The Side Stage Story — building the fund we wish we had…
Last week we shared that we’ve done the first close of Side Stage Ventures Fund 1 and quietly made our first 3 investments from the fund.
Today — we wanted to share a little bit more about who we are and why we do what we do.
As a bit of context,
Side Stage Ventures is a founder-led seed fund & community backing the top 1% of founders in Australia 🇦🇺
We’re a team of founders that have been investing together, as a syndicate, alongside a community of over 100 founders and operators and now we’re building the seed fund that we wish we had when we were starting out 🌱.
We write small cheques into the best early stage companies. Then we lean in to help the founders build & scale.
We’ve been founders (Linktree, Platoon, Unified Music), operators (Apple, Amazon) and investors (Go1, Mr Yum, Airtasker). We’ve experienced success and we’ve experienced failure but most importantly… we truly understand the struggle in building a business from the ground up.
We’re a team of 8:
- 4 of us building the fund
- 4 of us building our own businesses & supporting the fund as active Venture Partners
We back people. We’re comfortable investing across all sectors and business models.
And our goal is simple:
To be the most valued early-stage partner for the top 1% of founders in Australia.
How we work?
- We typically invest up to $500k in pre-seed or seed rounds
- We are super collaborative and enjoy investing alongside other great investors both in Australia and around the world
- We are sector agnostic but looking for the best surfers riding the biggest waves — outlier founders, building in big markets.
- We are early stage specialists — we focus on solving the challenges of 0–1
- It’s never too early. We’re comfortable backing companies very early, often pre-revenue.
Why we hope founders want to work with us:
- We are founders and we behave like founders — with passion, enthusiasm and belief
- We are flexible on valuation and ownership. We think what’s best for the founder is best for us.
- We offer active and collaborative support focussed on the earliest stages of building a business — such as hiring, fundraising and getting to product market fit.
- We have a high Helpfulness to Cheque Size ratio (H:CS)
- We’re building a unique community of founders who want to contribute
- We are an international team with a global network
- We feel fortunate to be here and absolutely LOVE what we do.
What we look for:
- Outlier Founders
First and foremost, we back people. We look for outlier founders who have proven hustle, a compelling, global vision, the hunger and drive to build a billion dollar business and the capability to sell their vision to employees, partners and future investors.
- Differentiated Product
We look for products that are solving real and meaningful problems, with passionate first customers and that have the potential to be orders of magnitude better than their nearest competitor. This could be demonstrated through sticky initial customers, accessing an underserved market or through a compelling and non-consensus product insight.
- Big Markets
Our focus is sector agnostic but with a bias towards big markets that have either billions of potential customers or billions of dollars in accessible revenue capacity.
What we care about:
Founders First
We always remember that we back founders. It is their business and we are part of the support team. We behave like founders — with passion, enthusiasm and belief — and we know that what is best for founders is best for us.
The Right Thing
We do the right thing even when no-one is looking. We build conviction and then have 100% trust in our team and our founders and we expect the same in return. We are a team, not just a collection of individuals. We take responsibility & share the wins and the mistakes together.
Safe Spaces
We create safe spaces for our founders, teammates and LP’s. We thrive on debate, we challenge our team and our founders directly and with honesty, but always caring deeply. No question is a stupid question and vigorous debate and disagreement is encouraged.
Force for Good
We believe that entrepreneurship is a force for good in the world. We back entrepreneurs who are changing the world — for the better. This might be through the core problem they are solving (such as Climate change or Health) but could equally be in the way they build and hire a diverse team or create opportunities for others.
Long-term games
Venture is a long game. We play long term games with long term people. We plan to be here for decades and we want to work with and invest in people who will be here too. We recognise the trust that our founders & LP’s place in us as long term partners and we don’t take this responsibility lightly.
Bias to Action
Done is better than perfect. Speed matters. We leave everything on the field. We are proactive, move fast and take the initiative. We like to GSD.
Crazy ideas change the world
Many of the world’s most impactful ideas sounded crazy at first. It’s so easy to attack new ideas and be right. The hard thing is to challenge, support, nurture and stake our reputations on new ideas.
Thanks for getting this far. If any of this resonates and you’d like to meet, please get in touch hello@sidestage.vc.
To the next decade & beyond,
Team Side Stage x
