H2 Ventures announces new startups following fresh funding
The co-founder of fintech accelerator H2 Ventures, Toby Heap, has warned Australia’s big four banks that they are underestimating the wave of digital disruption taking place in their sector, as it announces its next intake of hopeful startups. H2’s next group of entrepreneurs will range from a startup that provides people with their own personal chef, called DishMe, to a social sporting platform that lets sport fans compete against their friends during live matches, called FanTrade. To date 25 startups have gone through the accelerator program, including online marketplace for home loans HashChing, which raised $1 million from Sapien Ventures last year, and crowdfunding platform Equitise, which also raised more […]
Square Peg has $US180m to invest in tech start-ups
Paul Bassat’s Square Peg Capital has officially closed the books on a $US180 million ($234 million) raise for its first fund, in another sign of the revival of the venture capital asset class in Australia. The Australian Financial Review can reveal the Melbourne-based start-up investment firm recently completed the fundraising process for its first fund, exceeding its original $200 million target. Square Peg was set up by Mr Bassat, a co-founder of employment website Seek, in 2012. It has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into start-ups since then, including taking an early stake in the world’s most valuable private tech firm, Uber. But until now it has been structured […]
Equity crowdfunding bill passed, but proprietary companies still excluded
Retail investors will from September be able to buy up to $10,000 of equity in their favourite business ideas, after crowd-sourced funding legislation passed the Senate. The legislation will allow unlisted public companies with annual turnover or gross assets of up to $25 million to advertise their business plans on licensed crowdfunding portals, and raise up to $5 million a year to carry them out. Investors can put up to $10,000 a year each into an unlimited number of ideas. A 48-hour cooling off period had applied to the legislation which passed the House of Representatives in February, however the Labor Opposition successfully amended this to five days, with support […]
The federal government wants to buy $900 million of tech from Australian startups
The federal assistant minister for digital transformation has declared he is targeting a spend of $900 million each year on entrepreneurial tech suppliers, to move away from traditional providers like IBM. “The government can support innovative companies without resorting to handouts. If we want to transform the entrepreneurial or digital government sector in Australia, the most important thing we can do is be a better customer,” assistant minister Angus Taylor told media in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. Technology work in the public sector, worth $9 billion a year, is traditionally dominated by big consulting firms or large companies such as IBM, as in the case of the census, […]
Qantas partners with Slingshot for its first startup accelerator program
Qantas will open its technology platforms, data and anonymised customer information to up to 10 start-up or scale-up businesses when it runs its first ‘accelerator’ from May. The Avro Accelerator, named after Qantas’ first aircraft, is a 12-week program designed to help the airline innovate across its business, including its offshoots in insurance and banking. Qantas’ partner in running the accelerator is Slingshot, a specialist in bringing corporate sponsors together with relevant start-up and scale-up businesses. Slingshot’s venture capital fund, whose investors include industry super fund Hostplus, will back each business selected for Avro with $50,000 upfront, with a further $100,000 for those still showing promise at the end of […]
Westpac buys stake in Lantern Pay to help deliver NDIS
Customers of the federal government’s $22 billion National Disability Insurance Scheme will be able to pay for health services through a new platform to be rolled out by Westpac Banking Corp, which has taken a 10 per cent equity stake in payments firm InLoop. InLoop is the parent company of Lantern Pay, which has created a “digital wallet”, or mobile application, that lets customers of government-backed medical services schemes monitor budgets. Lantern Pay pays service providers up front before claiming the payments back from the government. The deal is an example of the policy shift towards “consumer-directed care” in government medical schemes including the NDIS, which puts customers in control […]
Don’t write off bitcoin yet, despite blow to Winklevoss plan
It seems that bitcoin’s prophets of doom celebrated prematurely after the US Securities and Exchange Commission comprehensively knocked back the Winklevoss brothers’ bid to create an exchange-traded fund tied to the price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency. The obituaries written over the weekend made much of Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss’s feud with Mark Zuckerberg over founder’s rights to Facebook, the world’s most popular social networking website. “They lost on Facebook; now they’ve lost on bitcoin,” the twins’ updated narrative said. Not so fast. Sure, the bitcoin price collapsed by 18 per cent after it had motored past the price for an ounce of gold in the week preceding the SEC’s […]
DomaCom signs off on new crowdfunding deal
DomaCom has finalised its first venture into agricultural assets with a deal that gives 90 retail investors a stake in a property in Victoria’s prime Western District pastoral land. The 150-hectare property, ‘Doyles’, outside Casterton near the South Australian border, is in the heart of prime beef and sheep region. Prior to entering into a contract to purchase the property, the fund was successful in securing a strong local operator as the tenant. The tenant will use the property to run beef cattle. “The identification of good operators to work with in the leasing of the property was key to the transaction. We are striving to deliver a packaged opportunity […]
