Blackbird set for $22m close on Australia VC fund

Blackbird'’s first close of A$16 million last March included longstanding US angel investors such as Bill Tai and Dave McClure as well as the entrepreneurs behind successful Australian companies such as Atlassian, Campaign Monitor and Aconex.

“"We are looking for Australian-born businesses that are addressing global markets from day one with scale digital marketing,”" Rick Baker, managing director at Blackbird, told the AVCJ Australia & New Zealand Forum. "“There are great pockets of activity where you can back small teams of 10-20 people more easily than in Silicon Valley due to the huge intensity of demand for engineers.”"

He cited recent Blackbird investee SafetyCulture, a software start-up based in Townsville in northeast Queensland. Despite the somewhat remote location, the founders have built up a base of 200,000 uers and more than 200 corporates, including General Electric, Woolworths and Coles.

Kate Mitchell, a partner at US VC-firm Scale Venture Partners, added that several of her portfolio companies are setting up operations beyond Silicon Valley for cost reasons.

Blackbird’s success is one of relatively few in the Australian VC landscape and Baker describes the industry as being “in a scorched earth moment.” He estimates there are 20 break-out companies in the country that could eventually go public yet they haven’t received any capital from Australian VC investors.

Tod Francis, managing director at Shasta Ventures, another US VC firm, pointed to a wider problem in that many overseas markets are not yet completely comfortable with the venture capital model.

"“What we are not seeing in other parts of the world is the desire to take risk,”" he said. “"Structurally we are ready to take advantage of the tech boom but culturally it will take time for people to embrace risk and failure. But once a neighbor or city has goes for it, it will grow significantly."”

 

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Fundraising
• Australia
• Venture
• Blackbird Ventures
• Fundraising