A Message From Mel 🙋🏻♀️
We were so excited to put on a cocktail networking dinner for the AirTree fam founders this month! 🥳 🍸For many of us, it was the first time we’ve seen each other in person since COVID which made it extra special. We in the startup sector might be more comfortable using digital technology and working remotely than most, but there’s still no replacing the magic of getting a room full of extraordinary people together for great conversation and mutual support. 💕 We are still buzzing from it and can’t wait for the next one!
The Trans-Tasman bubble meant that our Head of Talent Andrew Donald was able to co-host in person the ‘Careers of the Future’ talent expo for superstar Kiwis looking for dream opportunities within the startup sector. The expo featured AirTree fam companies including Thematic, Joyous, LawVu and Open Insurance which are always on the lookout for amazing people to join their growing teams. 🙌 Big thanks to our friends at Icehouse Ventures, Blackbird, Movac, NZ Growth Capital Partners, Matchstiq.io, Ministry of Awesome, Xero and AWS for making it happen. Yes, a whole village turned up!
The Big News 🗞
🎉 A big warm ‘Welcome to the AirTree fam’ to Mina & Michael at full stack e-bike brand Zoomo, Sam at legaltech software LawVu and Matthew at prescription medicine delivery platform Chemist2U!
👍 We’re so proud of ‘home loan wreckers’ Nathan, Michael and the team at Athena who have continually delivered an incredible pace of innovation for Aussie home buyers and now they’ve announced a record-breaking $90m funding round!
🚀 Props to another huge milestone for Luke and the team at SafetyCulture as they announce a massive $99m funding round that makes them ‘a unicorn twice over’.
💰 Both the Australian and New Zealand governments unveiled Federal budgets this month.
You can find highlights of the Aussie one here and the Kiwi one here.
Our Chair Daniel Petre and Partner James Cameron shared their thoughts with the AFR, pointing out tax incentives outlined in the new digital economy plan do very little for fast-growing tech startups and Mina Radhakrishnan from :Different spoke out against the ‘marginal commitment’ of the budget to support women entrepreneurs.
For the Kiwis, the consensus industry reaction was that tech took a back seat. ‘At a time when the New Zealand economy urgently needs to be rebuilt, where tourism is at a standstill, we should be doing all we can to encourage the growth of the digital and tech sectors. This Budget largely leaves the settings alone. It’s almost as if the lack of tech-industry people in politics is hindering our move to the new digital economy.’
Topics That Caught Our Eye 👀
💪 We’re getting closer to being able to regenerate limbs! ‘In 2018, Levin’s team attached a plastic cuff containing progesterone, a hormone that alters the behavior of ion channels, to the stump where a frog had once had a leg. They left the cuff on for twenty-four hours, then observed for about a year. Ordinarily, a frog that’s lost a leg will regrow a cartilaginous spike in its place. But the frogs in the experiment grew paddle-like limbs. About nine months later, little toes started to emerge. Levin thinks that, eventually, the same kind of cuff could be used on humans; you might wear one for a few months, long enough to persuade your body to restart its growth.’
😲 All of the forces we experience every day can be reduced to just four categories: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force and the weak force. Now physicists say they have found possible signs of a fifth, ‘undiscovered sub-atomic particle’ or new fundamental force of nature.
📈 The ‘Post-COVID’ war on talent is well and truly on! Big US tech companies like Adobe & Square are doubling down on their Australian presence by ramping up hiring drives, at a time when local startups like SafetyCulture, CultureAmp and Deputy are doing the same. This has caused a notable rise in salaries for some startup roles according to a report by SEEK.
🔍 Canva’s Technical SEO manager Sam Ficek breaks down how your startup should tackle SEO: How do you decide what to prioritise? Should you do in-house or outsource?
💸 Don’t let China mint the digital currency of the future: Nial Ferguson, the historian who wrote ‘The Ascent of Money’, looks at the development of digital currencies — from gaming currencies like Robux, to crypto, to China’s e-CNY — and what governments need to do in response. ‘If the future of money arrives as rapidly as I think it will, in the form of a widely adopted e-CNY, do not be surprised if all we can offer our kids are Robux.’
⏳ Buy now pay later companies have made it easier to buy retail goods in instalments but a potential pitfall for consumers is the removal of the ‘psychological friction’ that forces people to consider whether they can really afford to buy a particular thing. What happens when this same lending model is replicated to necessities like rent and health care services?
😎 Our Venture Partner Anil Sabharwal has built or run 3 of Google’s 9 most successful products and he’s building his next one after a sabbatical from Google. ‘It will be a proudly Australian operation, with opportunities for local developers and product specialists to work on a global product, without uprooting their lives to Mountain View.’ We can’t wait to see how Anil’s new endeavour develops!
Major Funding Rounds 💰
Stake, a share trading startup, raised $40m
Little Birdie, an e-commerce venture, raised $30m
Mx51, a white-label payment technology provider, raised $25m
Amber, an energy startup, raised $20m
Comestri, an e-commerce tech provider, raised $15m
Carted, a next-gen universal e-commerce API startup, raised $13m
Quasar Satellite Technologies, a space startup, raised $12m
Lyre, a non-alcoholic spirits brand, raised $9m
Console Group, a cloud-based proptech startup, raised $7.5m
First AML, a Kiwi regtech startup, raised $7.3m
Hnry, a Kiwi fintech startup, raised $4.1m
Josef, a legal automation startup, raised $2.5m
Mass Dynamics, a biotech startup, raised $1.5m
Seabin, an eco-startup, raised $1.2m
Gathered Here, an end-of-life tech startup, raised $1.1m
CircleSource, a marketplace for SMEs and local businesses, raised $1m
Rental Heroes, a proptech 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 💕
🔗 Good on Alex & the Linktree team for taking a leadership position on preventing the spread of misinformation. “Linktree has always taken steps to ensure the safety of its community, and reserves the right to ban any account that violates our terms and conditions. Misinformation and hateful content is prohibited under our terms of use, and we take the trust of our users very seriously.”
🏆 We’re so proud of Fatemah from Secure Code Warrior who has been included in The Software Report’s Top 25 Women Leaders in Cybersecurity. Woop woop, so well deserved!
⭐️ Brighte CRO & CMO Malini Sietaram, previously eBay’s global head of content & social media strategy, shares 3 things startups can learn from Silicon Valley and vice versa at the Intersekt conference.
🎉 Congratulations to the Qwilr team for launching their API for automatic document creation so that teams can instantly create thousands of complex quotes and proposals as beautiful, interactive, intelligent web pages.
💰 Our Co-founder & Chair Daniel Petre outlines the case for philanthropic giving and urges the wealthy to do the right thing.
Community Bulletin 📌
📖 The Dream Venture Masterclass is a 2-day program dedicated to equipping Indigenous Australians with the connections, capabilities and access to capital that they need to become investor-ready, or ready to invest. Apply for the program here.
💰 The Angel Association New Zealand is running a session on impact investing on Wednesday, 2nd June 9:00am NZT: Impact investing can be ethical and financially rewarding, they are not mutually exclusive. This session will be an opportunity to learn impact investing works and the myriad of similarities between angel investing and impact investing. Register here.
❓Raising funding for the first time? We loved these candid tips from Amogh Sarda at Eesel who has just been through the process.
💭 Engineers & Founders: Join Antler at the Sydney Startup Hub on Wednesday, June 2 at 5:30 pm AEST for the opportunity to network, connect and potentially work with future global tech companies. Talk directly with co-founder CTO’s on tech stacks, challenges, and their open roles. Register here.
Jobs Jobs Jobs! 🇦🇺🇳🇿
💊 Chemist2U, a prescription medicine delivery platform, is looking for a Head of Marketing, Brand and Communications
👗 GlamCorner, the fashion tech company creating an endless online wardrobe, is looking for a Full Stack Software Engineer
🩺 HotDoc, Australia’s largest and most trusted patient engagement platform, is looking for a Customer Success Team Manager
🚲 Zoomo, a global full-stack commercial e-bike brand, is looking for a People and Culture Manager
Is your startup hiring? Add your jobs here.
Say Hi to Team AirTree! 👋
16–17th June — Jackie is attending the AWS Brisbane Founder Dinner
Throughout June — Mel is offering mentoring hours with the Sydney Startup Hub
29–30th July — John is speaking at the Dream Venture Masterclass
What We’ve Been Listening to 👂
🤖 The AI-First Company by Ash Fontana
‘AI-First companies are the only trillion-dollar companies, and soon they will dominate even more industries, more definitively than ever before. These companies succeed by design — they collect valuable data from day one and use it to train predictive models that automate core functions. As a result, they learn faster and outpace the competition in the process.’ Ash has been a long time friend of AirTree, and in this book, he offers a playbook for companies to win with AI.
🎮 Epic Games — Acquired Podcast
This is the ‘epic’ story of how game developer Tim Sweeney built an $18b empire after bootstrapping for the first 22 years. Now, he’s willing to take on Apple, Google and anyone else who ‘doesn’t support his vision of an equal-opportunity internet future in a fight to the death’.
