A Message From Mel 🙋🏻♀️
We shared some HUGE news this month with the promotion of Elicia & Jax to Partners 🥳 Thanks to everyone who sent supportive messages through — it means so much to us. We’re beyond lucky to have them both, and we can’t wait to see the magic they will continue to create for the startup community! Elicia & Jax wrote about their experiences working together (aawww), you can read about it here and here 💕
As if that wasn’t exciting enough, in the last 2 months (and not deterred by lockdowns), we’ve added 6 new superstars to the AirTree team! A huge welcome to Bree, Dave, Katie, Lucy, Miriam and Ryan — it’s so good to have all of you with us!
Craig, our Cofounder & Partner, spoke to the AFR about the tremendous growth of our sector and how we turned an initial $60m into $2B under management. We published an Aug 2021 update to our ‘Companies valued at over $100m’ chart which visually showcases this growth. The chart isn’t an exhaustive list, but we are thrilled to receive so many submissions from the community on the companies we need to add to it. We can’t wait to publish another update! In the meantime, please submit any suggestions to community@airtree.vc
Finally, for B2B founders asking the perennial question: how do I know if I have product-market fit? Andrew from our Investment team has put together this breakdown of benchmarking metrics VCs look at for positive signals and red flags.
The Big News
🌱Congratulations to Anastasia and team Regrow on their $23m round. Regrow’s platform goes a long way in incentivising growers, suppliers and packaged goods companies to implement climate-forward agriculture practices that can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions — a mission we can all get behind!
⚖️Amazing news for Tim, Sam and team LawVu as they announce their $17m Series A raise. We’ve seen the team grow from 20 to more than 70 in the last year, and we can’t wait to continue our journey with them as they expand into the US and create better business outcomes for in-house legal teams.
💉Over 4 million jabs and counting — Ben and team HotDoc are the true MVPs of the vaccine rollout, making it easy for everyone to book their appointments.
🙌We’re excited to be a founding member of the Tech Council of Australia. The Aussie tech community has come together to shape our digital future, setting the goal of creating 1 million jobs in tech by 2025 and contributing $250 billion to the economy by 2030. We’re all for initiatives to develop talent, foster growth and develop fit-for-purpose regulation that will drive Australia’s economy into the future.
👏 A double dose of good news for founders looking for capital: Jelix Ventures announced their $15m fund, and AfterWork Ventures have closed their first $10m fund.
💸And we couldn’t call it “The Big News” section without mentioning Square acquiring AfterPay for $39b! It’s monumental news for Anthony, Nick and the team, as well as the Australian tech scene. We’re looking forward to seeing Afterpay’s early employees support the next generation of Australian startups through angel investing and advisor roles.
Topics That Caught Our Eye 👀
⚠️AI has the worst superpower: medical racism. Research has found that AI can trivially learn to identify the self-reported racial identity of patients to an absurdly high degree of accuracy. Human’s can’t tell a patient’s race from medical images, and researchers can’t figure out how AI does it. AI’s ability to homogenise, institutionalise and algorithm-wash health disparities across regions and populations is not a neutral thing — it can seriously make things much worse. There are plenty of uses of AI that are innocuous, but Australian Kate Crawford, a pre-eminent scholar on the social and political implications of AI, wants us to wake up to AI’s inherent risks.
🤔How do you minimise the risk of hiring people who aren’t the right fit? You need to explicitly ask: What’s going on here, with this human? We loved this brilliant piece by Graham Duncan that outlines the 3 steps to see people clearly and examples of uncommon, yet deeply revealing questions to ask in interviews. Our favs: “What criteria would you use to hire someone to do this job if you were in my seat?” and “How would your spouse or sibling describe you with ten adjectives?”
📖 How do you remember what you read? Hands up if you’ve read an inspiring book packed with life-changing insights, only to realise you’ve completely forgotten them when you’re finally in a situation where you could use them? *Raises hand* Consuming information is not the same as acquiring knowledge. To get the most out of what we read, it’s vital to know how to record, reflect on and put into action our conclusions. Farnam Street runs through 5 strategies to get in the active reading frame of mind.
📊 5 internal processes to minimise churn and increase customer retention. Net dollar retention is typically the north star metric for customer retention. Customer success can move the needle on this metric in 2 ways: reducing churn and growing existing customer contracts. Get started by booking in a line-by-line process with all the right people in the room to align on requests and brainstorm tactics for saving and growing customers. Churn is inevitable, but “sunlight is the best disinfectant”, so conduct a retrospective to explore measures that could have prevented churn and then operationalise those learnings in your CS playbook.
🙅♀️ Let’s stop telling women they have imposter syndrome. Instead, let’s explore why it exists in the first place. Imposter syndrome puts the blame on individuals without taking into account the historical and cultural contexts that are foundational to how it manifests in women. Leaders must create a culture for women and POC that addresses systemic bias and racism to reduce the experiences that culminate in so-called imposter syndrome. At the very least, it can help these employees channel healthy self-doubt into positive motivation!
💡9 ways top founders come up with great business ideas and 4 signs you’re onto something: 1. Obsession is a litmus test for having founder-market fit- there should be nothing else you’d rather be working on than this idea, 2. Something is obviously broken, and it “shouldn’t be this hard”, 3. Potential customers “get it”, and you’re solving many customers’ problems, 4. You’re an outsider, and you’re able to rethink assumptions that everyone else has made about an area, technology or market, making the seemingly impossible possible.
Major Funding Rounds 💰
V2food, a plant-based meat startup, raised $72m
TechLend, a non-bank lender, raised $50m
Hireup, an online disability services platform, raised $40m
Forage, an education technology startup, raised $34m
Seer, a medtech diagnostics company, raised $34m
Real Flow Finance, a proptech startup, raised $25m
Crimson Education, an education technology platform, raised $23.8m
Quantum Brilliance, a quantum accelerator startup, raised $13m
Pendula, a customer communications platform, raised $6.75m
Fable Food Co, a plant-based meat alternative, raised $6.5m
Carbonix, a drone-as-a-service startup, raised $6.3m
ezyCollect, an invoice-to-payments subscription software platform, raised $6.2m
Ordermentum, a hospitality startup, raised $6m
Dovetail, a customer research startup, raised $5m
Inloop, a fintech payments company, raised $5m
Lygon, a blockchain-based platform, raised $5m
Oscer, a medical AI platform, raised $5m
Foodbomb, an online food marketplace, raised $4.5m
T-shirt Ventures, a health tech company, raised $4m
Sicona, a battery materials startup, raised $3.7m
Send, an on-demand grocery startup, raised $3.1m
Circle In, a parent support platform, raised $2.27m
Pi.Exchange, an artificial intelligence startup, raised $2.75m
Barcats, a hospitality recruitment platform, raised $2.4m
Fresh Equities, a capital raise platform, raised $2.3m
Programa, an all-in-one platform for architects and interior designers, raised $2m
Unhedged, an AI-based investing app, raised $2.3m
Operata, a performance monitoring and assurance platform, raised $2.2m
Hearables3D, a custom earpiece startup, raised $1m
Octant AI, an AI for project performance startup, raised $1m
Did we miss your raise? Want your yet-to-be-announced raise featured in next month’s newsletter? Let us know: community@airtree.vc
Love For The AirTree Fam 💕
🦸♀️ Melanie from Canva, Katherine from Brighte, Nicole from Kin Fertility and Audrey from GlamCorner were all recognised in Vogue’s list of innovative women breaking boundaries in 2021.
🏆 Mina from Different was named the Most Innovative Person at Finder’s Innovation Awards, acknowledging excellence, creativity and impact across various industries.
🥰 Employment Hero and Go1 have partnered up to support their users impacted by rolling lockdowns in Australia by providing free access to 20 mental health and wellbeing courses. If your mind, body or soul could do with a little bit of TLC, don’t forget to check out our support panel here.
💙Ruby Kolesky and Kevin Norris from Joyous have penned Joyfully — the Joyous Way of Working. Sharing their first hand experience of shaping a new organisational structure, forming a product strategy and navigating new ways of working, it’s packed full of insights and beliefs e.g., “We believe in supporting lines, not reporting line.” It was written with other software teams in mind, but we think just about any team on the journey of organisational formation, finding strategic alignment and establishing how to work together will benefit from it.
🍭 Mr Yum’s co founder, Adrian Osman spoke on the Funny Business podcast about the defining moments in the company’s journey so far.
Community Bulletin 📌
💰 NSW Government is allocating $11 million to support businesses, universities and innovative districts to commercialise R&D that helps address the impacts of Covid-19. Find out more about the Innovation Scaleup Fund’s programs here.
📒Great news for founders who’ve been apprehensive about accessing the research and development tax incentive (RDTI): reforms have been implemented and audits are becoming more ‘balanced’. Changes include a refundable tax offset of 18.5% above the tax rate for small firms and a new intensity measure to calculate the offset for larger companies.
🏢 WeWork launched Growth Campus, an $8m initiative to support the Australian startup ecosystem by sponsoring up to 50% of space costs and providing a support program for eligible startups. You can register your interest here.
🦌 Come along to Antler Uncovered on Thursday, September 16th at 5.30PM via Zoom. Antler’s Managing Partner, Bede Moore and two of their portfolio companies will be taking a deep dive into what it means to build with Antler, how they support entrepreneurs and what they look for in founders.
Jobs Jobs Jobs! 🇦🇺🇳🇿
Reach out and have a chat with Andrew (andrew@airtree.vc) if any of these roles catch your eye:
🍃GROW, who are building technology solutions that make a genuine difference to people’s financial wellbeing, are hiring a Chief Product Officer
🚴 Zoomo, the world’s leader for utility e-bikes, is looking for a Global Customer Success Manager
💻Open, a technology platform reinventing general insurance, are hiring a GM of Technology
🏗Archistar, the world-first AI platform streamlining the property development process, are searching for their next Engineering Manager
Is your startup hiring? 🚀 Add your jobs here.
Say Hi to Team AirTree! 👋
2 Sept — Craig will be speaking with co founder of Go1, Andrew Barnes, on How to Build an Early Team for Future Growth at SaaStock 2021
7 Sept — Mel is speaking at UTS Startup Festival’s ‘Find Your Next Job or Internship at a Startup’ session.
10 Sept — Andrew will be judging the final round of She Loves Tech 2021
13 Sept — Rich is speaking at the Venture & Capital Conference
14 Sept — Rich will be at Stone & Chalks Investor Match Pitch Day
14 Sept — Andrew is doing virtual office hours with Ministry of Awesome NZ
30 Sept — Mel is speaking at ‘the 2030 movement’ by General Assembly
What we’re watching & reading 🤓
⏰ Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
Some are calling it ‘the most important book ever written on time management’, Burkeman’s Four Thousands Weeks (the average human lifespan) is an entertaining and practical guide to managing our scarcest and most precious resource — time. This book offers a peaceful reprieve, urging us to reject the fixation on getting everything done and instead focus our attention on what truly matters.
😺8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown
We could all do with more humour in lockdown and we’ll be rewatching all 21 seasons of this show in memory of comedian and “Team Captain” Sean Lock, who sadly passed away last week. For the uninitiated, it’s a comedy panel show hosted by Jimmy Carr, filled with word and number quizzes, risqué one-liners, physical humour and celebrity contestants trading razor-sharp barbs.
