{"id":47791,"date":"2023-10-20T15:55:11","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/sydney-startup-spaceship-closes-1-6-million-seed-round-led-by-atlassian-founder-mike-cannon-brookes-to-bring-its-game-changing-offering-to-market-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:55:11","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:55:11","slug":"sydney-startup-spaceship-closes-1-6-million-seed-round-led-by-atlassian-founder-mike-cannon-brookes-to-bring-its-game-changing-offering-to-market-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/sydney-startup-spaceship-closes-1-6-million-seed-round-led-by-atlassian-founder-mike-cannon-brookes-to-bring-its-game-changing-offering-to-market-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Sydney startup Spaceship closes $1.6 million seed round led by Atlassian founder Mike Cannon-Brookes to bring its \u201cgame-changing\u201d offering to market – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>\n

A Sydney startup offering a chance for Australians to invest their super in tech companies has closed a $1.6 million seed round from some of the most influential tech players in Australia.<\/p>\n

Spaceship is a mobile-only super fund that will invest in larger tech companies and startups, and will be launching a beta phase by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

Founded by Andrew Sellen, Paul Bennetts, Kaushik Sen and Dave Kuhn, the startup will also be launching an AI-powered app that will allow users to closely monitor where their money is going.<\/p>\n

A high-powered tech team<\/h3>\n

Investors in the early-stage tech company include Atlassian founder Mike Cannon-Brookes, early Salesforce investor Simon Clausen, Aconex founder Leigh Jasper, Upguard\u2019s Mike Baukes and Alan Sharp-Paul and Vinomofo founder Andre Eikmeier.<\/p>\n

Sellen says the team was able to close the seed round in just a handful of days.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt all happened very fast \u2013 in about three days we had raised $1.6 million,\u201d Sellen tells StartupSmart<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re really lucky to have an amazing group of investors. We\u2019re so lucky to have so much great support from some really influential people in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sellen says the idea for Spaceship came from the founders own personal frustrations with the financial services industry, and was born over some beers towards the end of last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of our backgrounds are in financial services and we have all experienced first-hand the frustrations of being inside big companies and wanting to do things that are radically different and innovative, and then coming up against barriers when trying to do so,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is about wanting to do something different and launching a super fund that invests heavily in technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to invest where the world\u2019s going, not where it\u2019s been.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

An opportunity to invest in the tech giants<\/h3>\n

Spaceship will give Australians the opportunity to have more control of their super and to invest it in an area that they are passionate about, he says, with the biggest weighting in larger tech companies like Apple.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you ask people what their super is invested in, most people don\u2019t even know,\u201d Sellen says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tell our members down to the stock level how much they own \u2013 we\u2019re building a diverse portfolio of hundreds of stocks with tech at its core.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although tech investments are often viewed as more risky, he says the more traditional super funds also come with their own risks.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost default options are always quite heavy on Australian shares, and they\u2019re very concentrated around the big four banks and the mining and resources sector,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s risky and there\u2019s a high probability of disruption. All investments have risk no matter what they are.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you believe the tech sector will perform well in the coming decade then you should do well with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

A game-changer<\/h3>\n

The seed round marks the first startup investment Cannon-Brookes has made through his investment company Grok Ventures.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpaceship will be a game-changing and I\u2019m looking forward to transferring my own super in when it lauches,\u201d Cannon-Brookes says.<\/p>\n

The Spaceship app will also allow users to quickly combine separate super accounts into one with one tap, Sellen says.<\/p>\n

A small beta group will be allowed onto the app in early November before a larger intake by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

The founder says the key to Spaceship\u2019s early success is the experienced and passionate team surrounding it.<\/p>\n

\u201cFind great people,\u201d Sellen says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason why things have gone well for us so far with both fundraising and getting everything together is that we have a really great, well-balanced team with complementary skills.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is some amazing experience among this team. It\u2019s the right team for creating this product in this market.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

A Sydney startup offering a chance for Australians to invest their super in tech companies has closed a $1.6 million seed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58346,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47791"}],"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=47791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}