Q1 Quarterly Update #Stayhome Edition
March has brought turbulence as we are adjusting to both WFH and the impact it is having on our families, businesses and society. We have been full throttle in working to support our existing portfolio. Last month we published our COVID-19 resource information here. We also reached out to our network to talk to some familiar faces and experts that have been through similar times.
🐶 Stew chatted with Glen Richards about how he navigated a recently listed company through the 08' GFC. How to scenario plan and where he sees consumer behaviour changing post-COVID-19.
🥤 Steve caught up with Janine Allis and discussed how this isn’t like anything we have seen before, how retail is going get through this, and the not so long process before we return to regular habits.
👨💻 Stew and Steve talked about the steps founders need to talk to ensure their businesses survive and why communication is the essential step in the process.
👨⚖️ Steve sat 1.5m away from Ashley Tiplady — Partner (Restructuring and Insolvency) @ Mills Oakley on what is Force Majeure and contract frustration? How to deal with changes to insolvency and how that affects safe harbour laws.
Round of Applause
💸 Transition Level Portfolio company Arkose Labs secured $34m AUD from Microsoft’s M12, Paypal and USVP to continue their mission eliminate the business of fraud. Read about that here.
💸 Several of our new TEN13 portfolio companies raised funding, read more on that below.
A New Exit
👨🏻⚕️We are excited to announce Transition Level investments latest exit with Atomo Diagnostics being the first company since COVID-19 begun to list on the ASX. Congrats to John and the team on their successful IPO.
Virtual Boardroom Lunch
🍱 If you’re a sophisticated investor looking to access to high calibre technology deals, we are hosting a TEN13 prospective member virtual boardroom lunch this Wednesday on the 29th of April from 12–1 pm. Every sign up gets free lunch delivered (via Uber eats gift card). Learn more about our latest exit, our winning model and why we love investing in startup companies. Register on the form here.
🎉 NEW YEAR, NEW US
At the end of 2019, the Transition Level Investments team dived into the development of our new product offering TEN13. We have supported startups since 2011 and invested in over 35 businesses since then. After Steve exited River City Labs in 2018, we wanted to continue to support early-stage companies and be the catalyst for growth in the startup ecosystem. We wanted a solution to bring in more capital (from traditional investors that were interested in diversifying their existing portfolios) that would allow us to continue our investments in the existing portfolio and invest further in exciting startups.
The new way is TEN13. An investment syndicate platform that allows sophisticated investors the opportunity to invest alongside Steve and Transition Level Investments in vetted deals, deals that become part of our portfolio and get the fullest support of our organisation and benefiting from the years of experience operating in this space. We are excited to get more capital in the hands of amazing companies and the founders that lead them, allowing sophisticated investors to invest early in top calibre technology companies.
You can read more about our founding members that joined our efforts in our article published in the AFR here. Michael Malone (founder iiNet), Robin Levison (executive chairman PPK Group) and Bob Waldie (co-founder Opengear) have all come on board. Amongst a growing number of amazing investors, many of whom have had extensive careers as operators in their own businesses.
If you classify as a sophisticated investor under the wholesale investor guidelines, we would love to have you onboard you can view our offering here at TEN13. Are you not convinced? We are hosting a virtual board room luncheon next Wednesday the 29th of April at 12–1 pm for sophisticated investors to explore our offering and learn more about our thesis and the latest TLI exit Atomo Diagnostics IPO, you can register here.
To the companies we have worked with and funded up to now, you will see no difference, TEN13 is an addition to what we do — not a replacement. We are working harder than ever to get more support and funding to our portfolio and the awesome dealflow we see despite the times. We are still open for business and are always accepting pitches for exceptional founders and companies. With the addition of TEN13, we hope to not only fund but help support future tech leaders in Pre-seed to Series A rounds.
Welcome to the family
We launched TEN13 in October last year and we are happy to say we have welcomed 4 investments into the TEN13 family. Some are very familiar as we follow-on funding from our existing portfolio and others that are sure to be household names.
We also want to introduce our newest team member.
Doug Oliver joins TEN13 as Head of Platform, managing community, marketing and internal tools.
Doug has been a startup advocate, especially in Queensland with roles at the RCL Accelerator and other local incubators plus experience managing teams at unicorn fintech N26 in Berlin. We’re excited to work with Doug to help grow our community of founders, investors and ecosystem partners.
Please join us in welcoming Doug, and you can follow him on Twitter and on LinkedIn.
Say 👋🏼 to Drawboard
Drawboard is on a critical mission to eliminate paper and digital waste in the workplace with its design communication and collaboration platform Bullclip, trusted by design teams worldwide to eliminate coordination issues.
We have invested alongside Blackhorn Ventures in the US to participate in Drawboards $9.3M Series A round. Welcome to TEN13, Alistair and the team.
Read about the raise in the AFR.
Say 👋🏼 to Clipchamp
We are excited to continue to support Alex, David, Soeren and Tobias as they grow out Clipchamp and its enterprise offering.
Its been a rocketship since we invested early at seed for the company, now boasting over 8 million users and closing their $13.2m Series A. We are happy to start working with the team at Tola Capital in Seattle.
Read about why we love this company so much in the AFR.
Say 👋🏼 to Vervoe
We welcome Omer & David to the TEN13 family.
Vervoe helps reduce recruitment times and hire on performance and merit, not the background of the candidate. Vervoe automatically ranks and grades candidates based on how well they can do the job.
Happy to be co-invested with Seek Ventures for the second time.
Say 👋🏼 to Arcade
We welcome David Cherrie and the team at Arcade.
Arcade works with retailers to gamify their frontline worker’s management tools. Arcade’s mission is to make for 1 million happy frontline workers across the globe. They believe that happy workers do their best work, live their best lives, and are more successful because of it.
Great to be along for the ride with ATX Venture Partners from Texas.
Find out more >>
Who’s Hiring?
It’s been a tough time for the startup ecosystem this quarter, not only for founders but for the employees that help these businesses grow, innovate and succeed. Looking for something new? Here are some of the startups in our portfolio that are hiring right now. 🤝 Drawboard is looking for a customer success manager based in Melbourne or New York.
📼 Clipchamp is hiring across multiple departments. Recruitment, growth, product and engineering in Brisbane.
🔒 Arkose Labs is hiring senior information security analysts in Brisbane and San Francisco.
👩🏻💼 GO1 is hiring in marketing & events in Melbourne and finance in Brisbane.
👩🏾💻 Kapiche is hiring an engineer specialising in vue.js or django in Brisbane.
👩🏻🏫 Wonde is looking out for account managers, developers and integration members in London.
Safe Travels,
TEN13