Issue #9 - First follow on investment, new deal & Rolling Fund
Hello 👋 and welcome to Issue #9 of Playbook Deal Flow! We have a lot of exciting announcements in today’s newsletter!
Big congrats to Mark Woodland and the Kismet team on announcing their US$8.2 million (A$12.6m) Seed round. Playbook Ventures was an investor in both the Pre-Seed & Seed rounds! (SmartCompany)
2 new deals and a sneak peak of our next Playbook Ventures deal (that’s currently live) in the memo section below 👀
And announcing the next exciting evolution of Playbook Ventures.
Btw if this is your first time coming across the Playbook Deal Flow newsletter, welcome!
The purpose of this newsletter is to help connect the dots between some great companies looking for capital and angel investors/VCs looking for deal flow.
If you would like to get deals sent to your inbox every month, subscribe to this newsletter below so you don’t miss out!
Evolution of Playbook Ventures
Long time readers of this newsletter would know we’ve been investing in some phenomenal early stage startups as a deal-by-deal syndicate for the past ~18 months via Playbook Ventures. In this period we’ve had some great success with our 7 portfolio companies to date including:
the acquisition of the first company we invested
investment into Kismet’s pre-seed round in March 2023 and follow-on in their US$8.2 million (A$12.6m) Seed round. Check out my podcast interview with Kismet Co-Founder & CEO, Mark Woodland here
winning allocation into highly competitive rounds, such as one recently which had 3x the amount of committed interest for the size of their round
We’ve had consistent feedback from our investors that they love the deals we put forward but don’t always have time/bandwidth to do their own DD, and have on occasions missed out on deals because they were travelling or tied up with their own business!
Some of the investors in our network have asked if they can pre-commit capital and get exposure to every deal we invest in and off the back of this feedback we’re excited to be launching the Playbook Ventures Rolling Fund to invest in more great Pre-Seed and Seed stage deals!
We have some exciting details of investors in the Rolling Fund that we will be able to share over the next few weeks (watch this space!) but if you are interested in learning more about the Rolling Fund, please drop your details below and we’ll get in touch!
Playbook Ventures Sydney Dinner
We’ve hosted a number of small intimate dinners in Melbourne over the past 18 months and they’ve all received amazing feedback. There’s something special that happens when you bring together a group of phenomenal founders, investors & operators over great food and wine.
We’re excited to be hosting our first Sydney dinner on Wednesday 10th April. Places are very limited so if you’re interested in attending, register your interest below and we’ll reach out if there are any spots left.
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 #9 of Playbook Deal Flow!
The Deal Room
A quick note on this section: Unless explicitly stated, I haven’t invested personally or through Playbook Ventures 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 #9 👇
OPO
Platform to help built environment professionals measure, monitor and report on nature across the worlds 10,000 cities.
🤔 The Problem: 70% of the global population will live in cities by 2050 causing further rapid urbanisation, deforestation, loss of biodiversity and rising temperatures. Global and national policies are shifting towards reporting on the state of nature linked with land management. Yet built environment professionals don’t have a way to easily access data quickly and at a low cost.
🙌 The Solution: Access to Nature Data at the touch of a button - Powered by AI. A B2B SaaS product which helps built environment professionals to make quick, quantifiable decisions by reducing the cost, and time it takes to understand metrics, insights and actions for a project site.
🔑 Key Team members:
Thomas Gooch - Founder/CEO - Previously worked at the City of Melbourne as a senior landscape architect
Luke Wallace - Lead Earth Scientist
Annie Fergusson - Product Manager
Ray Yamamoto Hilton - Lead Software Engineer
🚀 Traction: 18 sales, $385k revenue
😇 The Ask: Raising a Pre-Seed round to build out product and UK expansion
The Separation Guide
Divorce is more than just a personal problem, it is a societal problem that impacts government, employers, super funds and health funds.
🤔 The Problem: Divorce is a complex and costly process that affects millions of people every year. The traditional legal system is slow, expensive, and often adversarial, leading to high levels of stress and dissatisfaction for all parties involved.
🙌 The Solution: A platform providing a range of tools and resources to help clients and professionals navigate the legal, financial, and emotional aspects of separation.
🔑 Key Team members:
Angela Harbinson (CEO & Co-founder) - Passionate, insights-led strategic leader with career experience across CX, marketing & digital in the legal and finance sectors
🚀 Traction: Achieved almost 50% YoY growth and now on track for $1M+ ARR (pre-investment). Secured a range of partnerships with leading legal and financial professionals, with a growing pipeline of SQL opportunities worth $17.9M+.
😇 The Ask: Raising a round of funding to support growth and expansion plans.
Want to have your startup featured in a future issue of Playbook Deal Flow? Get in touch here
The Memo:
For this edition I wanted to give a sneak peak of a deal we are currently running for investors through the Playbook Ventures syndicate
The company is a B2B organisation-specific profiling SaaS platform, helping elite sports teams use objective event data to identify, manage and develop talent. It was developed in part with the founder’s PhD and through his time as the Lead Recruitment and Data Analyst at a top English Premier League (EPL) Football Club.
Although the initial focus is in sports given the founders background, connections and the market opportunity within this segment (with the product already generating revenue from Tier 1 customers in the English Premier League and the AFL). The long-term vision is to continue to develop the product from within professional sport and then take best practice profiling analytics back to HR in more commercial settings (HR tech is a $30+ billion industry, and growing).
We've gotten to know the founder over the last few months and have been impressed not just by their domain expertise and background, but also by their ability to get buy-in from key people within the industry as customers, advisors or team members.
This Seed round is led by a European VC fund backed by a collective of some of the most prominent athletes in global sport including Formula 1, Football and Boxing. We’re excited to have won allocation in this competitive and oversubscribed round for our investors.
To get all the details on this deal, and to invest alongside an incredible community of founders, operators and investors, you can apply to join the Playbook Angel Network below:
The Folio:
Each issue I share some recent funding announcements from this month. (Note: This is by no means an exhaustive list).
Kismet announces their US$8.2 million (A$12.6m) Seed round. Playbook Ventures was an investor in both the Pre-Seed & Seed rounds! (SmartCompany)
Wellbeing expert advice marketplace Anni has banked $1 million in a Seed raise just five months after launching (Startup Daily)
Cybersecurity startup Nullify locks in $5.2 million Seed round for US launch (Startup Daily)
Voly co-founder’s new antique e-commerce platform Bazaa raises $650,000 pre-seed (SmartCompany)
Korean hangover drink Bae Juice sculls $1 million for US push (Startup Daily)
The Stash:
Each edition I’ll share a few resources that I found useful.
One of the big reasons Playbook Ventures exists as it does today is thanks to support from LaunchVic. They’re currently offering grants to help set up angel networks to back Victorian startups, more details here.
Queensland has opened 2 grant programs for women founders, worth up to $200,000 a pop (Startup Daily)
LaunchVic has picked the final 10 startups it thinks have unicorn potential in the 30×30 program (Startup Daily)
📰 VC news:
Australia has its first tech ‘unicorn’ in two years (AFR)
Square Peg touts billion-dollar returns as it hits up market for $843m (AFR)
And that’s time on Issue #9! 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).