This Week in Australian Startups #37, 17th September 2023
No deep dive this week as I had the week off and have been on holiday with the family, here’s my top 3 reads for this past week;
The List: Top 100 Innovators (The Australian)
Sydney's startup hub could be hit by government funding cuts (Capital Brief)
Australia’s largest start-up accelerator, Startmate, has given its earliest backers almost 3x returns (AFR)
Top News
Australia
Startmate reveals the 13 new startups it’s backed ahead of SXSW Demo Day (Startup Daily)
EnergyLab backs 13 climate tech startup for new program to help them through the ‘valley of death’ (Startup Daily)
Taryn Williams and Samantha Martin-Williams join Fishburners board (Startup Daily)
Grown Not Flown cofounder Nikki Davey wins the AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award (Startup Daily)
Waddle co-founder Leigh Dunsford targets Gen Z wealth creation with his latest venture Nine25 (BNA)
VentureCrowd teams with Pitch VC to drive a new era of DIY startup funds (BNA)
Mining tech startup Torqn is seeking a $5M Series A round as it looks to become an ‘everything app’ for industry, tapping MST Financial to kick off the round (AFR)
Slyp, a digital receipt start-up, backed by all big 4 banks, has made 30% of its staff redundant (AFR)
Coassemble, whose investors include OneVentures and EVP, has been running a formal sale process after receiving unsolicited approaches from prospective buyers (AFR)
Terry Bowen quits BHP, Coles Group, Transurban boards for Rokt role (The Australian)
Former Appen boss Mark Brayan tapped for new role leading Soprano Design (The Australian)
Digital ID brings Australia’s digital tipping point closer (InnovationAus)
First transaction between eConveyancers lands (InnovationAus)
Australia’s biggest online gallery, Bluethumb, is turning starving artists into millionaires (Forbes)
The owner of Bunnings and Kmart is now in the prescriptions business, raising fears over patient data (The Guardian)
Press Play Ventures launches a 12 week program for women founders to go from employment to entrepreneurship with $50K for those who successfully graduate and go on to raise funds (LinkedIn)
Around the World
Amazon launches first Fresh store on Deliveroo UK (The Grocer)
Amazon announces Supply Chain by Amazon, which includes restocking physical stores (TechCrunch)
In the Google antitrust trial, defaults are everything and nobody likes Bing (The Verge)
TikTok fined over $368 million for children's data privacy violations in Europe (Axios)
Salesforce is hiring over 3,000 people, despite axing 10% of staff in brutal job cuts earlier in 2023 (Business Insider)
Unicorn Startup Airtable Lays Off 27% Of Firm, Shifts Focus To Big Clients (Forbes)
Google is laying off hundreds in its recruitment division (CNN)
Australian Funding Rounds
Amp, a suite of interconnected, high-performance solutions for ambitious eCommerce brands, has raised $28.5M Series A round led by Jungle Ventures and Open Space Ventures (Startup Daily | AFR)
Flagship, the startup empowering retailers to make better, faster, and more informed decisions for their business and customers, has raised a $2M Seed round led by Tidal Ventures and Nick Molnar (SmartCompany)
Yaala Sparking, the Indigenous-owned startup that makes alcohol-free drinks flavoured with native ingredients, has secured $125K from Shark Tank ‘shark’ Dr Catriona Wallace (Startup Daily)
Climasens, a climate risk analytics startup, has received $5M grant from Google.org to build a scaling an AI powered climate risk evaluation tool built on multiple urban climate hazard models (SmartCompany)
EngageRM, the startup that provides business and marketing automation, CRM and Data Analytics for the global sports & entertainment industry, has raised a $6M Series A led by Five V Capital (LinkedIn)
Tikpay, the startup revolutionising transport ticketing and payments, has raised an undisclosed pre-seed round by Investible, AfterWork ventures, BlackNova VC, Func Ventures and Metagrove Ventures (Investible)
tapestry ai, the startup which enables retailers to monetise their data assets and share real-time information with their suppliers, has raised an undisclosed pre-seed round led by Co Ventures (LinkedIn)
International Funding Highlights
Shop Circle bags £96m for AI ecommerce software (UKTN)
Databricks raises $500 million with backing from rival Snowflake’s top client (VentureBeat)
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