Connect to Capital

Jackie Vullinghs

Jackie Vullinghs is affectionately known by most people as Jax. Far from her birthplace in the UK, she now finds herself as an investing partner at one of Australia’s most successful venture firms Airtree.

Despite winning most of the prizes there are to win growing up (1st class honours in History at Cambridge, 3 Cambridge Blues in Women’s Lacrosse, the Bundy Scholarship for Academic Excellence, the Dunster Prize for History and the Sarah Springman Prize for simultaneous excellence in both academic study and university sport), these days she is much more impressed by behaviours than badges of success. And when it comes to being a great venture capital investor, she believes that there is one attribute that trumps all the others, more important that curiosity, analytical skills, sales acumen and operating experience. Jax believes that the one trait that trumps all others is agency. The ability to develop a plan and take action, without anyone’s permission.

Jax is driven by the joy of making connections - between ideas, and between people. She also loves seeing companies where growth is driven by raving fans who feel compelled to spread the word. Years ago that led to an obsession with direct to consumer and creator-led brands. Today, despite its volatility she is fascinated by how Web3 is allowing creators to reward fans with ownership in their communities and can't wait to see the emergent behaviour that evolves as a result.

Links

Jackie Vullinghs on LinekdIn 

Behaviour over badges  - Substack newsletter

Complexity by M. Mitchell Waldrop

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner.

Companies

Grow Super - Super admin software

eucalyptus - healthcare technology company

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This week we have an extra special guest, Libby Briggs who is the superstar designer of Scale’s entrepreneur education program, EmpowerEd. Libby is steeped in rigorous pedagogical training and experience having taught for 9 years at one of Melbourne’s highest achieving academically selective schools. Having then emersed herself in the startup world with SBE Australia and started her own business, it's hard to think of anyone better to design educational experiences for founders.

Libby loves working with business builders and has found that being surrounded by other incredibly entrepreneurial and accomplished women inspires her to be more engaged, take risks with her own business and strengthen her skills in supporting women-led ventures.

As facilitator Libby is passionate about supporting founders to hone their skills, grow in confidence as they talk about their businesses, create a strong narrative in their pitch and extend their networks for growth and scale. As the project manager she is agile and adaptive, working to create the best online education programs for female founders.

At Scale we feel so lucky to work with Libby!

Resources

The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World - Book by Melinda Gates

Cut Through Venture - Australian startup funding ecosystem newsletter

AirTree Open Source VC - free legal documents, checklists and databases 

Right Click Capital's Garry Visontay - curated list of blog posts, eBooks, reports and tools 

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Alexandra Clunies-Ross wanted to be lots of things when she was growing up – a doctor, a lawyer an actress and a journalist. As the portfolio Manager for Artesian's clean energy / climate tech VC funds and the Female Leaders Venture Fund, she has sort of found a way to be a bit of all those things. She has built a formidable network of scientists and technical experts to enable her to cover the enormous span of investment opportunities she sees from solving intractable medical problems, to finding commercial solutions to some of our most pressing climate challenges.

Ali is an optimistic extrovert and an enthusiastic supporter of those who are early in their journey as entrepreneurs or venture investors.

She is the co-host of Artesian's "ArteHouse" podcast and her enthusiasm is infectious.

Artesian is an alternative investment manager focused on early and later stage venture capital as well as fixed income investment. Artesian is the largest early stage VC investor in Australia, offering an end-to-end VC platform for startups at seed, angel & growth stages in Australia and China.

Hero and mentor – Vicky Lay

Podcasts

Acquired podcast
Pivot podcast
Artehouse podcast
The Daily podcast
Axios podcast
Energy Insiders podcast

Books

Superpower: Australia's Low-Carbon Opportunity by Ross Garnaut  
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo  by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Normal Peopleby Sally Rooney
The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

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Adam Milgrom grew up in a very entrepreneurial family and being the third generation of business builders, he always know that he would somehow be involved in selling stuff. However early he had an epiphany that he would only be successful if he was selling stuff that he really believed in and which would make the world a better place. Since then, he has been committed to combining his interest in technology with the desire for impact, being a serial angel investor and now partner of Giant Leap Australia's first 100% impact venture capital fund. Along with previous podcast guest Rachel Yang, Adam using his expertise across consumer marketing, ecommerce and innovation to invest in exceptional, rapidly scalable businesses that blend financial returns with deep social and environmental impact.

Adam is generous with his time and incredibly consistent in his focus on creating value for others, so make sure you listen to the end of the interview where Adam shares a fabulously curated list of resources for founders and business builders.

Links

Hex – education startup, CEO Jeanette Cheah

Humans of Purpose podcast with Mike Davis 

Brave New Work podcast 

First Round Review podcast and startup materials 

Venture Deals, book by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson 

Startup Funding, Australian directory of VC's 

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Kara Frederick believes that chance favours the prepared mind. From her life trajectory, it is also clear that fortune favours those that are prepared to take chances.

Kara is the Founder and Managing Partner of Tiger Financial Group, the investment firm dedicated to empowering Australian growth companies into global markets.

After growing up in the San Francisco Bay area, attending Princeton and then spending 15 years as an investor and adviser for financial services technology in New York and San Francisco she found the love of her life, moved to Sydney, and became as she calls it an accidental Australian.

Kara has thrived in her adopted home, with her firm Tiger instrumental in the $1.2 billion USD deal to list Tritium on the NASDAQ, and advising HR tech leader Culture Amp on the capital raise which propelled them to unicorn status, amongst numerous others notable deals.

Kara is committed to the future of education and diversity in tech, volunteering her time as a director of SBE Australia, Princeton University’s Alumni Schools Committee, and as an active mentor in the tech ecosystem.

Kara’s well publicised departure from Westpac’s corporate venture arm Reinventure and subsequent litigation, highlights her commitment to standing up for what she believes in and using her actions, as much as her words, to be a role model for others to be brave.

Companies

Tritium

Cover Genius

Indebted

Podcasts

Invest like the Best

Bloomberg

CNBC

Mentors and Heroes

Robyn Denholm – Board Chair, Tesla

Didier Elzinga CEO of Culture Amp

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You know you are doing a good job as a venture investor when your portfolio companies rave about the value you add to their company completely independently of the capital you have provided. That’s certainly the case with this week’s guest Scott Gunther, General Partner of IAG’s Firemark Ventures.

Scott describes Firemark as a strategic rather than a financial corporate venture investor, investing in startups to bring their capability inside the big insurer IAG to transform how it delivers insurance to customers. By early this year Firemark had made 33 investments across 18 portfolio companies and had achieved 6 exits including several IPOs.

However Scott sees the real measure of success in the ability of IAG to meaningfully partner with investee companies and is very proud of the 13 corporate agreements across the portfolio to create mutual value.   

With years of both designing and delivering digital transformations across multiple industries, Scott possesses the skills and experience of both strategy and execution - a differentiator at the Board table that investee companies rave about.

Links

Scott Gunther on LinkedIn 

About IAG Firemark in Interface Magazine, Issue 27, and in the Australian Financial Review 

AI leadership coaching app, Bunch AI

European startup news media, Sifted. 

Crunchbase - VC research

How to create Google alerts 

EmpowerEd

EmpowerEd is a 10-week program that is detailed, practical and high touch.

Combining online learning, small cohort facilitated sessions, mentorship, networking and personalised support. The program has been specifically designed to decode the world of angel investing and venture capital for women-led startups across Australia and designed in a way that supports you, the founder- every step of the way!

Want to know more about the Empowered program? Apply here and don’t forget to use the code Connect to Capital for a 25% scholarship for the August 2022 program. Starting August 9th.

TAKE 10MINS TO APPLY NOW:  https://scale-investors.mykajabi.com/empowered

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Steve Baxter says it like it is. He is not shy about being controversial and he is comfortable with the discomfort of disagreement. But as one of Australia’s most visible tech entrepreneurs, active investor and mentor to numerous startups, he has done more than almost anyone in the country to popularise early stage technology investment. He also provides some of the most useful and easy to remember advice to entrepreneurs, like ‘execution is everything’ and ‘don’t treat your business as a cash register’.

Steve has been championing Australian startups and entrepreneurs since he founded River City Labs, Brisbane’s well-known co-working hub in 2012.  But many of us are most familiar with Steve as a result of his appearance as a ‘Shark’ on Channel 10’s Shark Tank Australia.

These days Steve is energised by TEN13 an investment syndicate platform for sophisticated investors to invest alongside him and the experienced Investments team that supports him.

It was a real treat to speak with Steve – and like me I am sure you will not die wondering what he really thinks.

Links

https://www.stevebaxter.com.au/

https://www.ten13.vc/

River City Labs

EmpowerEd

EmpowerEd is a 10-week program that is detailed, practical and high touch.

Combining online learning, small cohort facilitated sessions, mentorship, networking and personalised support. The program has been specifically designed to decode the world of angel investing and venture capital for women-led startups across Australia and designed in a way that supports you, the founder- every step of the way!

Want to know more about the Empowered program? Apply here and don’t forget to use the code Connect to Capital for a 25% scholarship for the August 2022 program. Starting August 9th.

TAKE 10MINS TO APPLY NOW:  https://scale-investors.mykajabi.com/empowered

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This week’s guest, Matt Allen, knows Startups are hard. He knows because he has founded 4 tech startups, invested in more than 26 and advised countless others over the past 20 years. 

A couple of years ago leading VC firm Airtree recognised Matt and his wife Aprill as some of the best angel investors in Australia noting that at the time of writing they had:

• $533k invested into 26 companies
• With 58% of the active portfolio having a female founder
• And notwithstanding that 3 had gone to zero, the remainder had generated $2.6m in cash returns and $7.7m in equity value (at each company’s most recent valuation)

That means that Matt & Aprill are up ~19X so far…(!)

These days Matt is the CEO of Tractor Ventures, Australia’s first revenue based investment fund.

Matt’s goal is to connect dots and facilitate the magic that happens when great people work together.

Links

Matt Allen personal website

Matt Allen on LinkedIn 

https://www.tractorventures.com/

Airtree Halo Effect article

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I have confession to make – I have been wanting to meet this week’s guest Dan Phillips for years. Ever since I started my career as a graduate at Macquarie bank in the 1990’s, the founder of Macquarie’s Technology Venture Capital Business has seemed like the stuff of myth and legend.

Over his more than 30 year career at Macquarie, Dan has not only build arguably the most successful corporate venture business in Australia, or perhaps the world, with numerous investments becoming billion dollar technology companies with an incredibly high strike rate, but he has done it without fan fare finding time to actively support philanthropic and social causes which are important to him. Dan was one of Scale’s first investors and has been on the board of Australian Philanthropic Services, the not for profit organisation encouraging greater charitable giving, particularly by wealthy individual donors.

However, when you ask Dan why he seems to keep such a low profile, he honestly can’t accept the premise of the question. He believes it’s the entrepreneurs who do all the hard work, and his job as an investor is to provide the capital, connections and support to enable them to fulfill their potential. He genuinely wants the entrepreneurs he backs to take centre stage and be the stars.

It has definitely been worth the wait to meet Dan!

Links

Australian philanthropic services

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Nicole Small knows that growth-stage technology businesses need more than just money to succeed. They need partners who understand the pace, challenges and opportunities of the startup process. As investment director at rampersand, Nicole knows that an injection of funds into a business will make a difference financially, it’s the support with sales & marketing, communication, exposure to our global network & more that delivers the real value. Nicole knows how to provide this support, or find someone who can, having been part of the team responsible for building one of Australia’s most successful start ups, Seek which now has a market capitalisation over more than $9 billion.

Together with the rest of the rampersand team, Nicole loves to fund companies that have built a product or service, brought it to market, have a few early customers and are now looking to grow. Fast. But notwithstanding the pace of innovation, Nicole takes a very considered approach and has clear mental frameworks. She often falls in love with the companies she meets, but she knows that to be a successful venture investor, giving a fast no is just as important as every high conviction yes.

Links

Nicole Small on LinkedIn

Rampersand

Anthony Ulwick Jobs to be Done methodology (video) 

The Disruptive Voice HBR (Podcast) 

Think Again by Adam Grant (book) 

Companies

Expert 360 founder Bridget Loudon 

Goterra  founder Olympia Yarger 

Mass Dynamics founder Paula Burton 

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