{"id":44371,"date":"2023-10-20T15:35:30","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/airtree-ventures-barking-up-the-right-tree-with-pawshake-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:35:30","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:35:30","slug":"airtree-ventures-barking-up-the-right-tree-with-pawshake-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/airtree-ventures-barking-up-the-right-tree-with-pawshake-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"AirTree Ventures barking up the right tree with Pawshake – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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AirTree Ventures has made pet-sitting marketplace Pawshake the first startup to receive investment from its latest fund.<\/p>\n

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In July AirTree Ventures, a fund founded by former tech executives Daniel Petre and Craig Blair, raised $60 million to help \u201cplug the Series A crunch for Australian startups\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The fund had originally intended to invest between $2 million and $5 million, but has started slightly short of that mark. It has led investment in a $1.5 million pre-Series A funding round for Pawshake, although Blair won\u2019t specify the exact amount the fund committed to the raise.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pawshake is a marketplace that helps pet owners find a trusted pet sitter in their community. The funds will be used to ramp up marketing, hire community managers, and strengthen Pawshake\u2019s engineering team in order to build upon the features it offers consumers. Blair says while it wasn\u2019t a Series A round, Pawshake has the maturity of a Series A company.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got thousands of pet minders, over 1000 in Australia and many more internationally and it\u2019s growing revenue in double digit rates month on month,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s got serious traction in other markets and a high quality team with a product that\u2019s proven.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Indeed, Blair counts himself as one of Pawshake\u2019s customers. When his family goes away this Christmas, their cat Boo will be staying with a pet sitter found on the Pawshake marketplace. The startup is not without competitors, one of which is Melbourne startup PetHomeStay<\/a>, but Blair says none have the same sort of traction.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cA number are interesting, but none have reached the scale in the time that Pawshake has,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Since launching its latest fund in July, the AirTree Ventures team have met with almost 200 startups, and went \u201cvery deep\u201d into the investment process with 40 or 50 of them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been really encouraged, we\u2019ve been in the market for a little over five months and in that time we\u2019ve seen over 190 businesses,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI think you\u2019ll find compared to our last fund\u2026 there\u2019s way more deals being generated by incubators or accelerators.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThe quality of the businesses is higher. They\u2019re looking more from a global context, with thoughts that are a little bit more broad. We\u2019re not as far away from international markets as we once were.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Blair says the biggest problem he saw with startups looking for funding was many didn\u2019t understand unit economics.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWithout being really crisp on unit economics, there\u2019s no point raising a large amount of money, all you do is burn cash at a quicker rate,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That aside, the biggest challenge for investors at the moment, according to Blair, is valuations.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a sense amongst some investors and entrepreneurs at the moment, they can\u2019t remember what it was like when there was a slight downturn. The assumption is that there will always be capital around. So the number one challenge will be to manage valuations,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AirTree Ventures next set of investments are expected to be announced within the next of month or two.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Image credit: flickr\/quinnanya<\/i><\/p>\n


Follow<\/i> StartupSmart on<\/i> Facebook<\/i>,<\/i> Twitter<\/i>, and<\/i> LinkedIn<\/i>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AirTree Ventures has made pet-sitting marketplace Pawshake the first startup to receive investment from its latest fund.   In July<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,21,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44371"}],"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=44371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}