This Week in Australian Startups #46, 19th November 2023
This week Deputy announced they posted their maiden profit, considering its last funding round was in 2018 and they were heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic it’s an incredible achievement.
Deputy recorded a statutory profit of $8.5M, a significant turnaround from a $24.9M loss in the previous year. This profit was driven by a substantial revenue increase from $75.7M to $103.92M, fuelled by growth across Australia (47% YoY), UK (30% YoY) and US (25% YoY).
Earlier this year, founder Ashik Ahmed handed over leadership to Silvija Martincevic, a seasoned tech executive notably CCO at Affirm, COO/CMO at Groupon and Board roles at Kiva and Lemonade. This year we’ve seen many startups shutdown or devalued with the shift in investor focus from growth at all costs to profitably.
Martincevic shared in an interview with the AFR, how her leadership team took an analytical approach to double down on their most profitable customer segments, reducing marketing spend and deprioritise customers who would take longer to realise value.
Reaching profitably this year, all while not making any layoffs is something to certainly be proud of.
With revenue of $100M+, based on a 9.2x multiple ($947M valuation) for Private HR Tech companies or a 10.5x multiple ($1.09B valuation) for publicly traded SaaS companies according to the AFR - Deputy could definitely make the case it’s now a unicorn.
Looking to the future, Deputy has a very strong narrative for growth.
It’s just hired a new CRO in Jaimie Buss who’s led revenue orgs at Articulate and Zendesk, and previously a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz she brings a wealth of experience.
Perhaps another fundraise could be on the cards in the next 12 months if not sooner - it has all the right ingredients to be the next model startup in the new investor environment of profitability.
Top News
Australia
Jack Dorsey's Block invests $3 million in First Australians Capital fund (BNA)
Pioneering VC fund Uniseed doubles its backers as five universities, including Monash, UTS and Macquarie, chip in (Startup Daily)
“Completely useless”: Boosting Female Founders program continues to hold back startups (SmartCompany)
Now self-funded, Humanitix makes largest donation to date with $4m given to charities in 2023 (BNA| LinkedIn)
Tyro Payments wins case to prevent agent Kounta from poaching merchants (BNA)
Cultivated meat startup Magic Valley expands into pilot facility (BNA)
Major cyberattack on Australian ports suggests sabotage by a ‘foreign state actor’ (BNA)
Rumuors that Canadian payments processor Nuvei is set to buy payments processor Till Payments for $47M (AFR)
Deputy in unicorn territory after posting maiden profit, without making any lay-offs this year (AFR)
After viral sexist post, women in start-ups say worse issues are buried (AFR)
Are we seeing the start of a tech M&A wave in Australia? (AFR)
The Australian federal government will trial Microsoft 365 Copilot for the first six months of 2024 (Capital Brief)
$18M in funding for emerging tech research at unis, from CSIRO’s Data61 (InnovationAus)
Australia will now need 1.3m tech workers by 2030, according to the ACS (InnovationAus)
Who's building ANZ's unicorns? First-time founders or serial entrepreneurs? (James Cameron on LinkedIn)
Victoria’s Press Play Ventures launches 100 scholarships to propel Women Entrepreneurs (The Australia Today)
Why do female founders get less funding? (Maisy Bennett on LinkedIn)
Around the World
Google’s deal with Apple looms large as antitrust trial winds down (ARN)
Apple to finally bring RCS to iPhones (TechCrunch)
Amazon and Hyundai launch a broad, strategic partnership—including vehicle sales on Amazon.com in 2024 (Amazon)
Airbnb acquires secretive AI startup, GamePlanner.ai, launched by Siri co-founder (TechCrunch)
Virtual influencers are earning as much as their human counterparts (WIRED)
Sam Altman fired as CEO of OpenAI (The Verge)
WTF is going on at OpenAI? We have theories (TechCrunch)
Turmoil at OpenAI: after firing Sam Altman, what’s next for the home of ChatGPT? (The Verge)
Microsoft was blindsided by OpenAI's ouster of CEO Sam Altman (Axios)
Google witness accidentally blurts out that Apple gets 36% cut of Safari deal (Ars Technica)
Leaked document reveals Amazon's return-to-office mandate just got nastier (TheStreet)
Australian Funding Rounds
Pyschae Therapeutics, which is developing botanically-derived treatments and psychedelic-assisted therapies for mental health issues such as PTSD, anxiety, and addiction, has raised $4.5M from the University of Melbourne’s Genesis Pre-Seed Fund (Startup Daily)
Sitemate, which provide a best-in-class no code software platform, has raised $7.5M in a pre-Series A from Blackbird Ventures and Artesian (BNA)
Refilled, the startup helping to eliminate plastic waste with its smart drink dispenser which pours over 100 flavoured, still or sparkling drinks on demand without producing any single-use plastic waste, has raised a $1.3M Seed round led by Melt Ventures with support from Envato cofounders, Cyan and Collis Ta’eed among others (Startup Daily)
Propcode, which automates analysis of urban planning regulations, has raised a $400K pre-Seed round from Skalata Ventures and Brisbane Angels (Startup Daily)
Upworth, the fintech democratising money management for everyone, has raised a $1M pre-Seed round from from leading business angel investors and entrepreneurs (Startup Daily)
Kashcade, a digital lender offering startups non-dilutive capital, has raised a total of $5.5M ($1M Seed round, and $4.5M debt equity) led by Prandium Capital (Startup Daily)
Spruces, a cleaning startup which is developing an AI-driven technology to monitor workers to boost productivity, has raised $2M (BNA)
Aerologix, a drone technology startup, has raised $2M led by Nightingale Partners to acquire global mapping software company Mappa and launch in the United States (AFR)
Evernegi Labs, an electric vehicle management startup, has raised a $15.5M ($10M USD) Series A led by Aligned Climate Capital (Capital Brief)
International Funding Highlights
Divergent Technologies completes Series D funding round worth $230 million (tct magazine)
Apax Digital Funds leads over $100m in vet and pet services software provider Petvisor (PE Hub)
Primary care player Forward unveils AI-based, self-serve CarePods backed by $100M series E round (Fierce Healthcare)
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