June 11th Weekly Start-up Retro

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

Our readership doubled this week with our new members joining from Startup Victoria and The Community Collective. Definitely check them out if you haven't! A very warm welcome to our new readers. I was analysing the domain names and it’s great to see the newsletter reaching a few start-ups and VC friends. Shout out to investors from Skalata Ventures, Startmate and x15 Ventures. If you're running a crash-hot start-up or are investing in crash-hot start-ups, hit reply and reach out. I would love to feature you down the line.

Feedback was received - everyone missed industry titles so they have returned in full force.

This week we saw a flurry of deals from EdTech to DeepTech. The trend of Superfunds investing directly continues and an triple unicorn was born (what's 200M between friends).

Sadly, @NegativelyGeared was taken from us too early. Danny Boy, plays softly in the background. The cheeky account was removed leaving Aus VC Twitter unchallenged.

If you're not yet subscribed but would like to join a group of legends learning about Aussie start-ups, join here!

Contents

1. Start-up retro: summarising the weekly start-raises in under 5 minutes.

2. Interview with a VC: Casey Flint!

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

4. Accredited Tweeters: Snippets from Twitter

5. (KaaS) Knowledge as a Service:

   1. 2-3 articles to make you smarter. Or share with co-workers to make them think you’re smart.

Start-up Retro

EdTech

🌱The Mintable

• News: The EdTech platform for business managers, The Mintable, has raised $6.8M in seed funding from a consortium of venture funds. The round, led by Blackbird, included cheques from Startmate, Treble Capital, Black Nov, Flying Fox Ventures, Sypkes group and Global Founders Capital. The Mintable has raised $1.3M in pre-seed. Mintable has already trained over 600 managers with its 4-week course. The courses include training, an invitation to a growing community and learning materials. Mintable currently targets managers at fast-growing start-ups. Providing managers in the thick of it with content specific to their needs. (Business News Australia)

🌱Go1

• News: The Brisbane-based start-up, Go1, secures $100M in funding at a $2B valuation. The round was led by AirTree Ventures and Five Sigma with quite a few big logos tipping in cash. The around ticks Go1s total raised to $400M. Go1 established itself in 2015 after participating in Y Combinator. Their platform aggregates content from leading educators from Blinkist to Harvard Business School. The value proposition solves my worst fear, Dealing with SaaS salespeople. Go1 gives a business a single contact rather than negotiating on individual contracts. Go1’s customers include TikTok and the Singaporean government with over 5M users. The business was positioned well during covid with corporations upskilling their workforce to keep talent. (Smart Company)

• Food for thought: "To bundle, or not to bundle" - OS

🌱Edrolo

• News: Edrolo, the Melbourne-based start-up that provides course curricula for teachers, has raised $40M. The Series B round was led by Blackbird Ventures with 4 superfunds contributing. Aware Super, HESTA, NGS Super and Telstra Super all invested. Edrolo targets schools across the country with 1100 signed up already. Impressively, 95% of Victorian and 77% of NSW schools are using Edrolo in some capacity. For context, Australia has approximately 2000 secondary schools. The content itself differs between states to fit government standards. Edrolo has targeted years 11 and 12s. Future revenue expansion opportunities in younger years and a wider breadth of subjects.

• Food for thought: Will Edrolo have a monopoly of influence over the next generation of Australian education?

DeepTech

🌱LexX Technologies

• News: Boeing and the UAE’s defence procurement arm (Tawazun Economic Council) have invested $175K each into LexX Technologies. What is LexX? Why raise so little? LexX aims to replace the traditional technical manuals for aeroplanes with software manuals. The benefits here are many, less bulky, easier to search, and local language settings to name a few. This raise is a thumbs up from Boeing and UAE defence to LexX who are expected to raise a $10M round later this year ($40M post-money). LexX has focused on aircraft but needed to pivot to other industries due to covid-19. The business has funded itself through government grants and friends and family. (AFR)

• Food for Thought: Brainstorm any other paper-heavy industry… Disrupt with software… profit?

Drones

🌱Swoop Aero

•  News: Swoop Aero flew away from a $100M takeover offer to instead raise $18M of capital. Swoop Aero operates a flock of drones that specialise in first and last-mile logistics. Impressively, the drones have delivered vaccinations in Vanuatu and Covid testing kits in Scotland. This capital raise was in motion in 2021 but sidelined when the $100M bid was thrown in. The founding team included its staff in the takeover conversation. The staff apparently didn’t want to cash out so the decision to continue with the capital raise was clear. The $18M of capital will be used to develop a new generation of aircraft, Kite, as well as a cloud-based infrastructure system. Swoop Aero can currently let one pilot control 5 aircraft anywhere in Australia but that number is expected to increase to 30 aircraft soon. Swoop has now completed over 14,500 flights with over 800K items delivered. The business is profitable with delivery margins covering OPEX, however, VC funds will be used to build out the fleet and RnD. (Start-up Daily)

Industry SaaS

🌱Fergus

• News: Fergus, the cloud-based job management system that lets tradies manage their business, has raised $13.5M. Fergus, named after former Kiwi plumber Dan Pollard’s pet dog, has been growing 40% a year and will look to expand into the UK market. Fergus lets tradies manage their quoting, timesheets, invoicing and workforce with APIs into Xero and MYOB. The round gives Fergus two years to plumb away at its growth strategy and is another example of tech digitising a sector. (Digital Nation)

Internet of Things (IoT)

🌱Inauro

•  News: The Townsville-based start-up SafetyCulture has made a strategic Venture investment of USD$2.1M into the internet of things start-up, Inauro. Inauro hopes to connect machines used by SafetyCultures customers to improve automation and analysis in agriculture, construction, logistics and manufacturing. Inauro will help SafetyCulture scale into international markets. (Enterprise Talk)

AdTech

🌱Veridooh

• News: Veridooh, the start-up that allows tracking of the performance of digital billboards, has raised $5M Series A from EVP and Jelix Ventures. The platform allows marketers to understand how their digital billboards are performing. The platform tracks over 300 metrics including the number of plays, exposure time, ad length and share of time. The AdTech start-up experienced 400% growth during covid and gained 140 clients. This growth was during lockdowns when ‘out-of-home’ marketing spend was low. There is an expectation that with consumers back in the wild, outdoor marketing spending will increase from Covid lows. (News)

• Food for thought: If Overnight Successes had a billboard, what would the tagline be? Send across some suggestions by replying to this email!

Casey Flint - Square Peg

Standard brunch order?

I don’t have a go-to, but I default to anything with chilli and typically order an oat matcha on the side.

Tell us about your journey so far?

I grew up in rural western QLD to two parents who have been serial entrepreneurs my entire life. I’ve been vicariously exposed to the ups and downs of running one’s own business through them and learnt a lot by being constantly around their various businesses from my earliest years.

After graduating from school, I wanted to explore studying nutrigenomics so I began a biochemistry degree in Brisbane, before quickly meeting some early Uber employees and jumping at the chance to join them as an intern. I ended up spending 5.5yrs there working on everything from driver growth to competitive strategy. I went from never having had a passport to working on projects in places like Bangkok, Amsterdam, Seoul & Hyderabad – a fast-paced multinational startup was a big departure from my small-town upbringing. Eventually, the company IPO’d and I had an itch to get back to startups and I found my way to Square Peg, where I’m incredibly fortunate to be an investor in their venture team.

What trend are you most excited about?

This probably seems like a cop-out answer, but if I’m entirely honest the trend I’m most excited about is the growing excitement people have today towards joining a startup and working in tech. I believe that startups have a powerful role in advancing the world and the more people working in them, the better.

Square Peg has always been about partnering with exceptional people, so they share this enthusiasm. But we’re also excited about vertical AI applications (like in the case of Aidoc, a healthcare startup), the creator economy and the future of work, and more equitable financial products in unbanked markets to name a few.

What's the biggest problem more Aussie start-ups should work on?

It’s hard to go past climate here, it’s a big problem. I also think there’s a really interesting challenge around supporting the world through technological change. For example, one of our portfolio companies, Retrain.ai, helps companies and governments understand what their future workforces need to look like so that they can develop a plan to reskill people. Another, Saasguru, helps people develop cloud computing qualifications to reskill and fill the gap in cloud skills.

Something you can’t live without?

The ability to learn something new every day. More tangibly, I’d be bummed to lose podcasts (and of course family, and friends but that’s the obvious answer!).

Pass the mic, what would you like to shout out? (content, project, movement, charity?)

The EarlyWork community – they’re doing awesome things for young people’s careers, particularly in tech.

Where to find you?

Linkedin

I don’t tweet much, but: @FlintCasey

Notice Board

• Start-up Galaxy has a ripper jobs board for roles in start-ups! Check it out here.

• Skalata Ventures is investing in up to 5 companies per month on a rolling basis. And you can apply any time. Don’t wait for the next intake, hit them up now.

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

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

Accredited Tweeters

Knowledge as a Service (KaaS)

• Cut Through Ventures June Edition was released during the week. CTV tracked 52 deals with $452M invested into the ecosystem.

• The James Webb Telescope has been hit by space debris but will live to take some happy snaps.

• How to fix twitter - The Atlantic. A longform piece on decentralisation vc centralisation.