Inside Investible: June 2024
A lot has been happening in the Investible ecosystem...
In this dispatch, we detail our new investments, highlight some of our portfolio company milestones, and recap some of our team's recent activity in the ecosystem! Investible CEO, Rod Bristow , also shares his perspective on what building a 'Future Made in Australia' looks like.
Are you working on your own startup and looking for an investment partner? We would love to hear from you.
Can we build a 'Future Made in Australia' ?
A note from Rod Bristow, CEO
The era immediately following the COVID-19 pandemic will one day be seen as a period of great transition. A wave of change has swept through geopolitics, sovereign policy and the innovation economy.
The old rules around globalisation no longer apply, and the landscape has inexorably changed. If Australia doesn’t develop new and innovative ways to deploy capital to the industries and sectors that will lead the world into the future, we will inevitably be left behind.
As early investors in deep tech and companies critical to our sovereign capability, we’re seeing this firsthand. Over the past couple of years, we’ve noticed more companies moving abroad because they’re getting access to public funding and grants elsewhere. We agree with the sentiment shared by many of our local homegrown founders: The time for this type of policy intervention is well and truly now.
Christiaan Jordaan , founder & CEO of Sicona Battery Technologies has been an outspoken advocate for a more competitive Australia. The founder of the Wollongong-based climate tech company told the Financial Times : 'Australia could not go “toe-to-toe” with China and should instead “find its edge” in areas such as renewable energy. “We can’t just copy-paste what China is doing. We’ve got to do it differently,” he said.'
Julian Broadbent , founder and CEO of Applied EV - Software Defined Machines™ works on the front lines of the intersection between complex hardware (robotics) and software in automotive innovation. Applied EV, based in Melbourne, has established strong relationships and strategic investments from offshore partners including Suzuki and Oxbotica.
“Ultimately, we have the resources and raw materials right here, but we need immediate and substantial increases in R&D investment to realise our full potential on the global stage."
"By investing in these capabilities and in our independence, we can move towards shipping post-process or finished products to the world, rather than simply raw materials. Australian-led innovations are, and will continue to be, the driving force behind the country's future productivity and prosperity," Julian says.
At Investible, we believe the public sector’s role is to create these new opportunities for companies through indirect support, rather than directly leading the charge. The recently announced ‘Future Made in Australia’ program within the Federal Budget gets some of this right, but at the same time, caution must be paid about picking specific winners. This risk is seen with the government’s backing of a single company, PsiQuantum.
The team behind Investible-backed Quantum Brilliance and Investible share a view on this, which I shared with The Australian Financial Review last month.
Quantum Brilliance (QB) has created a world-first room-temperature diamond-based quantum accelerator that has been already inserted into supercomputers. This technology targets an entirely different market within the quantum sector than that of its peer, PsiQuantum.
QB’s co-founder and chief scientific officer Marcus Doherty said Australia should follow the example of the UK, the US and Japan and “develop a national quantum computing testbed, to integrate various hardware and software technologies from local suppliers to directly compare them.”
“The best outcome for Australia is to see each of the domestic technologies, that are competitive in distinct domains of application, to succeed. This is what will fully convert Australia’s early potential into economic and security outcomes,” he said. Read more in Capital Brief .
While many of our early-stage portfolio companies may today be too small to benefit from newly announced funding opportunities (including through the National Reconstruction Fund), our position is that it will support a growing innovation sector, and feed into the entire pipeline, including for early-stage startups.
Rod Bristow
CEO, Investible
New Investments
⛓️ Switchboard (Australia) is a software platform helping to facilitate integrations between supplier, retailer, and third-party logistics supply chain systems. Investible led Switchboard’s recently-announced A$1.5m Seed round alongside a collective of VC firms and angels, backing Hugh Dixson and his team as they enter a new phase of growth.
Read more in Nicholas Ooi ’s Investment Notes and the news in Startup Daily .
🤫 Plus 3 more unannounced investments
🐡 A novel carbon capture technology (Climate Tech Fund)
⚡️ A connected network of solar and storage systems (Climate Tech Fund)
⚛️ A hydrogen injector technology (Climate Tech Fund)
Keep an eye on our Investible LinkedIn for the announcements 👀
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Portfolio Updates
In the ecosystem
Open Roles
Looking for your next career challenge? Here are some exciting open roles from the Investible portfolio.
The Investible Women's Network 🚺
This month, Deloitte released their Remaking the norm Research Report, detailing 6 key ways we can remake harmful gender norms in order to tap into $128 billion worth of economic and social value annually.
In the case study on gender norms in the VC industry, Amy Huang (Chief of Staff) and Ben Lindsay (Investment Manager) offered their insights on how Investible's investment process and methodology is designed to reduce bias when we make investment decisions.
As a step towards addressing the underrepresentation of women and non-binary members in the VC space, we launched the Investible Women’s Network (IWN) last year. Whilst most of the global community's events are private to our founders and investors, we will be opening up some of future events to the broader community — stay tuned!
PS — if you would like to get involved with the IWN, please reach out to hello@investible.com!
Join the Solar ScaleUp Challenge! ☀️
Our friends at Greenhouse have teamed up with the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) , to launch the Solar ScaleUp Challenge — an initiative aimed at identifying breakthrough innovations from all over the world and bringing together the key stakeholders needed to commercialise and scale them.
Who should apply:
🔹 Innovators and tech developers
🔹 Solar project developers, engineers, owners and operators
🔹 Customers, equipment manufacturers, and financiers
What's in it for you:
🔸 Access a total grant pool of up to $100m via ARENA
🔸 Collaborate with industry leaders
🔸 Amplify your brand and scale your solution
This is your chance to contribute to a greener planet and accelerate the journey to net zero emissions!
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