Eating our own tail — or Reinventure’s Year in Review
A firm fixture in our company logo since its earliest days (and also referred to in the name of our Medium publication!) is the symbol of a serpent eating its tail, otherwise known as an ouroboros. With roots in Ancient Egyptian and Greek mythology, the ouroboros refers to the process of creation through destruction. In our context, this is of course a nod towards our mission to reinvent financial services, with the support of one of the very incumbents threatened by this impending wave of disruption.
Another reference to the ouroboros is that of the annual cycle of time, as one year rolls into the next; every year looks both the same, yet fundamentally different to the one before it. In the three and a half years I have been at Reinventure, each one has felt completely different in so many ways, and yet, slowly but surely, we have created strong and consistent foundations from which to evolve, iterate and expand as a team.
2018 has perhaps been the most momentous yet, so we wanted to reflect on how we’ve grown, what we’re proud of and what we’re excited to see play out in 2019. Here are some highlights below:
Investments
Over the course of 2018, we have invested in six new companies — welcoming Everproof, Kasada, Akin and Slyp (plus two other undisclosed investments) to our now 25-strong portfolio. We also participated in 11 follow-on rounds across our portfolio family, up from seven in 2017.
In total, we participated in eight seed rounds, four Series A rounds, four Series B rounds and made an investment into a US-based fund.
We also announced our third fund of another $50 million in May this year, with Westpac again as the primary LP. Unlike its predecessors Funds 1 and 2, this fund is split between an ESVCLP structure and a unit trust, meaning we will be looking more broadly at the Asian region for investment opportunities into 2019.
Portfolio Family Milestones
2018 has been an equally big year for our portfolio community, with a number of milestone raises and key strategic partnerships bedded down.
In April, Assembly Payments became the first Reinventure company to receive direct investment from Westpac, along with a flagship product integration between the four-year-old fintech and the 200-year-old bank.
Through the second half of this year we have also celebrated the Series B raises of Data Republic, Flare HR and Open Agent — bringing the likes of Point72 Ventures, Singapore Airlines and Singtel to the table as co-investors. Open Agent also became part of Westpac’s stable of principal investments, as they embark on some exciting strategic conversations with the bank.
Aside from fundraising, 13 of our ventures now have some kind of strategic engagement ongoing with Westpac.
From the perspective of our portfolio community, this has also been our biggest year yet. Our team hosted a residential retreat in April, bringing together 25 portfolio founders and CEOs (plus three husbands, three babies and one 10-year-old) for two memorable days at Manly’s historic Q Station, looking back over Sydney Harbour and city. Despite a packed agenda of awesome content and special guests, without a doubt everyone’s favourite takeaway was being able to deepen relationships with each other.
This gave us the impetus to kick off our Founders Breakfast series mid-year, and in 2019, we will be looking for even more ways to bring our portfolio CEOs and their core team members together.
Thought Leadership
We pride ourselves on being high-conviction, thesis-led investors. To achieve this, we spend a lot of time thinking about the landscape in which we operate, the forces that set certain ventures up for success, and those that threaten to swallow up opportunity from under our nose. This thinking sometimes results in a presentation or paper that lays out our perspective on the matter, and how it governs our investment.
In particular, this year Simon Cant built on his thinking around the fintech stack, and how we are in the midst of three waves of financial disruption.
Danny Gilligan also laid out a call to action for Australia’s policy makers, regulators, corporations and startups to come together and create a best-in-class ecosystem for the data economy to flourish in his Global Data Wars whitepaper.
We’re excited by what we see emerging in 2019, and it’s everyone’s new year’s resolutions to write about it more! (Isn’t it, guys…)
Paying it Forward
One of our values we articulated earlier this year was the notion of paying it forward, which we have always taken very seriously in terms of our role and contribution we make to those communities we inhabit — whether that be the fintech, VC or general startup community.
We were excited to partner with Textbook Ventures, a cross-university organisation for entrepreneurially minded students, to help foster an interest in the fintech industry as an opportunity area, as well as connecting students to fintech entrepreneurs and businesses through our inaugural ‘Finchats’ event. More great collaborations in store here!
Following two years of leadership from Simon Cant as inaugural Chair of FinTech Australia, I was proud to be elected as a board member at this year’s AGM, and am excited by the opportunity to take Australia’s fintech ecosystem to the next level.
After serving as a founding board member since 2015, Danny Gilligan stepped down from the board of Stone & Chalk in June this year.
In July, we led a startup salary benchmarking effort with seven of our VC peers to feed into important work being done by StartupAUS and Think and Grow, the result of which is the 2018 Startup Salary Guide.
We also initiated a portfolio-wide diversity benchmarking study, to understand how we can better support our ventures (and enable them to support each other) to build diverse teams. It has been so incredible to hear the beautiful stories of inclusion and belonging emerging from our startups as we open up these conversations with them, and look forward to sharing more on this in the new year. We are also looking to launch a similar industry-wide initiative in early 2019 with some special partners.
On the topic of diversity, another area where we struggle as an industry to achieve diversity and inclusion is of course in venture capital. Based on an insight that women in the early stages of their career might consider themselves to lack the necessary skills or experience to apply for a job within the venture capital industry, we launched a pilot event with TechSydney and UTS to address this.
The Women in Venture lecture and case competition launched in September this year, with 20 women students being exposed to the practical skills and frameworks you might need for an entry-level role in venture, and having the opportunity to try their hand at analysing a venture through a one-day case competition. The pilot was an overwhelming success, and we look forward to further evolving the program next year to give more young women exposure and meaningful access to the world of VC.
Team
We started the year as a team of six, and over the course of the year have welcomed seven new faces, meaning our team photo is never quite up to date…
The year kicked off with my return to work after having taken six months off in the second half of 2017 for maternity leave.
In February, we welcomed our investment intern Elizabeth Harre to the team, where she wowed us with her intelligence and great sense of humour for six months before heading off for an exchange in the Nordics (thanks for the postcard Liz!).
We also had to say ‘don’t be a stranger’ to Investment Associate Sibel Buyukbaykal early in the year when she got an opportunity to join portfolio company BrickX, so were very excited to welcome Investment Analyst Guy Wallace in April, and Investment Associate Lisa Fedorenko a bit later in July.
Later in July we welcomed interns Brandon Saputra (Community) and Kevin Lu (Investment) to the team and have been so grateful for their epic skills and invaluable contribution throughout the latter half of this year.
Finally, we were thrilled to bring Nell Hardie on board in August as Reinventure’s first Head of Talent, offering executive search and talent advisory services across the portfolio as we continue to build out our platform services.
Aside from these stellar hires through the year, we’ve also stepped back to take stock of what it means to be part of the Reinventure team and portfolio, and refined our vision and mission for the next chapter of our growth. You can read about what we came up with here:
We also doubled-down on our commitment to diversity within the team, qualifying as a Work180 Employer of Choice.
And now for our tail…
These milestones and experiences have us feeling somewhat fulfilled, and looking forward to how we can build on them even further in the new year. But like the snake that eats its own tail, we are also prepared to begin 2019 as a somewhat clean slate, full of opportunity and curiosity for where it will lead, and ready to act with agility to what comes our way. We hope you will be alongside us for that journey.
Have a great break!
