😱 Rayn Ong

I genuinely believe a venture fund fully run by operator-scouts and angels would outperform traditional funds. Some of the best early deal flow I’ve seen lately have been coming from people operating in the trenches versus traditonal VCs

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Let's talk about Accelerators as VC Funds TIL ANZ has 69 active Accelerators, but only 4 invest: 👉 spreadsheet with all Accelerators in comments 1️⃣ Accelerator as a Business Firstly, Accelerators are shocking businesses. (Don't start one 😅) How do they pay the bills? There are 4 usual business models: 🏛️ Government - you get a grant for 2-3y, the grant stops, you have no revenue, you die 🧳 Corporate - corporate cares about you, until there's a leadership reshuffle, stops caring, you die 🧑‍🎓 Universities - similar to corporate, but more aligned with getting students into working world, usually grant rather than commercial funding 💰 VC - you run it as a VC fund, full alignment of LPs to the outcomes you and founders want to achieve BUT as you've learned in this series (post #5), management fees on SMALL funds are barely enough for a skeleton team So yeah, in short - bad, bad cashflow But ofc if you can make it work >> small funds = better VC returns (post #14) 2️⃣ Accelerators as VC Funds 🤯 there are 69 active Accelerators in Australia and NZ! BUT only 4 that actually invest money. 🔥 1/ UNSW Pretty epic deal at $100k SAFE note 15% discount Varies program by program though, so couldn't exactly find online if the deal still exists and for which program 👀 2/ Techstars Tagline: $180k for 5% + ~5% future equity Reality: [Tranche 1] $30k at $600k post (5%) >> $30k at $600k val 👀🤯 >> not entirely sure how that works, as it also triggers everyone else's MFN clause so you get extra diluted! [Tranche 2] $150k uncapped with MFN >> AU$150k So your startup is really valued at $600k. Note: converted from USD to AUD at $1.50. 😬 3/ Antler Tagline: $260k at $2.2m post-money (12%) Reality: $260k investment - but you don't see the money, because: $75k fee 😱 Effective investment: $185k for 12% which implies $1.5m valuation 😢 Even worse off are actually LPs, because only 😱 45 cents on every $1 invested goes to the founder = working capital 👉 you get charge mgmt fee + expenses (~25%) AND 👉 the investment to startups gets charged back via the fee to Antler (~30%) ❤️ 4/ Startmate ofc biased here, but no hooks nor surprises in our investment terms: Simple SAFE or equity (whatever you prefer) either: 1. $120k at $1.5m post-money (8%) or 2. we match your latest valuation if you have raised $250k previously Fun Fact: Startmate is the only investing Accelerator in NZ 🥝 👉 today's comment request if you liked the content: 🥝 ("kiwi") for the hidden gem and the love for Kiwi founders that Startmate backs ❤️ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ What is this? Day 16/30 - I'm posting one VC fund insight per day this month. I'm often wrong. What did I miss this time? 👉 cut my usual outro as I ran out of characters on this post 🥲

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“Why hasn't there been a dedicated pre-seed fund in Australia before?” Someone asked me this recently, and I had to stop and think. It's a really, really, good question. For starters, the Australian startup ecosystem has transformed dramatically. We now have nearly 100 active VCs (including Family Offices with dedicated VC arms) - exponential growth from just a handful when I left for Stanford in 2017. Simultaneously, we've witnessed an explosion of Australian-founded startups. Companies like Atlassian, Canva, CultureAmp, Linktree, and Eucalyptus are incubating incredible talent who eventually leave to build their next ventures. This creates a compounding talent flywheel (yay) that's only accelerating. We have a handful of well-resourced, multi-stage funds participating at pre-seed, and they’re doing important work to support the ecosystem. But there’s a natural limitation to how much they can focus here. When managing hundreds of millions, the math gets tricky on high-volume, small-check investing. It’s simply a function of fund mechanics and capital deployment realities. This is where the pre-seed gap emerges. The progression of companies operates like a funnel: only a portion of pre-seed companies graduate to seed, and fewer still to Series A. To keep the pipeline flowing, we need more pre-seed checks than seed and more seed than Series A. A growing ecosystem demands more early support – especially day-one support – not less. What other gaps do you see in the Australian startup ecosystem that need addressing? 〰️ I'm Maxine Minter, GP at Co Ventures. We're a cross-ecosystem arbitrage pre-seed investor backing Australians building global companies anywhere in the world, helping them accelerate into the US.

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When NinjaOne announced their $500M Series C at a $5B valuation, one point stood out from the press release: "NinjaOne has no debt and remains a founder-led and controlled business after the Series C extensions. Co-founders Sal Sferlazza and Chris Matarese remain the biggest equity holders in the company, have majority control of the Board of Directors, and hold a majority of the company's voting power." Sal Sferlazza knows exactly why that matters. When you're selling to enterprise customers, they ask one critical question: "Will this company keep innovating?" His answer: "So I think for good or for bad, our customers and our employees are stuck with me and Chris." We had Sal on Unicorn Builders to break down why founder control became their competitive advantage in a market with deeply entrenched competitors. We also cover: → Why enterprise buyers fear startups will pivot or get acquired mid-contract → How spending 25 hours/week on product as CEO signals long-term commitment → The accidental discovery that doubled their addressable market overnight → Why throttling growth built more trust than racing to scale → How consensus-based leadership creates better products than founder ego → Why homogeneous tech stacks beat "best of breed" acquisitions → The "spy network" management style that prevents product issues Full ep: https://lnkd.in/eN9QQAKt

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Are startup stage names irrelevant now? → 4% of seeds were north of a $50M pre-money → 7% of series As were above $150M → 8% of series Bs were under $25M Peter Walker beautifully broke out 1,084 primary rounds from Q4 2024 to Q1 2025 across different valuation tiers And the ranges were much wider than I expected… → There are deals across the entire spectrum → under $25M all the way to $500M+ → for every ABCD rounds 🤯 So what can you do as a founder? ➡️ Focus on milestones, not rounds Next, remember that your goal isn’t to raise… It’s to build an enduring company 🙌 So focus on checking off progress milestones instead 👇 1️⃣ Problem Solution Fit The first question for any startup is can you make customers truly happy? But don’t confuse paying customers as happy customers ❌ Do you know what happy looks like? What actions are you measuring? And how many can you show? This is what I’d call a seed round 👀 These days, most VCs will want to see revenue But the real focus is that it comes from happy customers in a well defined ICP 2️⃣ Go to Market Fit Now once you can make customers truly happy… The next step obvious step is to find a repeatable & scalable way to find more happy customers 😃 For me, repeatable means doing something more than 10 times And scalable means that (a) you know the control levers and (b) you can get to $10M ARR on that gtm motion Now, to actually show that you’ve found it… For most startups that'll be somewhere between $1M to $3M ARR And what I’d call a series A round 👀 3️⃣ Scale Market Fit #1 This is true PMF in my opinion 🙌 You’ve de-risked it, but you haven’t started to scale it yet So can you add $10M in new logo ARR in 24 months? Because that's venture scale growth... And for most startups, somewhere in there is where I’d call your Series B 👀 But growth doesn't last forever So I’d add one more milestones: can you de-risk your second PMF? - new product - new market - or new GTM motion? Whatever it is, will it power your next part of venture scale growth? 4️⃣ Scale Market Fit #2 Now it’s time to show both versions of PMF can scale 🚀 → Think Uber Black AND UberX Remember, just because you’ve had one venture scale success, doesn’t mean you’ll have another And at some point your growth will start to slow and so you’ll need to show that you have a 2nd act and possible a 3rd… For most startups, this is what I’d call a Series C 👀 Now your valuation multiples are starting to converge towards public comps 5️⃣ Public Market Fit? But by now, valuations can start limiting your options So you’ll need to be clear on what’s next 🤔 Are you on a path to go public? Are you going to exit soon? Raise more rounds? Or profitable? Answering those questions is what I’d consider the strategy for your Series D 👀 -- ♻️ Repost to help a founder in your network Click 'visit my website' at the top to register for my Seed to Series A session DM if you want help getting ready for your Series A

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100+ people hit me up about Forum Ventures' new analyst role. Most of them asked the same thing - “How do I get into venture?” The honest answer is that there isn’t a straight line. Actually, the easiest way to get into VC is to raise $10M from Sequoia and have a $100M+ exit. But let’s assume you haven’t done that. Here’s what I’ll say as someone who managed to figure it out after growing up in Winnipeg, going to a mid-tier school, and never getting a startup to revenue. I originally applied for a marketing role at Forum. Didn’t get it. But I met Jonah Midanik, stayed in touch, and followed up a couple of times a month. Eventually, Forum made a role for me. Sounds insane. And not repeatable, but it’s how most people break in - someone with influence believes in you. Not because you check every box, but because you made an impression. There have always been way more qualified people trying to get into VC than there are roles. So it’s going to be hard to break in, even if you’re smart, qualified, and follow “best practices.” So here’s my best shot at advice. The stuff that shouldn’t matter is what actually matters. Speak the Language: Know what AUM means. Know what’s going on with Rippling and Deel. Have a couple of startups or spaces you know a lot about. This industry runs on perception, and the baseline expectation is that you sound like you know what you’re talking about. That only happens if you honestly care about this stuff, and that’s hard to fake. Have a Take: This job rewards people who have a point of view. Right or wrong, being able to share a unique/contrarian opinion and back it up means something. It shows you’ve thought deeply, not just skimmed headlines. I need to know I can put you in a room with founders and VCs, and you’ll hold your own. Be in the Mix: SF, NY, Toronto, these cities aren’t magic, they concentrate the action. The intros, the offhand convos, the drinks that turn into deals, they all happen between meetings. The right school plugs you into the right networks. And going to every event keeps you in the flow. This is still a relationship game and you need to be around the action. None of this makes you a good investor. But before you can invest, you need to be in the room. I’m not saying this is how venture should work. Or that any of it makes sense. I’m just telling you the truth.

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Giant Ventures has backed one of Silicon Valley’s most respected founders to create a new relationship between authors and AI. We’ve led a $5.5m round in Created by Humans - started by Scribd founder Trip Adler, with backing from David O. Sacks, Garry Tan, Jason Calacanis, Mike Maples, Jr, Sam Lessin and the founders of Dropbox, Slack, Twitch and Cruise. This is publishing’s Spotify moment. Authors are heading to a Napster-esque world where their intellectual property is swallowed up without recompense by a wonderful but new technology. Instead, Created by Humans makes AI licensing easy so that creators can profit from AI’s use of their work while AI developers get authorized access to the best of human creativity Last week the Created by Humans introduced its licensing platform for books with support from the Authors Guild and over 100 bestselling authors including Walter Isaacson, Douglas Preston, Susan Orlean, James Patterson, and Sylvia Day. If you’re a publisher or an author - get in touch! Great piece by Fortune’s Luisa Beltran - link in comments. Emmett Shear | Cal Henderson | Kyle Vogt | Drew Houston | Craft Ventures | Slow Ventures | Floodgate | LAUNCH | Uncommon Capital

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Venture Careers Demystified Post 2: Routes into a VC Investment Team There are many ways to get into the Investment Team of a VC firm and each is sufficiently different that I'm going to spend the next few weeks covering each in turn. This week I'm just listing them out and defining them. This is not a precise science so if you know of a route that doesn't fit into these buckets, let me know below and I'll add it! 1) The Career VC: these folk decide, early in their career that they want to work in VC. Sometimes they break in straight from school or university, sometimes, they will do a few years at either one of the 'finishing school' employers (top tier banks and consultancies like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bain or McKinsey) or at a start-up. Assuming this previous job was relatively junior and held for no more than six years, these VCs start as an Analyst, Associate or Principal. Advantages of this route include: it's accessible to a large number of people; you enter the industry with some core skills already (modelling businesses, an operationally valuable start-up skill, etc); joining in a 'junior' role means you get mentoring and time to learn the craft of venture. Disadvantages include: initially a lack of something that makes you stand out both to VC employers and entrepreneurs you'd like to back; the need to navigate politics and org structures (usually very small in VC) that may limit your progress toward the all-important goal of being an investor yourself. 2) The Operator VC: this covers those who have much deeper operational experience, usually from the tech industry, whether a big tech company or a successful start-up who land their job in VC because that experience is directly useful to the firm and its portfolio of investments. Some of these will join at more senior, but still non-partner levels of an investment team and others will join in adjacent roles like 'operating partners' or 'venture partners' or 'executives in residence' but then seek to navigate into a full investment team role. Advantages here include: clear differentiation that means you can add immediate value to a firm and its investments; an existing network that helps you find companies and understand ('diligence') them. Disadvantages: Changing careers mean you may have to go backwards at first in terms of seniority and compensation. 3) The Second Career VC: this pathway covers those who enjoyed a substantial career before venture (founder of a very successful start-up, early or key member of a large tech company) and who decide to move into venture, either joining an existing firm as a Partner or by starting their own firm. Advantages here include immediate autonomy and the ability to make investments. The key disadvantage is that it's hard to do - very few firms have open new roles for partners from outside venture and starting a new firm is tough. I'll start with the first next week and, again, let me know if I've missed something big!

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Founders these are the steps you must take to protect yourself from a pulled term sheet 👀 1. Trust your gut Some funds issue term sheets to secure an option for your round If something feels off - particularly if they haven't done a sensible amount of due diligence on your company - be extremely wary about signing I'd expect a serious fund to have taken customer and founder references, asked a wide range of thoughtful questions, written an investment memo and held an investment committee with all the partners present 2. Watch out for conditions The only thing left by the time you get to a term sheet should be the legals This is what our term sheet says: Completion is conditional on the finalisation of definitive legal documents and satisfactory completion of legal due diligence (if any) If funds are adding technical, commercial, financial or other types of due diligence this increases the risk they can find a reason to walk away I'd push the investors to do all their work prior to signing the term sheet or at least have a checklist of items that need to be satisfied rather than allowing open ended language to be included 3. Ask around Reputation is everything is venture and pulling term sheets is really s*itty behaviour so word gets around Ping your founder groups, ask your lawyer, speak to your existing investors or advisors - anybody who might have some intel 4. Reference calls Taking extensive reference calls on the fund is critical Take the ones the fund recommends and then pick another 2-3 from their website Obviously you won't hit on pulled term sheets here, but you can get a good sense of how they operate post investment to validate your gut feeling There is no data on how big the problem is, but it's good practice to ensure you run a tight process and maximise your chances of a successful closing Questions? Just let me know if the comments 👇 #startups #venturecapital #entrepreneur #entrepreneurship #founders #fundraising #investing #technology #innovation

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The dupe era of software is here. With every startup funding announcement comes a flurry of open source clones (read: almost free, certainly cheaper) within the next 72 hours. 1️⃣Well funded startups validate market demand. 2️⃣ Independent teams go in with a fast-follower strategy at half the price and cost. If great artists steal.... Today, we have many great artists. Will there be a trend towards “build in private” as a counter to the “build in public” movement? “Build in public” creates general momentum and visibility – and most VCs love “hype” around a product. But “build in private” means startups can quickly gobble up market share through lean alignment with their target customers. However that requires knowing your customers well. And less throwing spaghetti against the wall. Better to be first mover or fast follower?

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I recently chatted w/Clay Norris about building VC funds. We talked about everything from misconceptions about starting a fund to being transparent with founders. My fave part was our exchange on the underappreciated role of luck. You can read the interview at: https://lnkd.in/edWfktGG

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Focused Growth Vs Experimentation. A fairly critical decision for early startup founders along their journey. Context for this post, was chatting with a young founding team yesterday. The founders had completely different opinions on whether to entertain a potential new client. Founder A was completely against talking to the client as they felt that the client's requirements diverged from what the team was building and it would be a distraction. Founder B was keen to try deploying a solution as they felt that it could open up a potential new market. Additional info, company's revenue is under ₹10 lakh (~$12,000) per month. Founders are under 25. Some basic work ex, both highly technical. My view(s): 1. Stage and Age : If this was a 2nd time founder, off a decent exit, telling me they are hyper focused on what they are building for round 2 and won't touch something outside that, I get it. In the case above, at the age and stage of the company, in my view, you need to bring home $$$. You may take on a few projects that don't scale, however if they are lucrative (generate large amounts of cash), you can take that cash and pay your R&D team, instead of diluting valuable equity. Apart from survival cash, at such an early point of time, you REALLY don't know what's going to work and what's not. InMobi started as a game developer. Slack started off as a computer game. Youtube started as a dating website. Nintendo made playing cards. American Express started off as a courier (jumped back in time there!). 2. Built by.....? : One of the most famous examples of 'smart place, right time' was none other than Bill Gates. IBM needed an operating system for it's Personal Computer (PC). Mr Gates, fresh of releasing the ALTAIR Basic interpreter, first introduced IBM to another company, suggesting they contract with them. When those negotiations failed, Gates & Allen identified another OS, 86-DOS, built by Tim Patterson. Gates quickly moved to exclusively license 86-DOS, for $5,000, selling a license to IBM for $25,000 under PC-DOS. While this was a full sale rather than today's software subscription arrangements, Gates understood that other companies would quickly copy IBM's hardware, allowing him to quickly license his OS under the name MS-DOS to the upcoming hardware folks. I cited the above example as my other suggestion to the founders was - find the right solution in the market, license it and resell at a higher margin, managing the entire installation/onboarding for the client. 3. Jobs to be Done : Following on from the above example, business clients have one primary goal. "Solve my problem" . The founders, being highly technical, were approaching the problem from a building standpoint, thinking of the time it would take for them to BUILD the solution. Hence my suggestion, license software, solve client problem, test if it's a use case they want to build for. #venturecapital #startups #sales #strategy #hack

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PSA: if you're curious about what careers in VC can - and do - look like, and how to get started, check out the Careers in VC collection on the Blume Ventures website which has a great compilation of written and video content specifically about this topic. Based on regular inbound requests by many young professionals that our team has received over the years, we've created what I believe to be best-in-class learning content about what working in VC is really like, how you can get started, and more importantly, how you should shift your mindset to ready yourself for a long and rewarding career in this industry. I recommend starting with the Youtube playlist Careers in VC followed by reading Venture Capital: A Deep Apprenticeship, Breaking Into VC: A Rough Guide and Compounding Careers in VC. Questions welcome in the comments below! https://lnkd.in/gviGfm3r

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