OIF Ventures (Our Innovation Fund)— Analysis
**2024 Update: I now publish Aussie capital raising content on Substack here **
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In the early days of COVID-19 in Australia, I asked a question to the Startup Grind Melbourne Facebook group, “As a founder, what do you need most right now?”… Surprise surprise the most common answer was “funding” and I think the answer is always funding.
The startup world is addicted to venture capital, a funding event is commonly seen as a sign that a startup has made it, although customers and revenue should be that sign of success. New funding rounds attract a lot of media attention, numbers get quoted that most could only dream of like millions and billions. Our government and startup ecosystem world rankings use funding levels as a proxy for the health of the local ecosystem, so it’s no wonder why founders think it’s the bee's knees.
The Facebook group question got me thinking about venture capital funding in Australia and how I could help these founders find appropriate investors. A couple of months later Startup-Funding.com.au was born. Startup Funding is a free community resource to help Australian founders search for appropriate investors as well as to learn about the capital-raising process. Within the first two weeks of the site’s launch, over 800 visitors have conducted over 1,500 searches for Aussie investors. Not surprisingly, 70% of searches are for early-stage investors (pre-seed, seed, and series A).
Startup-Funding.com.au is meant to give founders the information they need to make a more strategic approach to capital raising. Visitors can search the investor database on 3 key criteria, sector focus, tech focus and stage focus. Thus allowing them to easily build a hit list of suitable investors for their venture. However, as I was building the site, I realised that whilst knowing what sector, tech and stages a fund/investor specialises in are important when assessing investors, it is only one part of what founders should be evaluating.
I’ve spent a lot of time involved in global financial markets. I’ve been investing in the stock market since I was 14 years old, I studied banking, finance and accounting and I spent a couple of years issuing billion-dollar bonds to trillion-dollar private investors all over the world. However, even with this background and experience in financial markets, I find it difficult to gain visibility over the startup capital market, especially the early-stages (pre-seed, seed, series A). That made me wonder, how do founders manage to grasp it?
All of this thinking led me to more thinking and finally to question whether I can provide more information to founders beyond startup-funding.com.au with the ultimate goal of helping founders make more strategic choices about which investors to engage. As we all know, speed is of the essence in the startup world so spending 3–12 months trying but failing to raise capital will likely lead to a slow death.
That’s how this blog was born.
Now I present to you my first Australian investor analysis for Australian founders.
Keep in mind this is my MVP so I’d love any and all feedback so I can improve future investor analyses.
Rather than run commentary, I’m largely just going to state facts and let you, the founder decide if each investor is right for you.
All of the following data is from public sources.
My other analyses here:
OIF Ventures (formally known as Our Innovation Fund)
I chose OIF Ventures as the first Australian investor to analyse because up until a couple of weeks ago I’d never heard of them. They first came to my attention when a founder commented how great they were to deal with so naturally, I wanted to learn more and this was the perfect opportunity to do so.
To produce this I researched 28 founders from 12 startups who were involved in 18 funding rounds with OIF.
Background
Founding Date: 2016
Offices: Sydney & New York
Cheque Sizes: $500k — $5m
Fund 1: $50 million launched in 2016
Fund 2: $75 million launching in 2020 (unconfirmed)
Website: https://www.oifventures.com.au/
Team: Team is made up of previous founders that all have impressive exits — https://www.oifventures.com.au/promise
Stated Tech Focus: Software & Hardware
Stated Sector Focus: Agnostic (investors way of saying everything)
Stated Stage Focus: Seed, Series A
Don’t forget to follow me if you like this report
Analysis
A friend suggested an infographic summary, this is my first attempt!
I’m certainly no designer but Canva is awesome.
Founder Stats
Total Founders: 28 people
Gender: Male 93% | Female 7%
Founder’s Age: ~38 years old on average (youngest was 22)
Domain Experience: ~15 years on average (lowest 4 yrs)
Previous Startup Founder: Yes 58% | No 42%
Startup Stats
Total Startups: 12
Founders Per Startup: 1 Founder 25% | 2+ Founders 75%
Customer Focus: 100% B2B
Tech Focus: 92% Software | 8% Hardware
Years in Operation at First Investment: 1–2yrs 41% | 3–5yrs 42% | 5–7yrs 17%
Sector Focus: HR, Cyber Security, Manufacturing, Construction, Finance, Education, Software
Other Themes: SaaS, Big Data, Robotics, AI, Fraud, Safety
Portfolio Startups: Bare Cremation, Enboarder, Instaclustr, Kasada, Advanced Navigation, Assignar, Amaka, EFTsure, GO1, XM Cyber, Matrak, Circle In, Recomazing, Stream Lending (now Amaka)
** Bare Cremation is a new investment confirmed today by OIF but the size and stage are yet to be announced and therefore isn’t included in this analysis.
Funding Round Stats
Total Rounds: 18
Initial Investments: 12
Follow-ons: 6
Wrap-up
History isn’t always a good predictor of the future but it can certainly help guide us.
OIF has a very impressive portfolio that is clearly centred around B2B SaaS early-stage businesses whose founders have the relevant domain and some startup experience.
OIF’s team is made up of successful founders and if you’re eyeing the US/North American market then they have an office in New York.
If you’re thinking about reaching out to Our Innovation Fund then as always, make sure you are familiar with their current portfolio, the team and where your business fits into the portfolio and fund’s focus (complementary or adjacent). Oh yeah and always look for a warm intro.
My Previous Australian Investor Reports for Founders
Founders, Investors and Startup Newbies: Feel free to add me on LinkedIn, I love building up a network of interesting people
Looking for Funding? Check out Startup-Funding.com.au
I’m the Aussie Startup Capital Nerd… My name is Warwick Donaldson and I specialise in Australian DeepTech and FinTech Seed and Series A capital raisings. To date I’ve worked on over 150 Pre-seed, Seed, and Series A fundraises. Hit me up if you’d like to chat.
