Issue #7 - Our first follow on investment, end of year event + new deals!
Hello 👋 and welcome to Issue #7 of Playbook Deal Flow!
It’s been a busy month on my end especially on the Playbook Angel Network side of things. We just closed out one of our biggest and most exciting deals yet, and are about to launch our first follow on investment (see the Memo section below for a sneak peak 👀 ).
If you want to see/get first access to the deals I’m personally investing in, and invest into early stage startups alongside an incredible community of founders, operators and investors, you can apply to join the Playbook Angel Network below:
We’re co-hosting an end of year celebration with our friends at Antler & Skalata in Melbourne on December 7th. Come along to mix, mingle, and toast to the year's journey with fellow founders, investors, and operators who shape the pulse of our ecosystem. Tickets are limited and you can grab them below:
And finally 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 #7 of Playbook Deal Flow!
The Deal Room
A quick note on this section: Unless explicitly stated, I haven’t invested personally or through Playbook Angel Network in these companies, the goal of this section of the newsletter is to share some great companies I’ve come across who are currently raising.
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 #7 👇
Threadlet
Threadlet is a platform that uses AI & ML to lower business energy costs and emissions
🤔 The Problem: Retailer's and broker's incentives are misaligned. Energy brokers recommend retailers with the biggest commissions. They want energy bills to be as high as possible.
🙌 The Solution: A platform that autoswitches business's energy accounts to the lowest price every month, for every site.
🔑 Key Team members:
Michael Koopman (CEO) - A career in the Australian Energy industry and startups. Founded a renewable energy micro-investment platform before starting Threadlet.
Tom Dempster (CTO) - Mechatronics engineer specialising in energy markets.
Rodrigo Garcia-Mulder (COO) - Worked in national and international sales. Previously worked in biotech and aquaculture.
🚀 Traction:
Working with companies like Betty's Burgers, Domino's and Lord of the Fries to automatically reduce their energy costs by $20-$50k per year.
Crossed $1M ARR mark in June.
< 1% churn (net negative churn).
Positive net dollar retention.
😇 The Ask: Raising a pre-seed round to expand the team and launch the next product to continue reducing energy costs and emissions.
Outread
Outread simplifies cutting-edge research for businesses and individuals, using AI to distill complex research publications into key insights.
🤔 The Problem: Research papers drive innovation, but the research ecosystem is fragmented with no aggregation.
🙌 The Solution: AI-enabled platform that streamlines the research process by finding relevant papers, extracting key information, and organising the information into concepts.
🔑 Key Team members:
Janhvi Sirohi (CEO) - 2nd-time co-founder with a background in natural language processing and experience working as a consultant at PwC.
Dhruv Sirohi (CTO) - Full-stack developer.
Anshika Singh (CPO) - Experienced graphic designer and branding consultant to startups in the fashion, events and education space.
🚀 Traction:
300+ customers, $40k ARR in <4 months
Pilot with KPMG underway
Went through Techstars & AWS genAI accelerator
😇 The Ask: Raising a pre-seed round to continue building out the product and close first 5 enterprise customers.
Want to have your startup featured in a future issue of Playbook Deal Flow? Get in touch here
The Memo:
Last edition I gave a sneak peak of our latest deal in the preventative health space that we launched through Playbook Angel Network. We were blown away (but not surprised) by the level of interest from our syndicate of angel investors as well as readers of this newsletter. Many of you jumped in the on the deal and it was one of our biggest yet! We have some equally exciting news to share this edition!
Earlier this year we backed a company in the healthcare space at the pre-seed stage. We built conviction and backed them before they even had a product. Safe to say we’ve been blown away by the speed of execution from the team.
They’ve already hit $1.5m+ ARR and all their 2023 milestones 5 months ahead of schedule. They are now raising their Series A to accelerate growth with their lead (international) investor locked in and expect the round to be wrapped up shortly. It’s no mean feat to achieve this, particularly given the market conditions at the moment, but it speaks volumes of the company, the founders and their execution to date.
Part of the value of getting in early on deals like this is that we get to double down on companies taking off with our pro-rata rights negotiated at the earliest stages of the company.
We’re excited to share our first follow on investment with angel investors in our syndicate. If you want to make sure you don’t miss out on deals like this in the future, 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)
Startup lender Kashcade banks $5.5 million raise (Startup Daily)
Marketing AI start-up valued at $75m after raising $9.5m (AFR)
Plastics reduction startup Phantm lands $2 million Seed round (Startup Daily)
After selling his tech firm for $1.6b, Leigh Jasper is starting again (AFR)
Square Peg backs expat Australian’s Facebook alternative for Gen Z in $4 million Seed round (Startup Daily)
Proptech startup Happly banks $1.75 million Seed round (Startup Daily)
Coach Welly Secures Pre-Seed Funding, Valuing Company at $4.25 Million (LinkedIn)
Medtech Heidi Health raises $10 million Series A (Startup Daily)
$1.2m for start-up that helps brands ditch plastic cards (AFR)
HR and outsourcing startup Outstaffer lands $1.5 million in first raise (Startup Daily)
Investible backs manufacturing software startup Factory.app’s $1 million Seed round (Startup Daily)
Re-Seeded: Tidal backs renewables startup Orkestra again in new $2 million raise (Startup Daily)
The Stash:
Each edition I’ll share a few resources that I found useful.
📰 VC news:
LaunchVic is offering $300,000 cheques to VCs to get them to set up shop in Victoria. (Startup Daily)
Indigenous-led impact fund First Australians Capital lands $3 milllion from US fintech Block (Startup Daily)
The $1.3b fund targeting Aussie start-up founders (AFR)
📝 Blog Posts:
The Halo Effect - Ben Armstrong (AirTree)
And that’s time on Issue #7! 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
This information is provided by Playbook Ventures Pty Ltd (ACN 661 102 825), Playbook Ventures Pty Ltd is a corporate authorised representative (CAR No. 1302084) of GXE Fund Services Pty Ltd (ACN 162 966 609, AFSL 460870). This information has been prepared by Playbook Ventures Pty Ltd and it is for general information purposes only and is not intended to promote or recommend any particular product or services offered by GXE or Playbook Ventures Pty Ltd. This information does not take into account the objectives, financial situation or needs of any investor. Before making an investment decision, investors should read the relevant offer document and (if appropriate) seek professional advice to determine whether the investment is suitable for them. This information is intended only for wholesale clients within the meaning of s761G and s761GA of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth).