OneVentures' 7th fund, accelerator cohorts & Google monopoly ruling

0:00 Will Richards: You're listening to a Day One FM show.

0:04 Gemma Clancy: The Startup Retro is recorded on the lands of the Kabi Kabi and Wurundjeri people.

0:10 Will Richards: G'day and welcome to the Startup Retro, a weekly show brought to you by the team behind the Overnight Success newsletter, where we help you level up on the Australian startup ecosystem by giving you an insider's view on Aussie startups and venture capital.

0:21 Gemma Clancy: The Startup Retro is brought to you by Day One, the podcast network for founders, operators, and investors. I'm Gemma Clancy.

0:28 Will Richards: And I'm Will Richards. In today's episode, we dive into OneVenture's new fund announcement and we go into the history of their funds and how they got to their 7th fund.

0:37 Gemma Clancy: And we'll also talk about the 2 new accelerator cohorts that have been announced this week from Startmate and Remarkable, as well as the recent US court decision that's labeled Google an illegal monopoly.

0:47 Will Richards: And of course, we also go into our favorite startup raises of the week. And as per usual, we also include a couple interesting startup-relevant resources for you to nerd out on.

0:56 Gemma Clancy: Let's get into it. Okay, well, let's jump into some headlines. Uh, what caught your eye this week?

1:04 Will Richards: One headline that caught my eye this week was, uh, BonVentures announcing that they're going to, uh, launch a 7th fund, and this fund is targeting a $200 million close. And I think it's, it's interesting because you sometimes see these headlines come out and usually the fund will announce that they've got a certain amount of capital committed in these sorts of announcements. So they might say something like, we've got $30 million committed and we're aiming for $300 or $200 million. I'm sure they do have some capital committed for this fund because I'll jump into how they performed up till now. But it's, yeah, it's quite interesting to see in this sort of cloud of a challenging funding environment, a few funds announcing that they're going out there raising and doing it really quite publicly. And I have got some inside words of a few funds announcing closes fairly soon. And there's some pretty big funds who have closed some funds that we'll be hearing about in the coming weeks, which is really exciting.

2:02 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, it's promising. So I guess maybe if they're not deploying, that's one thing, but doesn't mean that they're not raising. So hopefully that means they're preparing for an upswing at some point, whenever that comes.

2:14 Will Richards: Yeah, yeah. And this, so this fund will basically mark, if they do get to the $200, OneVentures having over $1 billion under management, um, in total.

2:23 Gemma Clancy: Wow, that's huge.

2:24 Will Richards: Yeah. Um, so they launched in 2010, um, and their Fund 1 was pretty successful. Just some numbers behind Fund 1, like they returned it— it's officially closed and it's returned all its cash to, to investors, and those private investors made a 10x return on that investment. And yeah, I think it really got on the back of, you know, post-GFC, the tech boom sort of that, that happened in that period. So super successful Fund 1.

2:52 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, so around the same time of Blackbird's first fund would've been around similar time to that.

2:58 Will Richards: Well, this was actually predating Blackbird's first fund. So Blackbird's first fund was 2014, 2013, 2014 was when they started investing. So this was, yeah, predates it slightly. And Fund 2 though also had a really solid return. I think if you listen to First Check and a few other podcasts around being a fund manager, graduating from Fund 1 and 2 into sort of third and fourth fund is the really difficult thing because that's when you're sort of—

3:25 Gemma Clancy: Yeah.

3:26 Will Richards: You have a bit of data to look back on and prove out your thesis. So if you don't have those returns on those early funds, it's next to impossible to jump to the third and fourth and fifth. And now, as we're seeing the seventh fund.

3:38 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, it's very impressive.

3:39 Will Richards: Yeah, Fund 2 had a really interesting return as well. So they invested in a small business you may have heard of called Employment Hero. And that single investment, which from what I can read publicly, and I spoke to their team as well, they didn't really get to the details of this, but it sounds like this, they've exited this investment, but that single investment had a 13x return in Employment Hero. And that single investment as well also returned 1.5x of fund to itself. So that fund is still active, like it, Fund 1's closed, Fund 2 is still sort of active, hasn't fully returned, but right now it's gotten a pretty impressive multiple of of, of 5x.

4:19 Gemma Clancy: So it's in a good spot, in a very good spot. Yeah, makes them pretty confident to keep raising future funds like they are now. So that's pretty cool. Um, what are some of the other companies that they've invested in?

4:29 Will Richards: So a couple startups that you've probably heard of, um, that OneVentures has invested in, um, you've sort of got SixClicks, uh, Flippa, the marketplace for buying and selling businesses, um, Buildkite for automatic dev processing, those sorts of things. Luminary, it's a health tech business as well. They've been funded by OneVentures. Because they've been active for so long, they've got quite a large portfolio. And if you go onto their website, you'll sort of see quite a few brands that you recognize in the Australian ecosystem.

4:59 Will Richards: So they've definitely, you know, they're one of these venture funds that have done really well to get to where they are.

5:04 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, I think they're quite, like, I wouldn't say underrated, but they certainly, like, don't get quite the same coverage all the time as as some of the other big funds like Airtree, Blackbird, Square Peg, and the like. But they're definitely— I mean, they're up there obviously in terms of fund size and maturity. So everyone should definitely be keeping an eye on what they decide to do with that next fund. And like, where did the majority of the money come from, I guess, this time around? Who are they generally raising from?

5:30 Will Richards: Yeah, it's a, it's a really interesting point because in the, in the article by the AFR, um, the funding, the founding director Michelle Deeker said that this is the first time they'll be targeting super funds. And I find that such a fascinating thing because it's amazing to think that they've gotten this far on their 7th fund without speaking and getting capital from superannuation funds here in Australia, but still getting $900 million under asset— under assets under management. So from the reading and the stuff that they've put out there, it sounds like they're getting a lot of funding from family offices, private investments, private investment managers, those sorts of networks.

6:14 Will Richards: But this is the first fund that will target superannuation. Yeah, cool. So, Gem, what caught your eye this week?

6:20 Gemma Clancy: A couple of things. I think the first one was around a couple of the accelerator cohorts that have been announced. And, um, we record this podcast on a Friday morning, and then of course there's always news that comes out on a Friday that we can't always capture. On the podcast, but after, after we recorded last week's episode, Startmate announced its latest winter cohort, which is one of Australia's kind of best known and highly respected accelerator programs. And there are 11 companies in this cohort, and they were selected from about 600 applications. So it's a pretty big deal to get into Startmate, and the companies that get into it, they receive $120,000 in funding.

6:58 Speaker E: Wow.

6:59 Gemma Clancy: At a $1.5 mil valuation unless they've received funding over $200K before, in which case they match the previous valuation. But, you know, it's not a small amount of money. It's a really cool program, 12 weeks where they get mentorship and guidance to try and, you know, accelerate their startup. And it all culminates in a pretty big pitch night, which is part pitch, part raise, which is always a really fun event to go to. So I was, I was quite excited to jump in and see what startups had got into that cohort. Did you have any favorite picks out of that bunch, Will?

7:33 Will Richards: Yeah, so one of the startups we actually had an exclusive on a few weeks ago, Preve, the physiotherapy-focused application, that got into Startmate, which was really exciting. So after we broke the news, the founder got back in contact and said, oh, thanks so much for covering that. By the way, here's some more news that you'll be covering in a week or so. So yeah, really good to see them in the in the Startmate accelerator for winter.

7:56 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, yeah, I had never heard of this startup before, but there's a company in there called Recant.ai, and there's not a huge amount of detail about what their tech will do or how, how it'll kind of be built out, but their whole aim is around preventing online abuse. And it looks like you'll kind of be able to sign up for it, determine some rules around the types of things that you don't want to receive in terms of comments and interactions on your social media accounts, and, uh, and the platform will help filter those out. And I think that's really fantastic tech tool. Like, I think there needs to be more, more solutions out there like this. I'm sure a lot of influencers would probably get on board with something like this. So I was— that was really interesting.

8:36 Will Richards: Yeah.

8:37 Gemma Clancy: The other one where I actually have met the founder a couple of times is called fairgo.ai, and they have, um, an AI platform, uh, that's about streamlining the recruitment process, and it's is largely about running AI interviews as kind of one of those first phases of screening out applicants. And it's not only about kind of being able to get through applicants a lot faster and figure out which ones are right and which ones aren't, but also around removing bias from that process. Because hopefully, you know, if I guess if they build up AI models correctly, they'll be less biased than maybe the average person.

9:10 Gemma Clancy: Yeah.

9:11 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, that's a, that's a really, really cool startup definitely to watch from my conversations with the founders so far.

9:16 Will Richards: Awesome.

9:17 Will Richards: And there was also another accelerator that announced their cohort this, this week.

9:22 Gemma Clancy: Yes.

9:22 Will Richards: And I know you know the team really well at Remarkable, so what happened over there?

9:26 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, I mean, I met Remarkable— I've met a couple of people from the Remarkable team at Sunrise this year, and then I've been following them on LinkedIn, and I absolutely love their, um, their LinkedIn content. It's quite funny, so everyone can get around that. Um, but Remarkable is focused on supporting startups that offer solutions to the disability sector or people who are disabled, as well as the aging and I guess general healthcare sector as it relates to those sectors. And yeah, they've been around since 2016 and they have a 16-week accelerator program that offers a pretty similar amount actually to Startmate as part of getting into that program, which is $100,000 for 6% equity. Okay. And they have selected a range of startups that have, um, are going to be part of their next cohort. And they're largely actually post-product and post-revenue startups, which is quite different to a lot of accelerator programs where they— like, often you'll go into accelerated program with kind of maybe like a very much an MVP. Um, and certainly like a lot of accelerated programs, I don't expect people to have much revenue, if any. Yeah, so that's a really interesting one. They're much more focused on for-profit and for-purpose businesses that have a proven impact on the disability sector.

10:40 Will Richards: I think it is an interesting point to look at like what the different accelerators offer in terms of, in terms of the standard deal that they give, because you now got Antler with a very standard deal. Startmate has a standard deal.

10:50 Gemma Clancy: Yeah.

10:50 Will Richards: Scalata has a start— they're not an accelerator, but they have a, I'm pretty sure, a standard minimum deal. And that doesn't— the deal terms don't fluctuate. And now you've got Remarkable as well with a standard deal, but I'm This is just like, I reckon that valuation, $100K for 6% equity, has got to be the highest valuation you get at an accelerator here in Australia.

11:13 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, that's a good point.

11:15 Will Richards: Especially considering they're investing that money so, so early.

11:18 Will Richards: So you're—

11:19 Will Richards: oh, sorry, these are pre-revenue.

11:21 Gemma Clancy: That's post, it's post.

11:21 Will Richards: Yeah, yeah, post-revenue startup.

11:24 Gemma Clancy: So— Maybe because it's post-product, post-revenue, it's kind of, they've got greater kind of conviction to, to support them. And it makes more sense to take a bit less because they have to be further along their journey. They're not necessarily coming in right, yeah, right at the start taking a big bet that maybe it will, maybe it won't work. They've kind of somewhat already proven it out.

11:41 Will Richards: Yeah, I suppose it is de-risked to us to an extent if they're already post-product, post-revenue. Because if you look at the Startmate Accelerator companies, there'll be some of them that will have traction, but they, they definitely say they won't invest— they'll invest early that you're pre-revenue for sure. Yeah, yeah.

11:56 Will Richards: I would be surprised if you were pre-product. Well, maybe Preve is probably a good example of a business that is actually super, super early who doesn't necessarily have an MVP.

12:06 Will Richards: They've just got like a good team, but they've already come in with a capital raise as well.

12:09 Will Richards: So yeah, they're an interesting example of someone who's gone into the accelerator, already raised capital. And it actually, if you, if you raise capital before going to Startmate, the deal terms are actually really, really good.

12:20 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, yeah, exactly, because they just match the valuation. Yeah.

12:23 Will Richards: So if you set that valuation beforehand and back yourself to get into an accelerator like Startmate, it's just the best of both worlds.

12:28 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, super interesting to compare.

12:31 Will Richards: If anyone has any, any insight of other accelerator equity offers, let me know. I'll be—

12:37 Will Richards: we can maybe make a bit of a graphic or a blog post about which is—

12:40 Gemma Clancy: A bit of a comparison table, be interesting.

12:43 Will Richards: Yeah, comparison table about the deal terms on accelerators.

12:47 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, I would almost be surprised if nobody's created that before. There's probably founders out there who are like a really savvy founder who's trying to pick what accelerator to get in. Probably created one of these tables before. So if you want to save us some time and send us your— send us your— that'd be great. But yeah, if not, we'll create one.

13:03 Will Richards: You also forget how many accelerators there are. Yeah, in Australia, like, there's, there's that— we made that, um, accelerator table as well of all the accelerators in Australia, and I was like, oh wow, there is a lot of niche, niche accelerators out there, which is fantastic because they're catering to, to all the different demand.

13:20 Gemma Clancy: There are a lot of accelerators, but there's not necessarily so many like that, many that offer a very significant amount of venture. Yeah, funding upfront, certainly not at the 6-figure level. The last headline that I wanted to cover was one that was not necessarily super, um, you know, Australian startup ecosystem specific, but it feels like such big news that it almost felt negligent to not cover it, which is around a US court ruling that Google is, in their eyes, considered an illegal monopoly, which is a pretty big headline, pretty big deal. And, um, we're not really sure what I think the outcome of that ruling will be just yet. There's not been any kind of like— there's going to be a separate, um, proceeding that will be held to determine what the penalties are for Google and, um, the parent company Alphabet. But it's— there's a lot of speculation going around right now about what it could mean. Like, do they have to kind of separate the business out into different parts? Um, you know, what happens to the commissions that they pay to the likes of Apple and, um, and Samsung. Because at the moment, Google pays Apple, for example, like around 36% of the revenue generated through Google searches on its devices. And that is seen as part of its anti-competitive approach, where it's trying to lock in, you know, those devices to make them the default search option. But yeah, I thought it was too big of a— too big one not to, not to discuss briefly, at least.

14:44 Will Richards: So, when they're saying illegal monopoly, because you can, you can be a monopoly and exist, right? But you can't be a monopoly that takes advantage of their position in the market and, you know, affects consumers poorly or affects businesses poorly. So, is this saying they're doing that?

14:59 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, well, I guess the US courts decided that, yes, it's crossed the line between, um, between just being a monopoly and, and certainly being illegal. And you can't deny that there's other options out there, like being when it comes to talking about the, um, commission conversation with Apple, they apparently offered Apple up to 100% of the revenue that they would generate, but Apple still chose to go with Google anyway. And then so Google's argument back to this whole, um, decision is that, well, we're getting chosen because we're the best.

15:30 Will Richards: Yeah.

15:30 Gemma Clancy: And not because we're blocking out competitors. But it was funny, I was reading some of the Twitter threads around this, which is always a dangerous thing to do, um, But one person did say, well, if you're the best, then why do you have to pay the commission? You know, if they're, if they're going— why do you have to pass on the, pass on the revenue? Is an interesting point, I guess. And yes, so Google certainly thinks that they're well within their right to approach it that way. They are considered the best, and even the court finding said Google is the best search engine objectively. Yeah. So yeah.

16:02 Will Richards: Yeah, interesting to see how it will play out. Obviously when it happened to Microsoft, the, the You know, actually the Acquired episode went into it a fair bit about how there's a bit of a myth around what happened in those years post being found guilty of being a monopoly. Obviously there was some cool stuff developed, but the share price didn't budge at all. So yeah, interesting to see where it goes next. I'm assuming they'll definitely be appealing and there'll be a lot of money spent on, on legal action to protect this.

16:28 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, yeah. But it could open up the door actually for other startups to kind of come through, especially the AI search engine startups. So have you ever used Perplexity? Yeah.

16:37 Will Richards: Use it a fair bit.

16:37 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, it's really cool. And I think more and more people are going to get around things like that when they realize kind of the benefits of them. And if Google's slightly less prominent, or there's kind of some more rules in place to make sure that they can kind of leave the door open for a bit more competition, maybe that will allow the likes of Perplexity or its counterparts to kind of enter. That would be interesting.

17:02 Will Richards: So at Overnight Success, we have a monthly initiative called Pulse Check where we get some expert guest writers to cover a trend or a topic or an industry that they're working in or an expert on.

17:15 Will Richards: And I love it because it's such a—

17:17 Will Richards: having these correspondents focusing on industries that don't necessarily get coverage, especially from an Australian perspective, is super interesting.

17:25 Will Richards: Yeah.

17:25 Will Richards: And often, because Gem, you really lead this initiative inside the business, so I often am come quite late to it and sort of see it as almost a finished product, especially this month.

17:37 Will Richards: And I love it.

17:37 Will Richards: Like, it's sort of seeing it as a reader, and you often learn new things or hear about different initiatives that you just never would previously.

17:45 Gemma Clancy: Yeah.

17:46 Will Richards: So, I'd love to maybe get stuck into what was your favourite part about PulseCheck this month?

17:51 Gemma Clancy: Oh, there's a few. Like, and just, I guess, stepping back a bit, it's like one of the reasons that we wanted to to start it was that we were getting people reaching out to us asking if they could write Overnight Success. And then we couldn't necessarily manage all of those requests in a way that made sense. And like, Will and I usually writing Overnight Success late on a Friday, incorporating more people into that process was— is pretty hard. But we still wanted to capture this additional kind of expertise that comes from all corners of the ecosystem with people with, you know, knowledge bases that are so different to ours.

18:22 Gemma Clancy: Yeah.

18:23 Gemma Clancy: I mean, yeah, there's always quite a few golden nuggets. Funding the Balance is part of every single, uh, edition of PulseCheck. And Funding the Balance is the initiative that was brought to us by Preeti Mohan and Kirsten Hunter. And they, um, we interviewed them on the pod, I think, a couple weeks ago.

18:40 Speaker E: Yep.

18:41 Gemma Clancy: And that covers kind of the funding gender equity gap that we have in Australia and probably around the world at the moment. And it analyzes the data of the funding that we've had over the previous month. Looking at how much funding went to men, how much went to mixed teams, and how much went to gender minority founders. Yeah, every month they kind of summarize what the data was, and this month they've included a new graph which showed the funding that's gone to men after they've disaggregated it from— when you look at mixed teams versus male-only teams, we look at what percentage of those mixed teams are made up by men, and then they take the total funding amount and they divide it by that percentage, and then they combine that with the male-only teams to look at how much money went to men and then how much funding went to everyone else. And they've plotted that out, um, to see kind of over time how much money has gone to men, um, over the last year, or it's a bit less than a year.

19:34 Will Richards: And what does the data say?

19:36 Gemma Clancy: And the data says that more and more funding has been going to men, just increasingly.

19:40 Will Richards: Yeah, the trend's kicking up. So, so this month, so July, we saw just over 92% of funding go to men, male founders. It's just crazy.

19:49 Gemma Clancy: Yes, as the lady said in the right up, up into the right in all the wrong ways. And that's pretty much, pretty much captures the data. Um, so that's, that's one section I always kind of wait out for it. They also have a leaderboard of investors who are, who are, um, kind of leading the way in investing in the most, um, uh, gender, like, equitable way, or the most, um, gender minority founders. And, um, that's always good to watch. Alison Anderson Fund is always leading that at the moment.

20:17 Gemma Clancy: Mm-hmm.

20:17 Gemma Clancy: But yeah, that's always one of my favourite sections. What was one of your favourite sections?

20:21 Will Richards: I'm going to call out two. So, the first one I'm going to call out is by Georgina Healy.

20:26 Will Richards: She focuses on artificial intelligence and she increased my vocabulary this month by introducing me to Brat and Brat Summer.

20:35 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, I immediately felt uncool and then cool again after reading about what Brat is.

20:42 Will Richards: And yeah, her whole contention was that AI is having a moment.

20:46 Will Richards: And really, really putting it together with the sort of the trend of Brat that we're seeing.

20:52 Gemma Clancy: It's a real Gen Z thing, right?

20:53 Gemma Clancy: Yeah.

20:54 Will Richards: So Brat really took off with Charli XCX's latest album, which is also called Brat, and it has this distinctive ugly green colour. But yeah, it's just this trend that's really, really kicking off. And Georgina was really pointing out what we're seeing in AI and especially in Australia as well. Like it's becoming quite a dominant force in the investment landscape as well. So it was really cool to see that the two the trends happening there as well.

21:15 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, I loved their creativity with that one. That was great.

21:18 Will Richards: Yeah, the, the second one is by Leah, and it's Aussie Founders Going Global.

21:23 Will Richards: Um, and you may remember last week or the week previous, we covered Cuttable and their raise, um, around their new ad tech startup. We mentioned as well that their founder Sam had previously had a massive exit, um, with his business Cloud Guru. So what Leah did was she jumped straight on that and did some research on the story behind Cloud Guru and, and their journey, especially expanding internationally. So each month she focuses on Aussies going global and she's got a real global perspective having spent a fair bit of time in the US as well in the investment and startup space over there. So really interesting article and short little deep dive on how they expanded internationally. And she even went into the investment notes of the likes of Airtree when they made their initial CloudGuru investments. And there was interviews back then with Sam about how he was thinking about going global. Yeah. So quite interesting to sort of see like what advice he was giving back then and, and what he, how he was thinking about it and potentially how he's going to think about it this time around with his, with his new startup.

22:26 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, good pickup. And I just can't go past, I guess, like, yeah, there's just so much gold in this month, um, in particular. And this is like kind of a quick wrap-up. We've got Gab Parry, who always covers entertainment and fan tech, and he has such a unique insight into that sector. Always pulling out things that I hadn't otherwise heard of, but I always read them and think, oh my God, I should have known about that. We also got Holly Clark, who works with Launchvic, and she's a real expert on agtech. And this month she talked about why more farmers are and should get into becoming like funders, so getting into venture, um, so that we can help kind of accelerate the agtech industry in Australia. And we've also got Bernice Chong. She is always digging up some amazing insights on accelerators. So she covers a section we call Accelerator Watch, and this week she, she talked to Dr. Carl Turner, who's helping create entrepreneurial pathways for Indigenous Australians, and the OCA pre-accelerator program that he's helping run as part of OCA Ventures, which he's an investment manager for. And then Andrew Harding as well, he always covers climate and nature tech. And, um, this month he was wrapping up some of the Cutthroat Venture, um, report insights around that sector. Yeah, so go and check out the August edition of PulseCheck. You can find it on our website. You just go to the newsletter section at the top and you'll find it there. And, um, let us know what you think.

23:52 Will Richards: So, Jen, let's jump into the startup raises this week. And, um, you've done a lot of research onto your startup pick of the week. Who was it?

24:03 Gemma Clancy: It's a company called Ionic. I think the reason I was so drawn to it is because it's one of those startups where you just can tell it's genuinely solving such a huge and important problem, not just for us in the developed world but for people everywhere, and probably even more so for people in the, um, in the developing world. And at the same time, they're clearly— it's clearly aspiring to be a very commercially viable and successful business. Not just a not-for-profit. And striking that balance can be incredibly difficult. It can be very hard to solve some of the world's biggest problems in a way that's super commercially viable. So like, at least when it comes to things like this, which is in the area of healthcare. So what they do— So they're revolutionizing glaucoma screening by enabling online visual tests on the likes of, you know, your laptop or a tablet rather than needing to go to a specialized, you know, location and use really big, you know, bulky, old-school, um, like machines that will scan your, um, scan your eyes. Yeah. So it's really amazing that essentially they're taking something that would otherwise be off limits for a lot of people around the world and turning into something that the majority of people should be able to access as long as they've got some form of a camera device. Yeah, like the camera in it. Yeah, it absolutely blows my mind. So I had to look into what is glaucoma.

25:25 Gemma Clancy: Yeah.

25:25 Gemma Clancy: Like, I've heard of it, but I didn't really, I couldn't have told you what it was. So it's actually a group of eye conditions. It's not just one eye condition that damages your optic nerve. So essentially means you can't see. And usually at first when it starts coming on, you lose your peripheral vision and then you eventually lose all your vision. And it's mostly common in older adults, you know, I think most people would associate it with being something that older people get, but it can affect anyone. And what's so, um, I guess important about this technology that's been developed by Ionic is that you have to get regular exams, especially I guess as you get older, to look for the warning signs, because otherwise it's not really, um, always obvious to people that it's coming on. And the more early you can catch it, the more likely that you can slow the degradation of that optic nerve, which is super important. And it's not something that's necessarily curable. There's treatments, but it's not curable. So you just have to kind of look for it and then implement those treatments as soon as possible.

26:27 Gemma Clancy: Yep.

26:27 Gemma Clancy: And it's just so, yeah, it's so prolific. Like 50% of glaucoma cases in Australia go undetected, and in the developing world, around 90% of those cases go undetected. So clearly there's a need for a tool like this to make detection more readily available.

26:41 Will Richards: Yeah, I think it's such a great story of just the democratization of technology and AI coming together to, to really change the way something's done.

26:50 Gemma Clancy: Yeah.

26:50 Will Richards: So tell me about the actual raise itself, because they had a pretty interesting story winning a pitch competition and sort of putting themselves on the map.

26:57 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, so they raised $2.6 million, and, um, like you mentioned, they won, um, SmartCompany's pitch event, The Pitch. Late last year, and I think that helped them really, yeah, kind of put themselves on the map. Because the founder, um, his background is— his name's Simon Scalicky. I apologize, Simon, if I said your name wrong. Um, he's an ophthalmologist, which— he's an eye doctor. So he needs to very much come from a medical academic background.

27:22 Will Richards: Didn't see that coming.

27:24 Gemma Clancy: He's got amazing, um, founder, you know, product and market fit. Yeah, so he wouldn't have been kind of in this tech like, I doubt that he would have had many connections to, you know, VCs and, and whoever he needed to kind of get this thing off the ground. I was watching a video, uh, about his story, and he talked about being part of like a Microsoft Accelerator program. So I think that would have helped a little bit in the early days as well. But yeah, he's managed to get some funding from a guy called Martin Goodrich who has led the round, and then that's also been, uh, supported by Haynes Consulting Group and Kirschner Private Wealth. So not your typical big VCs, but, um, yeah, he's clearly managed to raise quite a bit there with $2.6 mil, and that should, that should be heaps, I guess, for, for his next phase of growth where he's looking to really expand out into even more markets, um, overseas.

28:14 Will Richards: And in terms of traction, they're already active in a few African countries with clinicians all across Ghana and Nigeria. So it's, it's cool to see that they're already piloting the software and it's already making a difference. Um, in the regions.

28:28 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, it's incredible. Yeah, it's really awesome. So yeah, I think it's across 18 countries at the moment. Wow, about 5,000 tests. They've got 100 clinicians registered in Africa. Yeah, now they're looking to expand into India. I think they've already been in Vietnam a little bit, but you're looking to expand a bit more there and into other parts of Asia. And Simon, the founder, said something really interesting on that same video that I was mentioning before around the fact that they— when they expand, it's not as simple as kind of just saying, here's the software, good luck. Um, it's— they have to actually, in order to train their AI models, um, to, to, I guess, spit out the right results, they have to actually— they had to figure out what are the normative values and ranges for each of these different markers, because people in different places, different backgrounds, different cultures, all have different, I guess, yeah, ranges that, um, are normal for these test results to come back within. So, um, yeah, I thought that was really fascinating. So they've you know, they've clearly done a huge amount of due diligence to develop this product out, um, and I'm really excited to see what happens next. What was your pick this week, Will?

29:29 Will Richards: Mine was quite different to yours. Mine was a fintech startup, um, focusing on, um, credit assessment. So it was a business called Rich Data Co, and they raised a big $37 million Series B to basically streamline credit assessments.

29:44 Gemma Clancy: So let's talk about credit assessments. Sounds quite fun, like something that we could probably talk about for ages. Yeah. Just messing. But yeah, and I'm assuming like this is kind of covering both like a business use case for when businesses need credit, but also kind of just your average Joe Blow like you and me who might need a loan. Is that what kind of credit assessments can encompass?

30:07 Will Richards: Yeah, exactly.

30:08 Will Richards: So when you need a credit assessment, it's when you're doing things like applying for a loan, a credit card, even rental applications often require do require you to get a credit assessment. But when you look at the B2B world as well, when there's a big business contract at stake as well, often you'll see businesses do credit checks on the counterparty just to basically make sure that, you know, it's gonna go okay and the business has the ability to—

30:35 Gemma Clancy: They're gonna repay their loans.

30:36 Will Richards: Yeah, exactly, exactly.

30:38 Will Richards: So this business is really active in the US.

30:40 Will Richards: So they have already partnered with a a listed bank called M&T Bank, which is headquartered in Buffalo, New York, and they have about 1,000+ branches across 12 states on the Eastern Seaboard. So, they've already got like a pretty significant foothold in the US, and this funding will really be used to grow that.

31:02 Gemma Clancy: Yeah.

31:02 Gemma Clancy: How is it different to like a normal—

31:03 Will Richards: Yeah.

31:04 Will Richards: So, the normal process is, let's say I am going for a mortgage, I will basically contact a few banks and they will each individually do a credit assessment on my ability to repay that. And when they do that, you know, they're all independently making requests to these big credit bureaus for information about—

31:24 Gemma Clancy: Yeah.

31:24 Will Richards: Me and my situation. What Rich Data Co is doing is continuous, ongoing, up-to-date checks on credit using AI basically to Yeah. To streamline that whole process and make it really cheap and affordable to constantly get a continuous view of borrowers' health. So up until now, it's very much like time and place, and you often see people when they're doing a big transaction such as, you know, maybe getting a mortgage on a property, they really get themselves in a position where their credit ability or their credit score is really solid at the time of that application.

32:02 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, get rid of all your credit cards, pay off all your debts. Yeah, just get yourself to the, you know, looking absolutely schmick for whatever month. Exactly. Somebody's going to be looking at it and then you can get back your credit card.

32:12 Will Richards: Yeah, yeah. And like I did exactly that, like I had a few credit cards and, you know, cancelled them.

32:17 Gemma Clancy: I'm not sure if you should admit that.

32:19 Will Richards: Lowered limits and whatnot.

32:20 Will Richards: And then as soon as, you know, the month after settlement, like, all right, well, get my credit cards back.

32:25 Will Richards: Yeah, exactly.

32:26 Will Richards: So yeah, the way this differs is, yeah, it's a continuous look and I think as well, when you have this line of credit as a business or an individual, for a bank or someone who's lending, you get a continuous view of that borrower's credit. So they have one product in particular which is called the Early Warnings Solution. So very, very inventive name. But it really is to proactively stay on top of their customers who are maybe exhibiting early lines of credit risk. And I think it's hopefully a better solution because then they can be proactive about maybe what's going on, maybe stepping in because the worst thing a bank wants is someone to default on their line and it's obviously not good for the borrower as well when that happens. So, hopefully, yeah, it becomes a bit more up to date and allows everyone to just be a bit more informed about what's going on.

33:18 Gemma Clancy: Yeah. I wonder whether it will also impact the interest rates that they offer certain customers at the beginning of the application process for, you know, a new loan. Maybe they would increase it But if they decided they still were happy to provide the loan, maybe they just increase the interest rate slightly. I don't know. But yeah, it'd be interesting to see what the use cases are.

33:34 Will Richards: It'll be interesting to see how it plays out because I think this is just this continuous trend of financial instruments just continuously getting more and more sophisticated.

33:42 Will Richards: So just the amount of data flowing between the systems is, you know, with open banking and those sorts of things now, like it's, yeah, it's becoming a much different product than it was previously. So I'll just talk maybe about the raise as well. So they They got capital from Westpac and Encino, who contributed together $28 million worth of the equity raise. And then Acorn Capital also invested about $9 million into the business as well. So they've got some pretty big names behind the investment round as well.

34:17 Will Richards: And interesting, I saw that they've—

34:19 Will Richards: It was hard to pick whether it was based on research out of these universities, but they definitely have ongoing relationships with some of Australia's best universities around the product and around the product development. So they're continuing to work with UNSW, the University of Sydney, and UTS, um, around the innovation and the research and development of the platform itself. So great to see, um, the university staying involved with a project like this.

34:47 Gemma Clancy: Well, yeah, I guess you'd expect that kind of level of due diligence when you're raising $37 million, like It's not a small amount of cash, but, um, yeah, very impressive.

34:57 Will Richards: I also had a special mention for a startup that I just really, really wanted to cover, so I'm going to be super quick with this one.

35:02 Gemma Clancy: I almost covered this one too. I was— it was like so close, so close as my top pick. Anyway, go on, we better tell them what it is.

35:09 Will Richards: Yeah, so it's a business called Novco Surfaces, and they actually didn't raise an equity— equity round. It was a $7.75 million debt round. From NAB, the bank. And really what they do is they recycle glass, so glass bottles, wine bottles, those sorts of things into tiles that you can use in construction sites, homes, residential, those sorts of things.

35:35 Gemma Clancy: Yeah.

35:35 Will Richards: And once again, it's commercialising technology that's come out of a university. So, the University of New South Wales in this particular instance. But my big call out was I always go on the websites of these startups to sort of look at what they're doing.

35:48 Gemma Clancy: How nice is it?

35:49 Will Richards: And the product is stunning.

35:51 Will Richards: Like, it is such a beautiful product.

35:53 Gemma Clancy: So pretty.

35:54 Will Richards: Yeah. Yeah, definitely want to check out if you're renovating a home or a bathroom anytime soon. They do floor tiles, benchtops, all that sort of thing, and it's, it's really stunning material.

36:03 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, my mum listens to the podcast and she just finished retiling her, um, her front porch, and now she's probably going to be hearing about this, wishing she'd use these tiles. So it's okay, Mum, you picked the right tile. It's It's all good. I'm sure you can use these tiles another time.

36:17 Will Richards: Yeah, sure, I'm sure.

36:19 Will Richards: So, the funding will be used to really expand the manufacturing ability of the business itself. So, right now they are generating 20,000 square meters of tiles a year, and that's going to be bumped up to a quarter of a million tiles a year. And once that's, you know, economies of scale kicks in, I think the actual price point for the tiles will really drop down.

36:43 Gemma Clancy: So— Yeah.

36:43 Will Richards: I think interesting that they're not sort of saying, we're this like green tile solution, and if you're really into the environment, you should use us. What they're saying is, this is a new version of tiles, and we're gonna be as cheap as the tile next to it, you know, when you go to Bunnings. So, you know, use us 'cause it's better for the environment. And I think it's just an awesome use of recycled material that often, you know, we say these things are recycled, but where are they actually reused? Sometimes it's hard to see.

37:10 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's great. Okay, Will, it's time for KaaS, which is Knowledge as a Service, and it's the same way that we wrap up our normal weekly Overnight Success newsletter, which is with our top, our favorite startup-relevant read, listen, or watch of the week. But I wanted to make sure that you covered your own article as your KaaS because you'll never bring it up yourself. And that's your article that you've published recently on the Overnight Successful website around Australia's sports tech sector. So go on, tell people about your article.

37:48 Will Richards: Yeah, thanks, thanks, thanks for forcing me to plug, um, my own content. Um, I do have another cast though, but I'll quickly summarize what I wrote about. My article really focused on the Australian sports tech sector, and I've been really sucked into what's been happening in the Olympics and definitely been watching way too much sport, but I really got sucked into, to why Australia was sort of outperforming compared to these other massive countries. Um, and I just fortuitously went to the Australian Sports Tech Network, um, their annual report event. So they do a bit of a summary, a bit like Cutthroat Venture, but just focusing on sports tech.

38:26 Gemma Clancy: Yes, cool.

38:26 Will Richards: So I heard some really interesting stories that night around what was happening in the Australian sports tech sector and It's kind of this like this industry that bubbles away that doesn't get a heap of attention from, you know, the technology media, in my opinion.

38:41 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, it's pretty rare that we cover news about a sports tech company. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, it's fairly underrated.

38:48 Will Richards: And the sector as well, like, is much bigger than you think.

38:50 Will Richards: Like, this article really focuses on athlete performance, and I think that's, you know, probably what the Olympics really is at its core about, and it's sort of what you care about. But it has all these other, you know, there's the whole media side of things as well. Sports now becoming one of the few things that actually gets people to watch TV live, you know, as we move away from linear TV. The only reason why you sort of watch TV live is to watch a sports event.

39:15 Will Richards: Yeah.

39:15 Will Richards: So, there's this whole aspect around, you know, fan engagement and broadcast and innovation in those aspects as well. There's the athlete performance side of things as well, and there's a heap of tech going into stadiums and stadium engagement of fans, so trying to get,— one, trying to get people in the door, but then also trying to get them to spend money when they're in there and really engage with what's happening on and off the field.

39:39 Gemma Clancy: Yeah.

39:40 Will Richards: This article, I really focused on some of this technology and the startups that exist in Australia that have actually been used to great advantage in the Olympics. And I'll just talk to one of them, which I think is a real, a great example of this. And it's a business called Gerford AI. Which is actually a Melbourne-based startup, and it's using AI to— I think the best example in the Olympics is around the swimming. So, the Australian national team and the US national team, who won the most medals out of any country in the swimming in particular, both use this technology to improve their athletes' ability in the pool.

40:18 Gemma Clancy: Yeah. Correlation or causation?

40:21 Will Richards: Yeah, it's a funny one.

40:22 Gemma Clancy: You make your own decision.

40:23 Will Richards: Yeah, but it does, like, it's these—

40:25 Will Richards: it's this computer vision that sits in the pool and it monitors the way the athlete's moving through the water. It gives them an idea, a heap of different data points that the coach and the athlete can then reflect on and use to improve. So it's just bringing a whole new lens to performance and coaching to sports like swimming, but it's also been used in beach volleyball and table tennis. Um, so it's, it's an interesting example of, of just, you know, data being captured, AI being used in sport.

40:53 Gemma Clancy: Yeah, and no doubt more and more companies are going to be getting into this space in Australia because they can see probably our, our own Olympics on the horizon when we host them in Brisbane in a couple of cycles' time. I know certainly Gav Parry, who writes for PulseCheck, he's been keeping his eye very much on what's been happening, um, in that, on like that intersection between media and arts and entertainment, um, and then how it, how it kind of intersects with sport. And, um, yeah, everything that's been developed in the lead-up to the Olympics. So yeah, great article, well done, Will. Everyone go and read Will's article. Thanks.

41:24 Will Richards: What was your cast of the week?

41:26 Gemma Clancy: My cast of the week is from my favorite podcast, The Imperfects, which is hosted by the founder of the Resilience Project, Hugh van Cuylenburg, alongside his brother and also Ryan Shelton, who's a fairly well-known TV entertainer and comedian. And, um, yeah, The Imperfects is just— it's a great podcast series just generally covering mental well-being. Um, it dives into stories of well-known Australians who have had all their various struggles and kind of unpacks those. But the episode that is actually my cast today is, is one that doesn't follow their normal format, and it's a little bit more of a typical kind of startup founder business podcast style. It's called How I Built This, like the, um, episode title of How I Built This. And you would actually, you have to listen to it to understand why it says this and not this. It's a, it's a too long of story for me to explain now, but it's, it's a riff on the very popular, um, podcast How I Built This, which interviews founders and how they built their companies. And so Hugh, the founder of The Resilience Project, which is the company, um, behind the podcast and, um, runs these amazing wellbeing programs in schools and in organizations to help people, um, build resilience through gratitude, um, empathy, and mindfulness. Mm-hmm. He talks through how he built the company. And I guess the main takeaway for me really was that age doesn't matter at all. I mean, he's not old by any stretch of the imagination, but he started out the Resilience Project when he was in his like mid to late 20s and really didn't make much money for the first, you know, 3 or 4 years. I think it took 3 years for him to make the same entry-level wage he was making as a teacher. Before he started the Resilience Project, and that was like $40,000. And so he just, he just, you know, chipped away at it for years and years because he's so passionate about it. And it was really, really awesome to listen to and a good reminder that, you know, amazing businesses often don't have great shortcuts. Not all businesses are like Leonardo AI that, you know, gets acquired after 2 years for millions and millions of dollars. But it doesn't kind of take away from those businesses. Yeah. That take longer to build.

43:30 Will Richards: Most things are not an overnight success.

43:33 Gemma Clancy: Most things are not an overnight success. I don't know why I didn't realize that connection, but 100%. But it is— You must have thought that's where I was going with that.

43:46 Will Richards: Yeah, yeah, I was like, oh, this is a great, this is a great build-up.

43:48 Gemma Clancy: Great connection, yeah. Did not make that connection, but yeah, clearly I resonate with it on many levels. Um, so what was your, what was your secondary CAS other than your own article?

44:02 Will Richards: My actual CAS before you forced me to plug my own, my own content was, um, your actual CAS.

44:08 Will Richards: It's a newsletter actually, and I think it's going to be probably a source of many future CASes. Um, and it's written by an investor at Firemark Ventures called Josh Bocamazzo. And, um, what he does is pull together and aggregate some really high-quality pieces of content on a few key topics each week. So, one's venture building, so building a startup. One will be on venture investing, so investing in startups. And then the third is sort of like a general resource around learning about the startup ecosystem and sort of like fundamental knowledge, which is really useful for just anyone who's interested in the space.

44:43 Gemma Clancy: Mm, it's like Cas on steroids. I'm looking at it now.

44:46 Will Richards: Yeah, it honestly is Cas on steroids.

44:48 Gemma Clancy: Probably even more like VC nerdy. No offense, Josh, but this is super nerdy.

44:54 Will Richards: Yeah, it definitely goes into the deep. I've chatted to him about it and it's, um, he's obviously really deep in the weeds and loves learning about the space. So, um, he finds some really niche—

45:03 Gemma Clancy: I know there's a lot of people who love it though, like, yeah, based on the reactions from a lot of your, um, casters, which are usually in this kind of realm. Yeah, there are definitely a lot of people who love this.

45:12 Will Richards: Yeah, so really good resource, check it out. We'll put the link to the newsletter, um, in the show notes and, um, it'll be in the newsletter, our newsletter this week as well. So want to check out.

45:27 Gemma Clancy: Thanks for joining us for this episode of The Startup Retro. We would love to hear what you thought of the show, so feel free to reach out to us directly on LinkedIn, or even better, you can follow us on your favorite podcast player and leave us a review so that more people can find us. And if you enjoy the podcast, you'll probably also really enjoy our weekly newsletter, Overnight Success, which goes into even more detail on the news headlines and startup raises and much, much more. You can subscribe to the newsletter at overnight-success.vc. Catch you next week.

45:53 Will Richards: Catch you next week.

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