Biggest stories from October & November 2022 Plenty of fresh powder to deploy

• Last time we spoke it was: EVP, RealVC, Telstra Ventures and Our Innovation Fund (total $800m)
• Since then there has been Square Peg (US$550m) and Blackbird ($1 Billion) which is now Australia’s biggest ever VC fund
• At Blackbird’s Sunrise festival, there were debate over the size of the funds and amount of dry powder vs the market conditions and deployment rate There are a few shiny capital raise stars
• Seed stage: Sauce raised $2.3m as a “mission control room” for product managers (startup founder flywheel, they are ex Atlassian and SafetyCulture)
• Series A: BuildKite raised $21m and Darwinium raised $10m tackling identity fraud (founders previously built cybersecurity firm ThreatMetrix which sold for $1b in 2018.
• Growth stage: Vow raised $49.2m and Ofload raised $60m for their digital freight platform to name a few ASX M&A heating up
• Elmo HRTech software agreed to sell for $500m to Los Angeles-based K1 Investment Management
• Nitro board supporting a $500m bid to US-based KKR’s Alludo. Still unsure if a bidding war is coming with another suitor
• Given the decline in Aussie dollar, Alex Waislitz says the market is putting the country at risk of “giving away” its innovations too cheaply It’s down down down
• Larry Marshall step down as CEO of CSIRO
• Steve Vamos step down as CEO of Xero
• Deliveroo’s Australian business has been put into administration
• ASX killed off their blockchain project writing off $250m
• Global cryptocurrency platform FTX collapsed after raising billions and valued at $30b+

Twitter

• 6 months after Elon Musk kicked off his Twitter dance, the deal has closed and he has purchased Twitter for US$44 billion
• It’s been a ride since … Execs fired, Board fired, 50% staff fired, some invited back, Tesla engineers doing code reviews, new products, failed products, Trumps back but not tweeting yet, memes galore and record growing daily active users! … we will need a lot of popcorn for this