Issue #4 - PAN launch, fundraising announcements and 3 new deals!
Hello 👋 and welcome to Issue #4 of Playbook Deal Flow!
I hope you had a fantastic holiday period and came back feeling recharged and ready for a big 2023!
Like many of you, 2022 was full of ups and downs, but one of the biggest highlights on a personal level was launching The Playbook Angel Network, our investment syndicate, last year.
In a few short months we completed investments into 4 deals (50% led by female founders), welcomed 45+ investors to our network and in November hosted a launch party with 100+ incredible angels, founders and VCs. A big thank you to all the legends who helped us celebrate on the night and to those who reached out to join our network since the last edition of Playbook Deal Flow!
Our launch party was just the start however, with our 5th deal now live (sneak peak later in this edition 👀)! Needless to say, we're very active and looking for more great startups to join our portfolio and angels to join our community.
If you want to see the deals I’m personally investing in, and invest deal-by-deal into early stage startups alongside an incredible community of founders, operators and investors, you can apply to join the Playbook Angel Network below:
And if you are joining us for the first time, welcome! If you enjoy what you are reading, please consider subscribing to ensure that you don’t miss a future issue of the newsletter below:
Before getting into the meat of this newsletter, I wanted to share a disclaimer that this newsletter is not here to provide financial, legal or investment advice of any kind. All of the information presented in this newsletter comes directly from the founder(s) and you should always do your own Due Diligence before making an investment
With all that said, let’s get into Issue #4 of Playbook Deal Flow!
The Deal Room
Each edition I’ll share details of a few companies that are currently fundraising. If you would like more information or want to connect with the teams, hit the “request an intro” button…I always do double-opt in intros…
Here are the companies selected for Issue #4 👇
Ren
Ren is a digital health app that provides parents with support and evidence-based guidance to navigate emotional & behavioural challenges, and safeguard their children's lifelong mental health.
🤔 The Problem: 47% of parents consider social and emotional development the most important area of their child’s development, but it’s the area they feel least equipped to support. There is so much research in this area, but it isn't being made understandable and accessible for everyday parents.
🙌 The Solution: Digital health app that provides parents with support and evidence-based guidance to navigate emotional & behavioural challenges to help safeguard kids' lifelong mental health and reduce family-related stress & burnout.
🔑 Key Team members:
Dr Jo Dennison (Co-Founder) - Registered psychologist - Founded award-winning psychology business (10yrs) - Board member (6yrs), with AICD qualifications - Executive advisor - Experience managing statewide treatment programs - Government behavioural change advisor (3+yrs) - Accredited in 4 evidence-based parenting programs.
Jess Tassell (Co-founder) - International CMO StubHub ($6B US online marketplace) - Expert advisor to Tidal VC portfolio companies - 10yrs management consulting (EY, in Aus & USA).
🚀 Traction: Launched a beta in August, with a closed group of parents. 63% of users asked questions to Ren's parenting experts, 96% said Ren positively influenced how they engaged with their child, 88% signed up to launch waitlist. Plans to launch MVP in April 2023 (in the US).
😇 The Ask: Raising Pre-Seed round: $1.2M SAFE note on a with $7M valuation cap and 20% discount. They have secured a lead US investor and looking to close out the round to further build the team, community and finalise the build of the MVP.
MedaData
MedaData software provides clinicians with personalised, context-aware medication recommendations to reduce the frequency and severity of prescribing errors.
🤔 The Problem:
When prescribing medication, clinicians are required to do a great deal of research and visit multiple tools, costing time, money and being prone to error. Prescribing and monitoring errors contribute to nearly 60% of all medication errors which result in terrible patient outcomes and are a massive economic burden. 2.4 million Australians have experienced an adverse medication event in the last 12 months resulting in 250,000 additional hospital admissions, costing $1.4B. 98% of patients in aged care facilities have at least 1 medication error and the impact to the US healthcare system is ~$528B a year.
🙌 The Solution:
The MedaData platform extracts non-identifiable patient information from existing practice management software (PMS), overlays it with best practice medical guidelines and our internal algorithm, to determine the best medication pathway for that patient. This reduces the risk of incorrect drug prescribing and saves clinicians time, improving overall patient outcomes and reducing the financial burden on the healthcare system.
🔑 Key Team members:
Siobhan Kelliher (Co-Founder) - Experience navigating health regulation working with the TGA - Completed Masters in Pharmacy at the University of Sydney - Worked across multiple areas of pharmacy, including hospital & community settings and within the pharmaceutical industry experiencing the problem firsthand.
Brock Ford (Co-Founder) - Commercial strategist with experience across the finance, insurance and risk management sectors - Post-grad qualifications in data science from the University of New South Wales.
🚀 Traction:
Early traction of the MVP has been very positive, with evidence of return users. They have received a $20k sponsorship from a global pharmaceutical company, for the maintenance and upkeep of this tool
Letter's of Intent for 3 clinics and >50 clinicians, with 4 more clinics on the way
Awarded the Startup of the Year award at conclusion of the LuminaX Health Accelerator Program
Founders nominated for the 2022 Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award
😇 The Ask:
$450k Pre-Seed round on a $2.5M pre-money valuation to expand from MVP to full stack software.
Want to have your startup featured in a future issue of Playbook Deal Flow? Get in touch here
The Memo:
Regular readers of the newsletter will know that in this section we usually go deeper into a company (usually one I’m investing in!). However the company I wanted to feature has asked to keep things under wraps until the official announcement comes out in a few weeks…
What I can tell you is that this is right in the sweet spot of what we look to invest in at the Playbook Angel Network.
When we started 6 months ago, we wanted to leverage our relationships and networks to win allocation into the best pre-seed companies built by incredible founders AND we wanted to get in at the earliest possible stage…and that’s exactly what our next deal is.
The founder of this company went through a large acquisition of his previous company 2-3 years ago and he’s taking the same executive team, existing partner relationships and playbook but going after a much bigger opportunity than his last company in an adjacent vertical.
They’re raising their first funding round and has secured a tier 1 VC as their lead investor who are taking a vast majority of this round alongside some high profile angel investors. Due to our relationship with the founders, we have been able to secure allocation into this highly competitive round.
If you want more details on this deal, or want to invest through our network, you can apply to join below.
The Folio:
Each issue I’ll share some recent funding announcements from the previous month (Note: This is by no means an exhaustive list)
Ethical investment app Bloom (Featured in issue #3 of Playbook Deal Flow!) lands $525k in seed funding for its anti-greenwashing platform (SmartCompany)
Fintech partner software startup Aerotruth lands $1.3M in Seed funding (Startup Daily)
Healthtech startup Vively raises $1.5M in Pre-Seed to tackle blood sugar levels (Startup Daily)
Bill Gates, Twiggy Forrest back livestock emissions reduction startup Rumin8 in $17M Seed top up (Startup Daily)
Top VCs back pregnant founder’s angel investing platform (AFR)
Kiwi car parts startup Partly banks record $NZ37M Series A (Startup Daily)
Urban analytics startup Neighbourlytics raises $1.3M in Pre-Series A (Startup Daily)
ESG startup FairSupply raises $6.3M Series A to tackle corporate greenwashing (Startup Daily)
Canberra 3D printing startup Syenta lands $3.7M Seed round to revolutionise electronics manufacturing (Startup Daily)
‘My Health Record for pets’ startup Vedi scores $3M treat to go global (Startup Daily)
Employee wellbeing startup Foremind raises $200k for construction industry mental health support (Startup Daily)
The Stash:
Each edition I’ll share a few resources that I found useful.
📰 VC news:
Blackbird and Airtree reveal six VC funding insights for 2023 (SmartCompany)
Square Peg value jumps despite tech correction (AFR)
Aussie VCs ready for the next tech boom: Generative AI (AFR)
“It’s still a good time for pre-seed”: 3 experts on the state of capital right now (Startup Daily)
Atlassian, Canva, Culture Amp founders back new Startmate fund (AFR)
Australian VCs went earlier and smaller with deals in 2022 (AFR)
And that’s time on Issue #4! Thanks so much for reading The Playbook Deal Flow and for making it all the way to the end.
I would love to hear from you to see how I can make this newsletter more valuable for you:
👂I would love to hear feedback on what you loved, what you wanted to see change/improve and what you would like to see in future issues of The Playbook Deal Flow. If you have a spare 3mins, I would appreciate it if you could fill out this brief survey.
👋 Feel free to reach out if you want to connect. You can find me at rohit@startupplaybook.co or on Twitter & LinkedIn
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See you at the next issue!
Cheers,
Rohit Bhargava, Playbook Deal Flow