It’s almost too daunting a task to summarise a year that could be best represented by this….. The long blood donation lines (hours long wait for many) to help the Bondi shooting victims. If there is an image that can truly sum up this year full of chaos, violence, war and fragile peace, technological advances… Read more »
Over the past week, conversations about women founders and venture capital in Australia have been amplified by Blackbird’s latest portfolio data, reported by Startup Daily’s Simon Thomsen, alongside Elaine Stead’s thoughtful piece, The myth of the funnel. Both point to something important: The numbers we track matter, but the story they tell depends on how… Read more »
Yesterday, there were numerous articles written about the fact that a couple large VC funds missed their gender targets for new investments. We do ask our VC funds for more transparency and effort, and then low key shame them when they don’t meet their goals and state it publicly, even if they are moving the… Read more »
“What very important truth do very few people agree with you on?” This is the infamous question Peter Thiel used to filter prospective employees and test for their tendency towards contrarian thinking — the type of thinking that enabled Thiel to be a successful venture capitalist. For a while there, many of us also believed… Read more »
Donald Trump is not the problem. Sure, I cant believe I wrote that either. But here we are. Oh how I long to live in uninteresting times… I mean, not really. As a middle-aged, single woman, we have never had a more privileged position than we do today. Previous centuries can get in the trash.… Read more »
CSIRO-backed venture capital fund Main Sequence has added another woman to its ranks with Startup Daily contributor Dr Elaine Stead joining the deep tech investor as principal. Stead is the founder of Human VC, where she managed the South Australian Venture Capital Fund and cofounder of Brisbane fund Tribe Global Ventures. She was previously the… Read more »
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how 4 days can be a long time in business. A year even more so. And it was only this week I was trying to convince my friends at Tribe Global Ventures to do a 2023 wrap up of startups and tech in their excellent podcast (full disclosure, I helped them get… Read more »
The last decade in corporate Australia has seen a much greater acknowledgement of toxic workplace practices and their impact. In the startup sector in particular, over recent weeks we have seen many women come forward to share their experiences of gender discrimination, sexism, harassment and abuse, a subset of toxic behaviour. I am in the… Read more »
It’s hard to imagine there is anything left to say on OpenAI, that hasn’t already been said in any one of the millions of hot takes over the last few weeks. But never fear. In startup land, there is always room for one more hot take that absolutely no-one asked for. Today I was asked… Read more »
Partners and principals at leading Australian venture capital firms, including Square Peg Capital, Main Sequence Ventures, Giant Leap, Jelix Ventures, and Flying Fox Ventures have signed an open letter to the editor the AFR about what the investment community sees as “an ongoing smear campaign” against colleague Dr Elaine Stead. The letter follows a high… Read more »
Dr Elaine Stead, the former head of venture capital at the now defunct Blue Sky Alternative Investments fund, has been awarded $280,000 in damages a defamation case against the Australian Financial Review and its Rear Window columnist Joe Aston. Stead, who was described as a “feminist cretin” and “venture capital pyromaniac” in a series of… Read more »
Startup advocacy body StartupAUS has added four names to its board as it looks to “build a world-class startup sector” in Australia ahead of the launch of its 2017 Crossroads report next month.
The South Australian government has announced it has selected Blue Sky Venture Capital to manage its $50 million South Australian Venture Capital Fund (SAVCF).
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