G'day and welcome to Overnight Success. A warm welcome to the 106 new subscribers that have joined since the last edition! You've just joined 1,228 other legends learning about Aussie start-ups.

Headlines:

• ⚡️ Cut Through Venture released The State of Australian Start-up Funding Report for 2022. Download the full report here.

  • Check out our TL;DR summary below!

• 🙅‍♀️ Local 'tech-wreck' casualties continued

  • Driverless tech start-up Bajara made ~75% of its staff redundant to ensure long-term prosperity, despite a strong track-record of fundraising. (AFR)

  • 'Buy now, pay later' business Openpay announced it was shutting its doors, leaving 80 staff without a job. (AFR)

• 📈 Interest rates kept rising...

  • The RBA delivered it's ninth-straight interest rate rise this week and warned there will be more to come. If the above headlines and a quiet week on the raise-front are anything to go by, it's hard to deny the inevitable flow-on impact to the Aussie start-up ecosystem.

  • Here's an analysis from The Guardian if you fancy yourself as a water cooler economist.

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

2. Notice Board: Signposting key events and opportunities.

3. TL;DR Special: Our summary of The State of Australian Start-up Funding 2022 report.

4. Wins: Highlighting wins, big and small.

5. Accredited Tweeters: Snippets from mostly Aussie start-up Twitter.

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

⚡️Start-up Retro⚡️

Alternative Meat

  🍄 Fable Food lands $12.3M Series A with mushrooms for growth

Fable Foods, a Sunshine Coast-based company that creates alternative meats from shiitake mushrooms, has raised a $12.3M Series A. The round was led by the Singapore-based VC 3 Ventures but included existing investors like Blackbird, AgFunder and Aera VC. The funding round also had a heap of exciting angels listed below. The capital will be used for R&D and help launch the new range of mushroom products in the UK, US and Singapore. Fable currently sell their product in big retailers like Woolies and Planet Organic. On top of this, they're commonly the alternative meat option found at your favourite fast-food restaurants. Grill'd, GYG, Marley Spoon and The Coffee Club all feature Fable products on their menus. The alternative food sector has come under scrutiny recently, being labelled a potential fad by Bloomberg, with Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods struggling recently. Beyond Burgers reduced their workforce by 20% in 2022. Fable Food hopes to differentiate from the rest of the market with its shiitake baseline, which contains more "meaty, umami flavours" than soybean meat alternatives.

Angels:

• Yum! CEO Greg Creed

• Australian ethicist and animal rights campaigner Professor Peter Singer

• SaladStop founders Frantz Braha and Adrien Desbaillet

• TV star Osher Günsberg and his wife Audrey Griffen

• TV producer Michael Simkin

Due Diligence: TechCrunch

Hydrogen Technology

Fabrum finds $23M Series A to supply end-to-end hydrogen solutions

Fabrum, the Christchurch-based company which builds technology and hardware for hydrogen production, storage and dispensing, has raised a $23M Series A. London-based AP Ventures led the round with investment from Fortescue Future Industries (Andrew Forrest), the Obayashi Corporation and NZ-based VC K1W1. The company was founded in 2004 to build superconducting transformers (technology that very efficiently steps-up or down the voltage of electricity) but pivoted in 2015 through a partnership with Absolut System. This partnership led to innovation in cryo-cooling technology, which enables the liquefaction and condensation of hydrogen to enable storage and transportation. This was also the beginnings of Fabrum. Fabrum now services multiple industries like research institutions, manufacturing, mining, transportation and aviation. The company now focuses on four main things:

• Cryogenics via AFCryocoolers: supplying self-contained, contamination-free, safe and reliable onsite liquid Nitrogen.

• Green Hydrogen: Hydrogen production to replace diesel-fueled vehicles.

• Advanced Engineering: Building custom machines for clients' unique requirements.

• Integrated Manufacturing: To build their own machines but also manufacture for clients.

The capital will be used to expand its global presence and scale up its manufacturing capacity with a new purpose-built manufacturing facility at its Christchurch headquarters. The investment is tactical, with Fortescue and Obayashi looking to work directly with the company to move towards a greener future. To learn more about hydrogen power, check out this 8 min video by the Economist.

"Our investment provides us with a share in a company developing world-leading applications for hard-to-abate sectors like mining, heavy transport and aviation." - Mark Hutchinson, CEO of Fortescue Future Industries

Due Diligence: Startup Daily & Hydrogen Central

If you're a founder or investor who has just closed a round, please reach out to us at [email protected]

The State of Australian Start-up Funding

A massive thank you to Cut Through Venture and Folklore Ventures for creating such a comprehensive report. Read the full version here.

TL;DR

• Equity funding in Aussie start-ups dropped by 30%, with valuations falling by 29%.

• Early-stage founders and investors continued strong, with deals remaining steady and funding increases.

• VCs closed new large funds but are investing slower and more cautiously. Plenty of powder remains dry.

• Angel investing, Venture Debt and Crowdfunding had a boon year as founders looked for alternative, non-dilutive capital.

• FinTech & B2B saw the largest investment into their sector, with ~$1.2B entering the space.

• International investors retreated from Australia in the second half of 2022, with many looking to support their existing portfolios.

MedTech Actuator Accelerator 2023: Applications Now Open!

MedTech Actuator Accelerator is a 12-month venture development program for early-stage start-ups in MedTech, BioTech, and HealthTech, backed by investors and led by the Asia Pacific healthcare ecosystem. Through intensive mentorship, industry collaboration, and capital-raising support, start-ups can achieve in 12 months what can typically take 3 years or more.

The Accelerator will support the development of your start-up in every dimension of health innovation. The first phase involves six three-day intensive sprints over seven months that focus on different areas specific to medical innovation, all pushing your start-up towards a pre-seed or seed capital raise. The second phase is focused on execution and growth, supported by commercial experts, strategy sessions, industry mentors, and tailored events.

Learn more and apply by Friday, March 3 at 11:59 pm to join the next cohort of health innovators!

Notice Board

• F*Up Nights Melbourne are back! 👏

  • Melburnians - do yourself a favour and clear your calendar at 6pm this Thursday, 16th Feb for this legendary event where you’ll hear Dom Pym (Up, Ferocia, Euphemia), Jodie Imam (Tractor Ventures) and Christie Jenkins (Blackbird) share some of their biggest failures and what they learnt from them. Register here for free.

  • Best suited to: Anyone who needs a gentle reminder that everyone’s human and makes mistakes (even seemingly super successful people!).

• Learn to build a community like a boss with The Community Collective ❤️

  • The Community Collective have launched their Community Cohort #2 program to support community builders around the world to connect and level-up together. Co-founded by your fellow OS reader, Paz Pisarski (ex Startup Victoria & RMIT Activator), we’ve heard very good things about this 8-week online program from some of the best in the biz!

  • Applications close 21st Feb, submit yours or get the full details here.

  • Best suited to: Anyone building a community for a business (founders/ operators).

• Fishburners Health Tech Pitch Night (Sydney) 🔬

  • Keen to keep tabs on the best emerging start-ups in the ever-important Health Tech space? This is the event for you.

  • It’s happening this Friday 17th Feb at 5pm - free for Fishies members, $15 for non-members. Get your tickets here.

  • Best suited to: Investors and fellow Health Tech founders & operators (aka sticky beaks 😜)

Have something to put on the Notice Board?

We're always looking for upcoming events & opportunities across the Aussie start-up ecosystem - reach out to [email protected] to add yours!

Wins

OS pulls a crowd for drinks in Melbourne! 🚀

OK, we know this is a bit self-congratulatory but we were so stoked to host our first ever IRL event on Thursday night, and even more excited when you all showed up! Thanks again to everyone who made an appearance - we look forward to doing more events like it in the future.

Accredited Tweeters

(KaaS) Knowledge as a Service

• Joey Moshinsky, Co-founder of Tutero, shares his favourite early-stage start-up resources.

  • Check out the LinkedIn post here which kicked off a good discussion in the comments with a few more resources.

• Cake Equity shared its Equity Tool Kit. A Notion database of resources with the aim to increase the long-term value of equity and reduce the time it takes to raise and manage.

  • One for founders to bookmark and investors to share with their next founding team.

• Brianne West's Capital Raising 101: A long form article on the pros & cons of funding types available for early stage companies.

  • Mostly applicable for pre-Series A start-ups.

What is the best thing you read or published this week? Reply to this email to be featured.

Community Shout-outs

You know what they say - it takes a village to grow a newsletter! 😜 A huge thanks to these legends that gave us the nod with on socials in the last month:

• Kacy Ratta (Uber Carshare)

• Anna Mackenzie (lady-brains)

• Paz Pisarski (The Community Collective)

• Pheobe Pincus (Startmate)

• Jon Glindemann (Immutable)

Have we missed something? Got some feedback? We love emails, so send one over!

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• 💌 Email

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Cya next time,

👋 Will & Gem