Australia Start-up & Venture Recap | May 28th Weekly Retro

May 28th Weekly Retro

G'day and welcome to Overnight Successes, the weekly newsletter that makes you smarter about the Aussie start-up and Venture scene.

The AFR rich list was published yesterday. Gina takes the top spot followed by Twiggy and the co-founders of Atlassian in the 3rd and 4th spots. Technology gives us 20% of the wealth in the rich list and our youngest ever member, 25-year-old Robert Ferguson. Robert and his brother James co-founded Australia's third most valuable privately-owned tech company Immutable. Immutable allows for zero fee NFT trading and is built on Ethereum.

Other interesting stats:

• 18.5% of the list is female

• Average age is 67.7 up from 66

• 9.5% live outside Australia

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Start-up Retro

Business

• ProductEngine

  • News: ProductEngine, a SaaS start-up that helps manage supply chains, has raised $1.2M in Seed capital from Folklore Ventures with support from Startmate. ProductEngine is a database of products, product information, management and pricing information and can connect via API to other tools like CRMS or billing software. The raise is a good news story from Startmates accelerator program (entrants close this Sunday). Folklore Ventures are interested in ProductEngine as they see it in the middle of several industries. (Start-up Daily)

  • Food for thought: If it's currently managed on a spreadsheet, can it become a SaaS?

• Convo Ink

  • News: The content marketing platform that lets you create, target and publish content has raised a $1.5M seed round led by 3C Capital. The platform helps publishers deliver branded content to audiences at a large scale and then measure the outcome through the recently launched algorithm nicely named 'Quality Attention Score'. Content marketing is growing annually at 16%. With recent changes to privacy laws and costs per clicks increase, brands are looking to diversify away from paid media and utilise brand building via content marketing. (Start-up Daily)

•  Fresho

  • News: The online platform that gives restaurants the ability to order directly from suppliers, has raised $14M from Capital Zed, Salta Capital and Second Quarter Ventures. The farm to restaurant table start-up was keen to secure the funding early to ensure there was a runway to develop the product. Fresho is used by over 38,000 venues across Australia, NZ, UK and America. Some of the local labels include Gimlet, Quay, Donovans and Rockpool. Interestingly, Fresho gives chefs more information direct from supplies around price which dictates their orders, causing more rotation of restaurant menus.

  • Food for thought: Anyone else hungry thinking about nice food?

Drones

• 🌱AEROLOGIX

  • News: Australia drone pilot matchmaking platform has raised $4.2M in seed funding from Nightingale Partners and Ellerston Capital. Aerologix matches clients with qualified drone pilots via its Any Drone Anywhere program. The platform can also create 3D models of infrastructure assets using AI and video. Clients love this as a drone can be sent to assess damage or a faulty tower with a repair worker viewing the footage remotely. Both investors are following on from their earlier pre-seed raise. (Start-up Daily)

  • Food for thought: Can every service with a barrier to entry become an uber for x?

AgriTech

• 🌱Swan Systems

  • News: The precision water and fertiliser management tool has raised a $3M Seed from AC Ventures and PureTerra Ventures. This is the second round of funding SWAN Systems has raised. The first was $590K of grants from AusIndustry in 2018. Swan Systems is a cloud-based system that allows irrigators to link various data points from soil probes to weather data to satellite imagery. 🦢 Systems give farmers a better yield per drop of water across various uses. Uses can include sports field management to crop growing. They say making hay is difficult, but it seems rather cut and dry to me.

  • Food for thought: If the Ukrainian war has caused a potential shortage of grain and fertiliser, can SWAN Sytems help? (The Guardian)

Infrastructure

• 🌱🅱️Neara

  • News: The cloud-based enterprise platform that allows infrastructure projects to build interactive 3D models of their network has raised a $20M Series B. The round was led by Skip Capital and also included Square Peg Capital and Our Innovation Fund. Neara gives an overview of a utility infrastructure network and allows for simulations with real-world physics. Simulations can include wildfires, flood analysis, storms and too many birds on a wire. (Business Wire)

  • Food for thought: Is worldwide infrastructure ready for the increase in bad weather events?

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Notice Board

• LaunchVic, Victoria's startup agency, is looking for founders to tackle healthy eating problems. Apply here for $10K in equity-free funding.

• Startmate has opened applications for their Winter 22 accelerator. Applications close on the 29th of May. Tomorrow!! Apply here.

• Featured Start-up: We're looking to feature start-ups who are mid raise to expose them to potential investors! Reach out if you're in the middle of a raise.

Accredited Tweeters

Knowledge as a Service (KaaS)

YC's advice to founders 

Cut Through Ventures twitter thread of who's cutting cheques right now?