeters: Snippets from Twitter!

4. (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!

MarTech

💾 Dataweavers raises $5M to fund international expansion

News: Customer data unification start-up, Dataweavers, has raised $5M to fund expansion into Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The round was led by OIF Ventures. Dataweavers unifies customer data to help create a better digital experience platform (DXP). Generally, customer data is created and tracked across multiple platforms. Dataweavers is becoming more relevant to businesses. As marketers battle the iOS privacy policy changes that limit tracking across the web. In short, Dataweavers can help a business build a profile on their individual customers. This profile is kept in-house, without relying on 3rd party software and cookies. The platform can extend across retail stores, the web, a mobile app and B2B transactions. Dataweavers has worked with some large Australian clients like Australian Retirement Trust, Isuzu and Uniting Care. The cash will help the bootstrapped company expand internationally. They'll lean on leveraging a global sales team and partner channels.

Read more about it: (AFR)

PropTech

🏢 CIM Closes a $10M round valuing the business at ~$100M

News: CIM, the start-up that helps landlords and owners measure the performance of their commercial properties, has raised $10M. The Series A round included Five V Capital and Carthona Capital. The platform is at home in large buildings like shopping centres or museums. It allows property teams to stay across maintenance schedules or optimise heating and cooling. CIM counts major Aussie landlords as clients with Charter Hall, Scentre Group, Lendlease and GPT Group signed up. The landlords benefit from large amounts of data collected and combined into digestible formats. Sustainability, for example, is front of mind with ESG targets to hit. Since commencing operations, CIM has helped reduce 179K tonnes of CO2 and helped save 277 GWh of energy. The cash will help build on their Australian and European footholds and target expansion into the US and Asian markets.

Read more about it: (AFR)

Engineering

🧪 Liquid Instruments raises $28.5M to dominate the engineering testing market

News:  Liquid Instruments, which was originally founded in the ACT, now calls San Francisco home. The start-up produces software and hardware that helps engineers test their designs and theories. The actual hardware comes in three sizes, the Go, the Lab and the Pro with the Pro priced at $12,000 USD. Liquid Instruments reduces expensive and slow physical tests with speedy and cheap software simulations. This allows engineering teams and labs to speed up their testing phase. The platform was born out of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and counts NASA as a customer. Typical customers include researchers and government labs. Applications are generally in sectors like Aerospace, Defense, Semiconductors, lidar and quantum computing. It’s not for the everyday hobbyist. The cash comes from the likes of Lockheed Martin Ventures, Acorn Capital and Significant Early Venture Capital.

Read more about it: (Tech Crunch)

Influencers & E-sports

🎮 GGWP Academy raise $1.125M to change the way influencer marketing is handled in E-sports

News: GGWP Academy, the e-learning platform that helps content creators become best-in-class while partnering with brands across the world. The Melbourne-based start-up produces better quality influencers in an everchanging landscape which can give their partner brands a better ROI. Since the content creation industry is so new, many influencers have minimal experience knowing how to professionally grow and engage their audience. The platform has worked with over 11,000 content creators and landed contracts with brands like Electronic Arts, Casio, Logitech and 2K. Investors include Flying Fox Ventres, Scale Investors, Euphemia and Startmate. GGWP is hunting in a large TAM. The global influencer industry is forecasted to reach $16.4 billion in 2022. GGWP believes that can reduce the time it takes for a good streamer to become from five-seven to two years.

GGWP: Phrase, Internet Slang and initialism of 'good game, well played'.

Read more about it: (Venture Beat)

If you're a founder or investor who has just closed a round, please reach out!

Notice Board

• The Westpac Social Change Fellowship gives 10 individuals $50,000 from any sector who are tackling Australia's social issues.

  • If you're passionate about making positive social change happen in Australia, register here!

Accredited Tweeters

(KaaS) Knowledge as a Service

• How to calculate LTV (Lifetime Value of an Acquired Customer). (Access here)

• How teams of drones could build homes and infrastructure in the near future. Layer-by-layer building where humans can't reach. (The Economist)

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