Oct 25, 2021

Wonder what the Winklevoss twins ( the Winklevii)  think of Facebook’s metaverse play. More on that later… Local newsings Simply the best. Atlassian has been named one of the 25 best places to work  in the world. It’s the only Aussie company to make the cut. 90% of employees at Atlassian say it is a great place to work. Want to steal Atlassian’s secrets? Lucky for you the US$105 bn company has an entire magazine dedicated to the topic . Who needs politicians when you have billionaires?! Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes and his wife Annie have  committed $1.5bn of their family wealth to climate change  philanthropy and green investments by 2030. The family’s investment office, Grok Ventures is now one of the biggest venture investors in the country. Not cash back. Online shopping rewards platform  Cashrewards entered into a takeover agreement with ANZ’s 1835i , valuing the company at $89.5m. The $1.135/share offer is a 19.5% premium to Thursday’s closing price, but a 35% discount to its December IPO price. 1835i already holds 19% of the company. Cashrewards made revenue of $20.1m from 273k active users in FY21. Shebah shuts up shop. Ride-sharing startup for women,  Shebah, has gone into voluntary administration . Shebah started to speed off around 2017, when it broke the record for Australia’s biggest crowdfunding raise ($3m at the time), with women making up 94% of investors. Pre-pandemic, the startup was providing up to 10,000 trips each month. As well as being used to take women to social events, Shebah provided school transport for children and worked with domestic violence support services to provide safe transport for women and children. Lockdown hit hard and Shebah struggled to find venture investment to keep the company afloat. The pandemic sure finds special ways to hit women where it hurts (if that concept is news to you, more on that  here ). VC differentiation. This week in VC: Square Peg  demystified capital raising terms , each of which “address either economics or control,” e.g. valuation, dilution, anti-dilution and liquidation preferences. AirTree shared what investors look for in early-stage startup investments: team, market, traction. Blackbird released a new startup ideas competition focussed on uni students,  Wild Futures . VC: we only invest in businesses with defensible moats and competitive advantages. Founder: and what differentiates you? VC: mostly our brand. Cool job alert. StartupVic are on the hunt for a  new CEO  after Judy Anderson stepped down, citing that “it’s time for someone new with a fresh perspective.” Thanks for all your great work Judy! Raising news Sub-$4m deals continue to proliferate. Zero Co  raised $11m  – a $6m VC raise led by Square Peg and a $5m crowdfund raise. The crowdfunding raise closed in just a day, smashing all records and breaking the Birchal website. Hemideina  raised $10m  to develop a more convenient hearing implant that could challenge industry giant Cochlear. MOBI raised $10m led by Capital Zed. Formerly known as Mobi2Go, MOBI provides hospitality businesses with websites, mobile apps, table ordering, kiosks, aggregator middleware, loyalty, delivery and analytics software. Rezdy  raised $7.5m  from existing shareholders for its online booking and distribution platform powering the experiences industry. OpenInvest  raised $5.5m  led by Pinnacle Investment Management for its wealth administration platform that enables asset and wealth management firms and stockbrokers to offer their own digital investing solutions to retail investors. Immediation raised $3.6m for its dispute resolution (digital courtrooms and mediation tools) platform used by Australian federal courts and New Zealand government agencies. CipherStash  raised $3.3m  led by AirTree. CipherStash is building an end-to-end, searchable encrypted data storage platform. Safewill raised $3m for its wills & estate administration software. EngageRM raised $2.3m led by the Gandel Invest family office for its CRM for Sports & Entertainment. Muso  raised $2m  led by Rampersand ( investment memo ) for its music booking and management marketplace. EnergyBank raised $1.9m led by Icehouse Ventures and joined by Blackbird ( investment memo ) for its energy storage solution that leverages the depth of the ocean and gravitational potential. ResVu  raised $1.5m  for its white label mobile app and management platform for strata managers. Parpera  raised $1.3m , following a $1m million equity crowdfunding campaign last year. Parpera will provide sole traders and small businesses with a digital wallet, card, invoicing, payments, cash flow, and tax management capabilities. BuildPass  raised $1m  for its app that’s designed to make managing construction sites safer and more efficient. SkyBuys raised from the Gandel Invest family office to develop its online duty free and travel retail platform and app. SiteMinder released its IPO  prospectus  confirming it wants to raise over $600m and appointed Pat O’Sullivan and Jenny Macdonald as directors. Pat spearheaded national brands like Optus and Nine Entertainment and is currently on the Board of ASX-listed  carsales.com , Afterpay and TechnologyOne. Jenny has a solid governance history on Boards of ASX-listed companies, including Bapcor, Redbubble, Australian Pharmaceutical Industries and Healius. In the US of A SnapSplat. Cracks in the world’s biggest ad-driven companies are starting to appear as a result of Apple’s ad tracking clampdown. Changes made to iOS in April have made it harder for apps and advertisers to tell when their ads are working. Snapchat parent  Snap says this caused it to miss this quarter’s revenue target  by $3m, and that it expects the impact to continue next quarter. Wall Street was not impressed. Despite also announcing that Snap crossed US$1bn in revenue for the first time and added 13 million daily users this quarter, shares dropped more than 26% following the announcement. Next up on the chopping block: Twitter and Facebook, who are are due to report results next week. WeWork finally listed. More than two years after WeWork’s original IPO plans spectacularly collapsed,  WeWork began trading on the NYSE  after a SPAC merger. The shares popped 13% as trading began, ending the day with an enterprise value of about US$10.5bn, which is around 2.4 times its projected 2022 revenue (still high for a property company). A far cry from the $45+bn figure bandied about in 2019. About-face for Facebook. Facebook is rumoured to be  changing its company name , à la Google/Alphabet in 2015. Given recent whistleblower revelations and onslaught of US antitrust regulators closing in, it may feel a little like a Mrs Doutbfire moment: jumping into different get up hoping no-one notices. That said, the change may help Zuck’s ambitions to position the company as the centre of the metaverse—a future internet world augmenting digital with reality—and to distance his perceived involvement in the group’s operations. Fairly obvious Zuckerberg is going to create a corporate holding company like Google did (Alphabet), then promote or hire a CEO and make himself Chairman. Then, like Larry Page and Jeff Bezos, he won't have to show up for any hearings ith the Senate, Congress, EU, etc.