💌 30th July Weekly Retro of Australian Start-ups & Venture Capital

30th July

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

Heyo! A quick note from me! I’ve been writing this newsletter for a few months and have been blown away by the feedback and the people who subscribed. A big thank you to those who’ve reached out and said hello so far! I reply to every email and would love to meet more of you!

As we’re approaching a milestone number of subscribers - the big 200 - I thought it would be time to invest some actual money into the platform. As such, we’ve unlocked polls, a custom domain and a branding revamp that's on its way.

Let's kick off our first poll! There's another poll down the bottom for those who love to vote.

Headlines:

• 👭 The largest female led seed round was raised by Human. More below!

• 🎨 Blackbird lowers Canva valuation by $14.4B after rejigging its valuation methodology.

• ✂️ Eucalyptus makes staff cuts off around 20% following a loan falling out.

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

3. Accredited Tweeters: Snippets from Twitter and linkedin!

4. (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!

HealthTech

🧠 Human

News: Human, the 9-month-old platform that helps patients get more personalised care has raised a $10.15M Seed round. The round was led by AirTree Ventures. Cash also came from Skip Capital, the Jackson family office and Scott Farquhar. Human provides digestible information about treatments to make patients can be more informed. Notably, this is the largest seed round for a female-led team in Australian history. The platform is being built to comply us US health regulations where it will be first launched. Human will remain free for all for the moment with monetisation opportunities to be explored. Monetisation should be easy in the 3-way (or 4-way) marketplace. Patients, doctors and big pharma or research institutions all gain value on the platform.

Read more about it: (AFR)

FinTech

💵InDebted

News: Digitised debt collection platform, Indebted, has raised $22.5M. The raise was spoiled slightly by news of 40 (17%) staff being laid off to extend the runway. Led by Perennial Value Management, Indebted has a post-money valuation of $200M. Indebted offers its employees a 4 day work week, unlimited leave and remote work options. While not yet profitable, revenues have grown over 100% within the last 12 months. Indebted provides tools for indebt customers to resolve their accounts. Tools include instalments options and payment plans. This means a higher repayment rate from its debt obligations.

Read more about it: (AFR)

Enviroment & Plastics

🥔 The Great Wrap

News: A Melbourne-based start-up that turns potato waste into cling wrap has raised $24M in series A funding. The Great Wrap was founded in 2019 working with Monash University. The start-up promises petro-based plastic wrap that will break down into carbon and water. The $24M was split between cash and asset financing. The cash came from various funds including Woolies VC fund W23, the Grill’d Innovation fund Giant Leap and NY-based Trail Mix Ventures. On the financing side, Rabobank's asset financing arm provided $13 of financing for the machinery and equipment in the new factory. The funding will be used to help vertically integrate the business with potato waste processing and biorefinery. 50,000 tons of potato waste will be processed annually.

Read more about it: (SmartCompany)

AI Automation

🦾 Serviceley

News: Would you like a robot that watches what you do all day, and then starts doing it for you? Introducing Servicely. Servicely is a low-code platform that observes work and automates manual tasks. The bootstrapped business had raised $1.2M in external capital which will be used to help grow internationally. In Australia, customers include Morgans, NST and Patterson Cheney. Servicely has helped large enterprises manage manual and repetitive work. Dion Williams, the founder, is a serial entrepreneur with previous exits that include ServiceNow. Williams hopes Servicely will allow workers to be released from mundane work and focus instead on higher-value work. With belt-tightening around the economy, we’ll wait and see how large enterprises utilise AI workers.

Read more about it: (ITBrief)

HealthTech

📝 Carepatron

News: The platform helping doctors spend more time with their patients over doing admin work, Carepatron, has raised NZ$1.6M in pre-seed. The cash comes from Blackbird which hopes to grow the NZ-based business. 700 health teams use the platform with the majority of users in the US and Aisa. Carepatron reduces the time spent on paperwork and manual processes. Solo practitioners gravitate towards the platform as they can replace admin and legacy systems. The platform also works across mobile allowing clients to access important information easier.

Read more about it: (Techcrunch)

E-commerce

👕 Local Threads

News: Australia's largest ethical fashion marketplace, Local Threads, has raised a $500K pre-seed round. Local Threads curates brands through a “rigorous selection process” and has a selection of over 150 brands and 6000 products. Local Threads will use the local funds led by Dr Qin Ding (co-founder of EMQ) with support from Angels Alex Yin and Eric Liam to build out the platform. The platform is the real value proposition. Local Threads only capture customer data that the customer approves. This includes shopping behaviour, sizing and pricing. This information is in the hands of the customer who pre-approves what is available on the platform. Will consumer privacy be enough of a value proposition to gain customers?

Read more about it: (Start-up Daily)

Notice Board

• The Startmate Women Fellowship is a two-month program that helps ambitious women find their dream job in a startup. Read more about the Fellowship and apply before August 14 (more info here).

• Optus Future Makers Program is calling all social enterprises to their accelerator. Get involved if you're building in health, environment or social. (more info here).

Newsletter Recommendation

The Community Roundup - The monthly Australian newsletter that keeps you up to date with the community industry, written by The Community Collective. If you're building a community or thinking about it, it's a must-read!

Accredited Tweeters

(KaaS) Knowledge as a Service

• Geoff Ralston - Guide to Seed Fundraising, With seed stages being the hottest end of the market at the moment. founders may as well understand how best to raise a seed. Check it out here!

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