{"id":43371,"date":"2023-10-20T15:28:06","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/techcrunch-calls-out-australias-venture-capital-issues-but-get-a-key-fact-wrong-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:28:06","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:28:06","slug":"techcrunch-calls-out-australias-venture-capital-issues-but-get-a-key-fact-wrong-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/techcrunch-calls-out-australias-venture-capital-issues-but-get-a-key-fact-wrong-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"TechCrunch calls out Australia\u2019s venture capital issues, but get a key fact wrong – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>\n

Nitro cofounder Sam Chandler\u2019s mission to keep the issue of Australia\u2019s capital crunch on the agenda has reached its zenith, with a piece published today in major tech publication TechCrunch where he claims there is negligible latter stage funding available.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The article was first published with a statement from Chandler claiming there was no venture capital fund actively making investments.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The comment has since been updated to the following:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cRight now there really aren\u2019t any Aussie VC\u2019s (sic) who are doing later-stage investing. There is a great early-stage ecosystem, but if your startup is more mature, you probably need to look outside Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Chandler told StartupSmart the seed stage ecosystem and funding was thriving, but it was latter stage investment he was advocating for.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is little if any new late-stage VC investment in Australia by Australian firms right now. This is because there have been no new large VC funds ($100m+) raised for a while. The larger active Aussie VCs, who could write larger cheques, are mostly nearly fully invested, and focused on their existing portfolio companies, rather than new portfolio companies,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Exactly one such venture group launched last year when two funds merged to form Square Peg Capital, which according to cofounder Paul Bassat<\/a> has \u201cseveral hundred million\u201d to invest in growing companies.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Investments include Australian startups such as Canva<\/a>, GoCatch<\/a>, BellaBox<\/a>, ScriptRock<\/a> and BugCrowd<\/a>, as well as companies in the US, Singapore and Israel.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Partner Gavin Appel told StartupSmart they\u2019re focused on growth capital (series A to C), seeing good deal flow and shares 50% of their investments made in the last six months have been local, in Australia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Their most recent investment was a $20 million USD round, co-led with Peter Thiel\u2019s Valar Ventures, in New Zealand point-of-sale software Vend in March this year.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re actively investing in Australia, and the more we can invest from a growth capital perspective the better,\u201d Appel says, adding venture capital ecosystems need both sides of the equation to thrive.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s capital and there\u2019s deal flow, and I think those are balanced right now. The pipeline here for companies seeking series A to C funding is very strong, and we\u2019re looking at a number of businesses in that range.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Venture capital investor peak body AVCAL reported last year the early stage capital crunch was over, but the concern had shifted to Series A and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nitro cofounder Sam Chandler\u2019s mission to keep the issue of Australia\u2019s capital crunch on the agenda has reached its zenith,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,14,21,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43371"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}