Capital Brief

Venture studios are a combination of VC and accelerator and have produced big hits abroad. But can Australia and New Zealand's studios replicate that success? New Zealand-based Tracksuit, a $142 million brand awareness-tracking company that came out of TRA Labs Venture Studio, is a promising example. Other examples include fintech Marmalade, a platform that provides on-demand invoice payment to small businesses, and NDIS service provider T-shirt Ventures. “Australia and New Zealand are reasonably far behind relative to the rest of the world in the maturity of the space,” said Ash Fogelberg, CEO of Paloma Ventures —one of the biggest Antipodean venture studios. Read more in this week's Sweat Equity newsletter by Daniel Van Boom 👇

Last week, Employment Hero CEO Ben Thompson made what he later described as a “bad dad joke” on X about Richard White. Women in tech see it more as a ”schoolboy dick joke" and believe it was a missed opportunity to address problems in the sector. https://lnkd.in/gpTF-GEn

With more than 1,000 employees across Australia and 26 current class action cases, Maurice Blackburn Lawyers is "the leading practice by some margin" when it comes to group claims, says CEO Jacob Varghese. Varghese spoke to Laurel Henning about why litigation funders are "essential", how the firm is investing in legal tech and AI, and what's next for the class action market. Read the full interview 👉 https://lnkd.in/gp_wVpG8

Aconex founder Leigh Jasper has called for a major rethink among founders and investors towards exits. Speaking at an Amazon Web Services and Startup Daily event in Melbourne last week, Jasper argued that rethinking traditional exit pathways could help alleviate the mounting pressure on venture capital firms to return capital to their investors. "A lot of people think about an exit as a one-time event," Jasper said. "I go to an IPO or I sell my business. The way we think about it is seeing exits as a series of events, so that you exit progressively over a period of time." Jasper was himself involved in one of the biggest exits in Australian tech and VC history when he sold his construction software business Aconex to Oracle for $1.6 billion. Read the full story from Bronwen Clune 👇

The Australian National University, one Australia’s most prestigious higher education institutions, posted a net surplus of $146.6 million in 2023. But one-off sugar hits — including insurance payouts from a 2020 hailstorm, which could not be spent on salaries — were masking a dire reality. A projected deficit of $60 million for 2024 had blown out to over $200 million. Now some insiders are left asking the question: how did one of Australia’s most prestigious universities, seemingly overnight, find itself on a financial cliff? Read the full story from Finn McHugh 👉 https://lnkd.in/g_-6Pve6

Early to the AI wave, customer insights startup Dovetail attracted one of the largest investments in Australia during the 2022 hype cycle, securing a whopping $86.9 million funding round — and said no to Andreessen Horowitz in the process. Fast forward to 2024, and the world of AI is moving faster than ever. As Dovetail CEO and co-founder Benjamin Humphrey told Bronwen Clune, "every man and their dog has an AI startup!" "Back in 2017, a startup was considered a risk that most people didn't want to take. But now anyone can spin up a web app on top of ChatGPT, emboldening people to become founders," he says. But Humphrey also says these founders will learn in time that "anyone can crank out a product — it's building a business that's the hard part". Read the full interview 👉 https://lnkd.in/gj7_MeYk #startupaus Benjamin H.

Earlier this year Leonardo.Ai was in talks with VCs to fund its Series B. Instead of investors, it found a buyer: Canva acquired the startup in August. The first seeds planted by that deal sprouted on Wednesday, when Canva launched Dream Lab, a text-to-image generator that runs off the startup’s Phoenix AI model. For Leonardo.Ai, which will continue to operate as its own entity, the buyout has meant not only access to a bigger talent pool, but also the costly GPUs crucial for AI development. “As we scale research capability, having more compute allows you to do more things in parallel, run more experiments, explore different avenues across a wider range of modalities”, says Leonardo.Ai founder JJ Fiasson. Read the full story from Daniel Van Boom 👉 https://lnkd.in/gs4UwgGd

Former Macquarie execs Steve Gross and Jeremy Wernert launched their own impact investing firm within Palisade Investment Partners, targeting three goals: zero emissions, zero waste and zero inequality. The pair established Palisade Impact 2021. A year later, it finalised a $450 million capital raise for its inaugural open-ended fund. So far, the team has made three investments in energy transition, healthcare, and digital inclusion. Gross spoke to Kate Burgess about their investment strategy and what's next. Read the full interview 👉 https://lnkd.in/gTHDFghq

BREAKING: Wellness entrepreneur Linda Rogan and WiseTech co-founder Richard White have settled their battle in the Federal Court. A spokesperson for White said “Mr White and Ms Rogan have settled the Federal Court proceeding which related to a commercial dispute". “Given this was a personal matter Mr White has settled to avoid any distraction from his primary focus which is on implementing WiseTech’s growth strategy and continuing to create value for its shareholders and customers.” Read more in this story from Laurel Henning 👉 https://lnkd.in/gxjYfjUE

Is this another sign that the fintech winter is well and truly over? ANZ's venture arm 1835i is not dormant, says CEO Justin Greenstein, but it has been focused on preserving its portfolio of investments in the last two years — including a stake in Airwallex. And that's about to change, with Greenstein telling Andrew Cornell that more announcements on deploying capital are imminent. “We have a few really interesting partnerships within our existing portfolio that we are starting to see flourish quite nicely now,” he says. “There's some other interesting things that are starting to happen, one with our New Zealand business and one of our portfolio companies in the UK. We're going to make an announcement soon around a new one, which we've spent the last few months already building the foundations for.” Read the full interview 👉 https://lnkd.in/g867CY7q