When we started TEN13, we formed a thesis around providing investors with access to quality venture capital deals on a deal-by-deal basis. We are proud to have invested in 12 rounds of funding and 10 new companies in the last 12 months with our ever-growing investor base.
We particularly appreciate the continued support from our investor network which is now 180 strong around Australia and New Zealand.
What is TEN13?
TEN13 is Australia’s largest venture syndicate investing in technology startups and fuelling ambitious founders as their early backers. We back global startups with a core focus on Australia, New Zealand, the US and Africa with cheque size ranging from $250k — $5 million.
We were founded by Steve Baxter and Stew Glynn, and have alignment on each deal with our dedicated investment and operations team as well Steve’s personal capital supporting each deal.
What’s in the name ‘TEN13’?
TEN13 stands for 1,013 hectopascals which is the setting on an aircraft altimeter when it gets to flight levels, ready to go high and fast. This is the time we want to join the founder journey, backing ambitious founders (aka pilots) on their flights into the jet stream. TEN13 provides fuel for the journey and we’re happy to jump on board at the earliest of stages.
It’s our goal to be there through all parts of the trip whether it’s clear blue skies or helping navigate the inevitable storms.
Fuelling Founders
Thus the introduction of our tagline of “Fuelling Founders” to help build the world’s most ambitious and exciting companies of tomorrow.
Network-based investing:
We’re referring to our investment strategy as network-based investing and we believe strongly that the deeper our network, the:
- More value we can add to our portfolio companies through our aligned investors that provide not only capital but advice, experience, and opening of doors; &
- More founders we will meet from our wide network of entrepreneurs, investors and partners.
This is why we have pursued a hybrid model between angel groups and traditional VC funds. TEN13 sits in the middle, combining the value of a VC to each portfolio company with our dedicated team and network, one line item on the cap table with the added depth of a valuable network sitting behind the capital.
So, what did we achieve in our first year?
💰 Over $10m in venture funds deployed
💸 12 rounds of funding (incl. 2 follow-ons)
🌍 3 countries — HQs in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Dallas, LA, San Francisco, & Lagos
💫 100% of last 6 deals — incl. female founder or PoC founder
✌️ 180 investors on the platform
Welcome aboard TEN13.vc
As investors, we encourage Australian startups to be global from day one. For a lot of businesses, the Australian market is not large enough to build the billion-dollar companies we look for in venture investing. We believe this theory applies to investment for Australian venture firms as well which is why we are happy to cast a wider net and is evident with our investments this year in companies operating out of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas & Lagos.
We’re looking to support the world’s most exciting founding teams and companies and are not constrained by investment mandates or structures on what we can invest in, thus our reach is broad on geography but focussed on our favoured thesis areas.
That’s why we are shifting our communications to TEN13.vc as our domain this year to support this vision of being a globally relevant venture platform. All our TEN13.com.au links and emails will continue to work!
Focus Areas:
We love the fact that transitioning to TEN13 we’ve received such great investor support, it's allowed us to remain sector agnostic. There continue to be focus areas that fit our expertise, where we can provide more value from experience, which is reflected in our existing portfolio.
Product led — Bottoms-up SaaS, building the organic flywheel
- Clipchamp helps you create and edit beautiful videos with music and stock footage in the browser to over 13m customers.
- Linktree (TLI portfolio) is the only link you will ever need. Allowing you to show your audience multiple channels and use analytics to give insight on how they are getting there. Used by some of the biggest brands and celebrities on the planet.
API — Plumbing of the internet, the silent warriors connecting the world’s data
- Carted is the future of commerce a universal way to shop online. Where any picture is a purchasable product.
- Wonde (TLI portfolio) allows schools to manage their data effectively. Helping give teachers, students and administrators easy access to what they need, when they need it.
Work tools — World of work has changed along with the tools we need to work and live
- Drawboard makes pdf editing and sharing easy. From construction to musicians.
- Bookipi is a simple, no fuss, no bullshit bookkeeping tool.
- Vervoe helps you hire faster and with less bias.
Payments — At some stage, every startup becomes a fintech, clip-the-ticket and win
- Mr Yum lets you create beautiful menus and couples it with simple QR ordering (now with tabs!)
Emerging markets — Bringing disruptive business models and technology to frontier markets with fast-growing economies and vibrant demographies
- Chipper Cash is a mobile money platform for Africa, allowing businesses and users to transfer money cross-border.
- ImaliPay gives access to gig workers to business-related loans and expenses.
Disruptive — Whether it be cryptocurrency, eComm, DTC health — we think of category creation and disruptive new business models
- Vurbl gives power back to the creators to monetise their audio libraries with over 2m pieces of content from famous speeches, earnings calls, podcasts and music.
- (You?) We’ve actively been looking at the perfect opportunity in this space. If you’re working on solving problems in this area please get in touch!
Buckle your seatbelts and get ready for take-off:
While we may continue to be landlocked in Australia in 2021. We are still aiming high and for new targets this year.
2021 Destinations:
We deployed $10m in our first year of operations, and are looking to invest $20m+ this year, placing us as one of the most active early venture investment firms in Australia & New Zealand.
Seed: We continue to search for and invest in the most exciting technology companies at the early stage, in 2021 we will look to invest in 8–10 new pre-seed & seed companies investing between $250k — $2m depending on round and stage.
Follow-on and later stage (Series A+): We are looking to provide access to later-stage companies with increased investment cheques targetting ~5 follow-ons and later stage cheques ($1.0 — $5.0m cheque size). We look forward to continuing to support our existing portfolio and satisfy investor demand for the enduring support of exciting companies as they progress in maturity.
If you’re a founder looking at investment pre-seed to Series A within our playing field, we would love to chat.
New Investment Offerings:
1. Welcoming Family Offices
We’re excited to continue welcoming some of Australia’s most prominent family offices’ to TEN13, many of whom have expressed interest in securing larger allocations in fast-growing technology companies.
If you run or manage a single / multi-family office, are an institutional syndicate of wholesale investors or are a wealth advisor, we would love to talk about our upcoming opportunities. Please reach out to us here.
2. Rolling in Commitments
We have heard from a wide array of investors that there is an appetite to support every deal of ours at TEN13 instead of deal-by-deal. We are exploring what structures and models could work to enable this to ensure allocation in each deal. More to come on this.
The Engine:
1. Creating Scalable Investor Infrastructure
We made the strategic decision not to build another platform with logins you never remember, this doesn’t mean we are not building to scale.
We’ve invested heavily in a flexible back-end to enable us to create a scalable deal-by-deal investment firm from early-on. This allows us to streamline the onboarding of our valuable investors, manage holdings and investments, complete reporting, review our deal pipeline, etc.
2. Investor Onboarding
As some newer investors have seen we have implemented a better flow in our initial signup to their first investment process. This has allowed us to get more information into the hands of future investors and get them onboarded faster so they don’t miss out on future deals. We’ve already seen onboarding times reduced by 70% with this change and hope to optimise it further in Q1 this year.
If you are a sophisticated investor and looking to invest in emerging early-stage technology companies — sign up here.
And more:
Events: We hope that with continued containment of COVID-19 in Australia & NZ, that we can look to travel interstate this year. If so, stay tuned if your investors or founders in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and wider. This will go a long way to helping connect and build a thriving investor community.
Education: As we invest more in companies and our investor network we realise there is a gap in investor and fundamental founder education that needs to be filled. We’ve been working hard on producing in-demand video content to fill this gap in the market and look forward to bringing it to our investors and the wider venture community next year.
Merch! Surprisingly one of the most requested products is merchandise. Rest assured 2021 is going to be a big year for this at TEN13 as well. Some of our members have already seen the first sneak peek of our jackets, this is only the beginning of a greater onboarding experience we are planning to delight our investors with.
Team
Newest Team Member
We’re excited to welcome our newest member Gretta to the team. Gretta has been working with Margot over the last few months on onboarding and compliance-based out of Manilla. Gretta has multiple years of experience in the administration & KYC/AML space and has been an extremely valuable resource as part of our finance and operations team.
Content
We wanted to highlight some of the amazing content coming out of our portfolio companies last year.
- Chipper Cash raises $30m Series B from Jeff Bezos
- Clipchamp gains 5m users as video surges.
- Mr Yum founder Kim Teo talks Food & Bev and the story of Mr Yum through lockdown
- DoseMe founder Rob McLeay talks about investing back in startups through TEN13 after his exit.
- Vurbl launches its platform with over 25 million pieces of audio.
- Invoicing is F&*king boring with Bookipi.
- Vervoe extensive recruitment guides on landing the perfect hire.
- How Hassel Architects is using Drawboard to keep connected.
- Clipchamp talks — Hiring & building world-class teams.
- Climb into 2021 with Vurbl’s ambient beats to listen too.
Touchdown:
Thanks for reading our Flight Plan for 2021, it’s going to be a massive year with lots of exciting projects being explored.
We continue to aim high and encourage all founders to launch this year. We can’t wait to fuel your ambition. If you are a founder, send us a note (invest@ten13.vc)
If you are a sophisticated investor and looking to invest in emerging early-stage technology companies — sign up here.
Safe Travels,
Doug Oliver