💡 Backing People, Not Just Startups: 25 Years of Investing Wisdom with Tracie Clark

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📈 From Property at 19 to Startups in Her 30s

Tracie’s journey into investing started unusually early. At 19, she’d saved up $10,000 and - with a little advice from a family friend - used it to buy her first investment property. She was still living at home and earning rent from tenants. That was the beginning of what would become a lifelong focus on building a strong foundation of financial independence.

Her early professional years were spent in accounting and financial planning. She built and sold two wealth management firms and eventually exited her second business around eight years ago. That gave her the freedom to take angel investing more seriously - although she’d already been backing founder friends long before she knew “angel” was a thing.

🎢 Riding the Rollercoaster

Like many early investors, Tracie’s first moves weren’t backed by due diligence or frameworks - just gut instinct and trust. Some worked out surprisingly well, but they taught her to balance optimism with structure.

Her investing style now reflects this evolution. While about 80% of her portfolio is aligned with traditional asset allocation - equities, bonds, and diversified vehicles - she reserves 15–20% for higher-risk opportunities like startups and listed small caps.

That “fun” portion of her portfolio now includes 34 active investments, and she’s already seen two exits — one of which returned 18x and paid back all her capital from the last eight years of angel investing. But she’s quick to point out: outcomes like that take time. Sometimes, a decade.

🔎 A Sharp Eye for Founders

Tracie’s diligence process has evolved over the years, but one thing has remained consistent: it’s the people that make or break a company. While she still runs through checklists covering IP, debts, cap tables, and market potential, she spends most of her energy evaluating founders.

She looks for resilience, domain knowledge, coachability, and focus. Red flags? Founders juggling too many ventures, poor communication, or silence during tough moments. One of her most important signals is how they treat others - and whether they follow through on the little things.

It’s no surprise that when companies have faltered in her portfolio, it’s rarely been because of the product or the tech - it’s been about people dynamics.

💼 Making Venture More Accessible

Over the past eight years, Tracie has become deeply involved in Australia’s angel and startup ecosystem. She’s been a vice-chair of Perth Angels, a member of Scale Investors, and a board member at Spacecubed - home of the Plus Eight Accelerator. She’s also coached founders via CSIRO's commercialisation programs.

More recently, she’s used syndicates to help demystify investing for women entering the space. Through the Aussie Angels platform, she ran a syndicate focused on female-founded companies with a low $2,000 minimum - attracting 10 first-time female investors in just six months.

For her, syndicates are not only a way to back more founders, but to bring more people into the fold - especially those who wouldn’t normally see themselves as investors.

💡 Direct, Syndicate, or Fund? It Depends.

Tracie has mostly invested directly, particularly when she wanted to work closely with founders. But she sees value in syndicates and funds for diversification, especially for time-poor investors or those looking for exposure in unfamiliar sectors.

Recently, she’s joined a few syndicates - including TEN13’s - to access deal flow in tech and AI, areas where she leans on the expertise of others in the network.

😇 What Makes a Good Angel?

She believes the best angels know when to get involved - and when to stay out of the way. While she’s hands-on with about five or six companies in her portfolio, she supports the rest more passively, helping with capital when needed or offering intros through her network.

She emphasises that most good angels are in it for more than just the returns. It’s about supporting smart, mission-driven people and making a difference at the earliest - and most fragile - stages.

📊 Portfolio Strategy and Advice for New Angels

Tracie is a strong believer in diversification - not just across sectors, but across number of deals. She suggests a minimum of 10, ideally closer to 20, to ride out the inevitable failures and capture those rare, outsized winners.

She’s seen investors go in hard on just a few early investments, get burned, and then swear off the asset class altogether. Her advice? Start small, learn as you go, and enjoy the journey. Because, as she says, if you’re not enjoying it, what’s the point?

🚀 What’s Next?

Tracie is diving deeper into deep tech, launching a new syndicate alongside fellow investor Rob Nathan to back alumni from Perth’s Plus Eight Accelerator. She’s also continuing to meet founders daily - and still gets energised by the problems they’re solving and the grit they bring.

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