This Week in Australian Startups #42, 22nd October 2023 - SXSW hits Sydney and 2 Mega deals
Unless you’ve been on holiday and made sure to switch off, or been without internet - like most people your social media feeds have been flooded with posts about SXSW in Sydney, the first time it’s been held outside Austin.
I’ve never attended the original in Austin, but did speak to a number of people who have been and asked how it compared. The general response was “not the same”, what made it special was how the entire city of Austin is taken over. When I last attended Web Summit in Lisbon, it had a similar vibe. I think there’s something special about a smaller city hosting a large conference, completely being taken over. Many people (especially outside tech) I knew in Sydney didn’t even know it was on!
The general quality of sessions was good, certainly some misses and others hitting home really well. Managing schedules was not ideal, with talks held from all across the International Convention Centre all the way to UTS (a 15-20 minute walk), along with many of the more popular talks hitting capacity if you weren’t lining up at least 10-15 minutes before it started. This meant if you wanted to attend two talks back to back, you’d have to leave the first 30-45 minutes in. Plenty of learnings that can be easily addressed next year.
The magic for me though was as Australian icon Dennis Denuto says “The Vibe”. On Tuesday I attended AFTER DARK, the SXSW Unconference hosted by AfterWork in partnership with Cut Through Ventures, Verve Super and Techstars. Everyone in the community at SXSW that day was there, and it putting yourself in places like this is where you can manufacture serendipity.
The second piece of magic was Startmate’s demo day on Thursday night, where a record 1,000 people attended. As they say in Hamilton, it was “The Room Where It Happens”. The energy was eclectic, but the quality of pitches by each of the 14 startups was incredible, what they had achieved in 12 weeks - some going from no product to $100K+ in ARR, one startup BioticsAI even won TechCrunch Disrupt.
Q3 this year saw no Mega Deals (Rounds of $100M+ funding), but this week we’ve seen two.
Employment Hero closed a Series F round of $263M hitting a valuation of $2B, and Skykraft with a $120M round.
In Cut Through Venture’s Q3 report, which I analysed here the lack of Mega Deals posed the question “whether we'll witness an uptick in acquisitions of mature startups lacking venture-style growth, an increase in startups shutting down, or a resurgence of massive funding rounds needed to sustain their operations.”
2 Mega deals isn’t enough to say it’s back, but certainly a strong sign for the Australian ecosystem, particularly when we’ve seen more layoffs globally Nokia (16% / 14,000), Microsoft/LinkedIn (3% / 668), Product Hunt (60%) and StackOverflow (28%).
Top News
Australia
High Court flattens Victoria’s EV tax (Startup Daily)
X has been fined $610,000 by Australian authorities for failing to respond to concerns about child sex abuse material (Startup Daily)
Australia Payments Plus launches ConnectID a digital ID that protects you data from hackers (Startup Daily)
The Australian government wants crypto exchanges to have a financial services licence (Startup Daily)
Jessica Box and Susan Hion-Jarvis launch Matched, the new app to build your community of advisors beyond your network (LinkedIn)
Nourish Ingredients launches Tastilux, an animal-free fat for plant-based meats (SmartCompany | BNA)
LoanOptions.ai crosses the ditch to launch in NZ market (BNA)
Airwallex to acquire Latin American counterpart MexPago (BNA)
Vitura Health gains telehealth foothold through $25m Doctors on Demand acquisition (BNA)
Marine Biomedical opens high-tech facility to convert pearl shell into bone (BNA)
AirTree bought and sold Canva in deal at market peak (AFR)
Salter Brothers set to launch $50M fund focusing on private and listed multi-stage tech companies (AFR)
Canva won’t list before 2025, but investors will still get rich soon (AFR)
Digital debt collection firm InDebted acquires competitor Reminda in a deal under $5M (AFR)
Canva’s template for success faces IPO stress test (The Australian)
UK-based Ideagen buys Melbourne health and safety software company Lucidity (Capital Brief)
Australia has quietly become a force in tech's next $1 trillion quantum computing market (Capital Brief)
Tech forum established in Parliament (InnovationAus)
Harry Hamilton and Lucy Wark launch Fuzzy, a new e-learning platform focused on helping knowledge workers gain “fuzzy” aka soft skills (LinkedIn)
Around the World
70% of femtech startups are founded by women, yet male-founded startups raise much more capital (Sifted)
New York VC firms form alliance to back diversity (TechCrunch)
The Techno-Optimist Manifesto by Marc Andreessen (a16z)
Marc Andreessen is getting raked over the coals for calling social responsibility the 'enemy' (Business Insider)
Marc Andreessen publishes ‘Techno-Optimist Manifesto’, names enemies including ‘ESG’, ‘Trust and Safety’ (VentureBeat)
LinkedIn confirms it will cut a further 668 jobs, bringing the total to nearly 1,400 this year (TechCrunch)
Amazon says its robots will speed up delivery and definitely not replace humans (The Verge)
Elon Musk's X testing $1 subscription fee for new users (Axios)
Tech layoffs continue as Nokia announces plan to cut up to 14,000 jobs (Fast Company)
How Google's Antitrust Trial Could Change Internet Search (TIME)
The Google antitrust trial has been frustratingly locked down — the NYT just filed a motion to open it up (The Verge)
Instagram apologises for adding ‘terrorist’ to some Palestinian user profiles (The Guardian)
Read the email LinkedIn sent employees announcing more than 600 layoffs across its engineering and product teams (Business Insider)
Product Hunt cleans house with layoffs impacting 60% of staff (TechCrunch)
Stack Overflow cuts 28% of its staff (TechCrunch)
Amazon Confronts a New Rival: TikTok (WSJ)
Amazon will pay Microsoft $1 billion in major cloud deal (XDA Developers)
Australian Funding Rounds
Darwinium, a digital security and fraud prevention startup, has raised a $28M Series A led by US Venture Partners with Blackbird, AirTree and Accomplice also participating (Startup Daily)
Employment Hero, the all in one HRIS, payroll and benefits platform, has raised a $263M Series F led by Technology Crossover Ventures hitting a $2B valuation (TechCrunch | AFR)
Skykraft, an air traffic management platform, has raised $120M from Foresight, Main Sequence Ventures and OPTrust (AFR)
The Martec, an employer branding and marketing platform, has raised $8M led my AS1 (Startup Daily | Investor notes from Jackie Vullinghs)
Konvoy Kegs, the beer keg monitoring and tracking startup, has raised $13M (AFR)
Wander, the upmarket pod hotel startup, has raised $913K in an equity crowdfunding campaign on Birchal (SmartCompany | Birchal)
Delidoor, a meal delivery startup, has raised $274K in an equity crowdfunding campaign on Birchal (SmartCompany | Birchal)
Orkestra, a startup that makes it easier to assess the feasibility of renewable energy projects, has raised a $2M Seed round led by Tidal Ventures along with Rampersand, Impact Ventures and Luxem (BNA)
Arlula, an Earth observation data startup, has raised an undisclosed sum from Lockheed Martin (BNA)
LAB Group, which sells digital identification and client onboarding technology for the financial services sector, has raised $6.9M from Global Credit Investments (AFR)
Sahha, a back-end mental health platform which can, using the biosensors on wearable devices, provide insights into a person’s mental health, has raised a $1.75M Seed round led by Aura Ventures alongside Antler and Supermoon Capital.(The Australian)
International Funding Highlights
Nirvana lands $57M to expand its IoT-based commercial insurance platform (FinTech Global)
Real Estate Tech Firm HqO Secures $50M Series D Round (Forbes)
Alibaba, Tencent Join $340M Funding for AI Startup Zhipu (Bloomberg)
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