Sydney investment firm Quadrant Private Equity is now a Canva shareholder after acquiring a hefty $500 million slice of the design giant, including more than $100 million worth of shares from VC fund Blackbird. That represents about 1.2% of the company’s stock. The deal comes after $2.4 billion worth of Canva shares changed hands earlier… Read more »
Envato, the creative marketplace that grew to generate more than US$1 billion in revenue for its users annually, is being acquired by US listed imagery company Shutterstock in a deal worth US$245 million (A$373m). It marks the end of an 18-year journey for cofounders Collis and Cyan Ta’eed, and their friend Jun Rung, having launched… Read more »
Airwallex is offering to waive initial FX fees for startups as part of a new program for the sector. The foreign exchange fintech has launched Airwallex for Startups, with vice president of small-to-medium enterprises and growth, Matthew Sek, saying it’s been designed to unlock growth opportunities for startups and help them get their finances in… Read more »
Less than three years after listing on the US Nasdaq, Brisbane-based electric vehicle charging company Tritium has been placed in receivership in a spectacular collapse for the 23-year-old business. McGrathNicol Restructuring has appointed partners Shaun Fraser, Katherine Sozou, Matthew Hutton and Jamie Harris as receivers of Tritium DCFC Ltd (Nasdaq: DCFC), less than a day… Read more »
The New York-based cofounder of New Zealand subletting startup Kiki, Toby Thomas-Smith, is blunt in his own performance assessment. “When we launched Kiki.nyc last year I fucked up,” he’s written on LinkedIn, after the business shuttered its New York launch after 3 months, only to revive it late last month amid controversy over plans to… Read more »
StartSomeGood, the pioneering platform helping social entrepreneurs succeed, has been acquired by social innovation business General Good, founded by media entrepreneur Piers Grove. StartSomeGood CEO and cofounder Tom Dawkins said the strategic move will continue the commitment he started 13 years ago to building a social entrepreneurship movement, partnering with circular economy accelerator Boomerang Labs under… Read more »
Sydney startup Forage, which helps students move from study to the workforce with virtual job simulations, is being acquired by US education firm EAB. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Forage was founded in 2017 by Pasha Rayan and Tom Brunskill as InsideSherpa. They set out to help students from less advantaged backgrounds a… Read more »
There are a lot of people who this week are talking to their accountant about capital gains tax for the very first time. Canva confirmed on Friday that US$1.6 billion (A$2.43bn) worth of shares in the design software platform had changed hands in a secondary market sale, at a valuation of US$26 billion. The total… Read more »
Monogramed luxury fashion startup The Daily Edited (tde.) is back in voluntary administration, just 15 months after the brand was sold to former Myer boss Bernie Brookes. Marquee Retail Group (MRG), which scored tde.’s flagship store in Sydney’s Queen Victoria Building, when it bought the 10-year-old business in December 2022, handed the books to administrators… Read more »
National science agency CSIRO has allocated $20 million towards supporting startups and smaller companies with greater access to vital research and development (R&D) opportunities to accelerate their growth. Up to 750 small to medium enterprises (SMEs) will be supported under the banner of SME Connect via programs that provide facilitation, training, dollar-matched funding and support… Read more »
Design software platform Canva is fattening up for its public listing in 2026, acquiring UK professional graphic design and photo editing software business Affinity for an undisclosed sum. It’s believed to be the biggest outlay yet by Canva in a string of merger and acquisition deals in recent years, including fellow British data startup Flourish in… Read more »
Employee experience platform Culture Amp is acquiring a Serbian people analytics startup to broaden its capabilities The cost of the deal with Orgnostic, founded in Belgrade in 2019, was not disclosed. The analytics platform combines fragmented HR data to give leadership teams rapid insights into how their workforce is tracking. That data will be plugged… Read more »
The public listing of Canva will most likely happen in 2026 and won’t be on the ASX because Australia is a small market, according to the design software’s cofounder Cliff Obrecht. The husband of CEO and cofounder Melanie Perkins, named the 10th richest person in Australia, alongside his wife, with a combined wealth of $10.92 billion,… Read more »
The final cohort of startups with the potential to be worth $1 billion has been chosen by LaunchVic for its 30X30 mentoring program. 30X30 is a leadership program helps develop and mentor scaleup founders and their executive teams to build their companies – and hopefully reach unicorn status: a $1 billion valuation by 2030. The… Read more »
Hostplus says Employment Hero CEO Ben Thompson wants them to “pay to play” to promote the super fund on the employee platform, but they’ve turned it down because it’s “undisclosed advertising”. In a statement to Startup Daily in the wake of Thompson publishing the letter from Hostplus to fellow investor, VC fund Airtree, which called… Read more »
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