Did you miss us? We spent last month heads down completing deals and launching new features at TEN13 as we round out 2021.
We've had some exciting wins in November with Chipper Cash becoming Africa's most valuable startup after raising US$150m led by FTX. Mr Yum has raised one of Australia's largest Series A rounds raising $US65m led by Tiger Global with us participating in our third investment round through TEN13. Plus adding new investments that we are stoked to share publicly as well.
A reminder about who we are:
We're building out Australia & New Zealand's largest syndicated venture capital platform, with 390+ investors made up of early employees, execs, and founders of some of the world's most exciting companies.
If you are excited about investing in global startup companies alongside us and our investors then you can sign up here (AUS/NZ Sophisticated investors only).
Africa's Most Valuable Startup - Chipper Cash Raises US$150m at US$2b from FTX
We're excited to share that Chipper Cash has officially become an elusive 'unicorn' being valued at US$2bn in their latest Series C extension round of USD$150m. The funding round was highly strategic being led by Alameda Research LLC, the investment arm of the leading Crypto platform FTX (last valued at US$18bn).
This marks our second unicorn at TEN13 in our first two years with Go1reaching this milestone only 6 months ago.
Mr Yum Raises US$65m Led by Tiger Global
Just over 12 months ago we led Mr Yum's Seed round backing the awesome founders Kim Teo, Adrian Osman, Kerry Osborn & Andrei Miulescu.
We've seen this team grow from 20 -> 120 in a year, support the hospo industry to handle consistent lockdowns, launch into 2 major markets (US & UK), release market-leading features (and more to come), and overall be a joy to work with.
This week, they announced their record-setting AU$89m Series A and we couldn't be happier to continue to support them for the third time through TEN13.
This team is building something special, we're excited to be part of the journey - Hugs not handshakes!
Want to know more about their journey? Kim Teo (CEO and Co-Founder) wrote about what their Series A means to them here.
Welcoming Our New Investments
Payhippo Raises US$3m Seed Round
When we launched TEN13, we never imagined being an Australian centric VC, for us it was always helping Australian and New Zealand investors to gain access and invest in the most exciting emerging tech companies globally.
Having invested in Chipper Cash and Imalipay earlier in the year in Africa, we see the same huge opportunity with the value being created with Payhippoproviding SME and Medium-Size businesses in Nigeria with speedy credit opportunities.
Preezie Raises $5.5m for Retail Experience 2.0
Customers want and expect better digital shopping and increasingly, personalised experiences. Preezie is helping e-commerce customers compete globally by raising the bar and delivering on these expectations. We're excited to be co-investing alongside our friends at Touch Ventures.
The Preezie platform is currently utilising guided selling, data driven insights and behavioural science to empower over 700,000 individualised shopping experiences every month.
Pushas Raises $2m Pre-Seed For Hype Liquidity
We met Justin from PUSHAS from an introduction through our Head of Platform Doug when we were doing due diligence on another company. Justin instantly impressed the team, so when they were looking to raise a round having bootstrapped thus far, it was an easy decision to dive in.
PUSHAS is Australia's leading sneaker marketplace and provides software tooling for sneaker resellers. They've launched a world-first liquidity function to provide resellers with instant liquidity which is underwritten by the PUSHAS Sneaker Fund – the world’s first sneaker investment vehicle – which has risen in value by 52.8% growth since its inception 12 months ago.
Heaps Normal raises $8.5m to fuel growth
Zero alcohol craft brewer Heaps Normal has raised $8.5 million in capital from a range of investors including Ordinary Equity, Athletic Ventures, Adore Beauty founder Kate Morris and the co-founder of eco toilet paper outfit Who Gives a Crap, Simon Griffiths.
Heaps Normal Funding Announcment
TEN13 Runway Conference & Christmas Party
Every year we love celebrating our wins and lessons learned with the rest of the ecosystem.
This year we gathered 150+ of our portfolio founders, investors, and community leaders for our Runway Conference, talking through the entire startup journey from pre-seed to exit.
Then we wrapped up an amazing year with 400+ community members including Christmas festivities and dancing (thanks Kite String Tangle!)
Thank you to our sponsors BDO, AWS for Startups, PFG (Partners for Growth), McCullough Robertson & Radium Capital.
Investment Notes
Flight Plan #011 - Have we got your attention: Our investment in Amplified Intelligence
We are happy to release our investment notes for Amplified Intelligence which we announced earlier in the year. We led the $3m seed round into Amplified as it leads a new category defining attention metrics in advertising.
Billions of dollars are spent on the major platforms such as Google and Facebook based on impressions and CPM (Cost per thousand ad impressions) as the core metric, yet the quality of those impressions is hard to measure. The question to be asked is whether a human is actually seeing and paying attention to the content or advert across platforms and the effectiveness of each impression.
This insight comes from real industry depth, Professor Nelson-Field is a Media Professor at the University of Adelaide, author, and a globally renowned thought leader in advertising measurement and effectiveness. Her research has led her to the conclusion that ad impressions, eyeballs, and other advertising metrics are ineffective descriptors of advertising impact. Her thesis was that the 'atomic units' or measurement metrics of advertising - the global benchmarks in which the US$450bn in global digital advertising is spent and measured are wrong.
And Amplified has set out to change this across this massive industry. Read on below...
Flight Plan #012 - Personalised Shopping: Our Investment in Preezie
If you've been to a high-end retailer to buy a big-ticket item, you'll know the value of an experienced sales rep. They'll make you feel welcome, ask insightful questions, educate you on the products before providing thoughtful and tailored recommendations that meet your requirements.
Now contrast that with the modern e-commerce shopping experience where you usually are left with a search bar, a myriad of filters, and poor, impersonal search results. Preezie wants to change this and enable brands to empower shopping experiences based on personalisation, bringing the sales rep experience online.
Read the full investment notes here.
More Portfolio News!
Vitruvian Announces Trainer+
Vitruvian has announced the next evolution of its hardware with more smoother weight transitions and a new locking system that gets you moving quicker and lifting more. Check it out in their shop.
Mr Yum on why you shouldn’t take culture for granted – especially during a pandemic
It’s been quite a year for Mr Yum. Some would call it crazy, but in the vein of their company mantra “think 10x”, they launched into the US and UK simultaneously earlier this year.
To say on the back of their US$65m raise it has been a success would be an understatement? But how did they do it? Leading by example and building an amazing team that simply loves to work there and embodies their company mantra "Here to serve".
Read more about scaling culture here.
Linktree Partners with Shopify
Our Transition Level Investments portfolio company Linktree announcedtheir integration with Shopify!
Merchants can now directly list items on their Linktree links and direct them to a Shopify store front.
Don't have a Linktree yet? Join ten's of millions of users here.
Carted looks towards the future of Commerce
The future of commerce is not all about building a new reality. It’s about building new experiences around people’s existing reality.
The era in which we are now, coined as Commerce 3.0, is about creating the infrastructure that allows for the seamless integration of commerce into relevant contextual experiences for shoppers — think social commerce, conversational commerce, voice shopping, live shopping, and more.
Holly from Carted breaks it down here.
Stone & Chalk Australian Startup Salary Guide
Now in its third iteration, this guide collates data from over 140 companies spanning 3,000 positions together with market insights.
We always enjoy working with the Think & Grow team and our portfolio companies to contribute to the report.
You can download the guide here.
Roles in our portfolio
🎥 Delegate Connect is hiring across all departments. Design, Accounts, Producers, Marketing, Mobile and Ruby Engineers.
💰 Chipper Cash is hiring across all departments. Product, Compliance, Engineering, Marketing, Growth, and more.
🍔 Mr Yum is hiring roles across the UK, US and Australia.
✏️ Drawboard is hiring Account Executives & C# Developers in their Melbourne HQ.
👩🏻🏫 Go1 is picking up pace to revolutionise corporate training and education and are hiring in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane & Salt Lake City.
🛒Carted is hiring designers, Go Engineers & React developers.
📒 Bookipi is hiring Growth Marketers, Operations Associate and Data Analysts.
Start investing with TEN13
We are always looking for new investors to join us at TEN13, if you're interested you can begin the signup process and receive our info pack by signing up on our website. Sophisticated Investors only
At this point, we can currently only accept Sophisticated Investors (that are Australian & New Zealand residents).
Start investing here.
Disclaimer: TEN13 Management Pty Ltd ACN 634 071 579 (TEN13) is a corporate authorised representative (CAR No 1276658) of Lanterne Fund Services Pty Ltd (ACN 098 472 587, AFSL 238198) (Lanterne) and is authorised to provide advisory and dealing services in connection with TEN13 to wholesale clients only.