{"id":40716,"date":"2023-10-20T15:09:35","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:09:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/seed-stage-venture-capital-fund-artesian-gets-85-million-boost-from-superannuation-giant-hostplus-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:09:35","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:09:35","slug":"seed-stage-venture-capital-fund-artesian-gets-85-million-boost-from-superannuation-giant-hostplus-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/seed-stage-venture-capital-fund-artesian-gets-85-million-boost-from-superannuation-giant-hostplus-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Seed-stage venture capital fund Artesian gets $85 million boost from superannuation giant Hostplus – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Artesian<\/div>\n

Australian venture capital firm Artesian has secured an $85 million boost from industry superannuation fund Hostplus as it looks to back even more early-stage startups Down Under.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been talking to Hostplus for sometime,\u201d Artesian managing partner Jeremy Colless tells StartupSmart.<\/em><\/p>\n

According to Colless, the superannuation giant wants to\u00a0invest 4% of the $20 billion it manages into venture capital and has already injected $350 million into the sector, which includes this deal with Artesian.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey thought we had an interesting and complementary model to other VCs they\u2019ve invested in,\u201d says Colless.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey also liked the fact that we were a seed-stage fund \u2026 and we\u2019ve been investing in China.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colless says the $85 million boost will enable Artesian to expand its portfolio across seed, early-stage and later-stage investments in Australia. In addition to backing Australian startups, Colless and his team will continue searching for \u201cremarkable startups\u201d and investment opportunities across China.<\/p>\n

Artesian generally spends $25,000 to $50,000 on seed-funding deals, $100,000 to $250,000 on angel investments and $1 million for later-stage ventures, says Colless. The funds from HostPlus will allow Artesian to take this up a notch.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will allow us to do $2 million plus investments into later stage startups,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Artesian, which recently led a $525,000 investment in Sydney event promotions startup Audience Republic<\/a>, backs 100 to 150 startups each year through a range of accelerator, incubator and university program partners. These include BlueChilli<\/a>, SproutX<\/a> and EnergyLab<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are now more than 10,000 startups being formed in Australia over a five-year period,\u201d says Colless, who believes the key challenge for VCs is avoiding\u00a0\u201cunivestible startups\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cPicking what\u2019s going to happen in the future is difficult and therefore we\u2019ve remained focused on picking the best businesses,” he says.<\/p>\n

Artesian only backs 5-10% of the 2000-plus startups it screens each year, says Colless.<\/p>\n

While Artesian\u2019s program partners have traditionally been focused on high-growth tech startups, Colless says the landscape is changing rapidly with the emergence of new programs focused on areas like clean energy and ag-tech as well as the emergence of corporate-backed accelerators.<\/p>\n

Read more: Job search giant Seek invests in startup accelerator to tackle \u201cthreats in HR\u201d<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cCorporates are now identifying areas where they want to develop and open innovation and that\u2019s bringing in a whole lot of new focus [areas],\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe focus for our fund remains on potentially high growth startups, we\u2019re interested across a range of verticals.”<\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart on<\/em>\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0Twitter<\/a>,\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>\u00a0and iTunes<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australian venture capital firm Artesian has secured an $85 million boost from industry superannuation fund Hostplus as it looks to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,21,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40716"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}