Transparent Venture Capital by Tribe Global Ventures

Founder Focus Ep 4: Luke Anear of Safety Culture

Today’s Founder Focus guest is Luke Anear of Safety Culture https://safetyculture.com/.
You know you’ve built an outlier business when investors are constantly knocking on your door to invest, including an offer of $500 Million at a $5 Billion valuation. But you’re probably also an outlier founder by knocking back that offer, and 99% of other offers too.
This is very much a story behind the story type episode where Luke shares how he and his team managed to go from $0 to $1 Million revenue, then $1 Million to $100 Million in just a few short years, with sights now firmly set on $1 Billion and $10 Billion in revenue. A big ambition, but believable given the confidence he demonstrates and the foundations built to support that growth.  
Luke shares how not only his role in Safety Culture has transitioned over time, but how he himself has grown, and shares experiences that helped cultivate humility, self-awareness and vulnerability.
There are a number of prescriptive examples that founders can use within their teams to challenge people to achieve results they never thought were possible, and how to build resilience to deal with the inevitable times of up and down.
We talk about the pros and cons of starting out in a regional area, and why their headquarters ultimately moved to Sydney. We also discuss journalism and the reporting of start-ups in general, along with ASIC’s rules around the reporting of private company information and the effect that can have on an ecosystem.
Now there’s a bonus bit included at the end that came out of the usual post podcast discussion thanking our guests for their time. We’ve included this as it’s an important message to remind founders they aren’t alone in a range of mental health experiences that can be par for the course in this chosen endeavour.  
We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed creating it, and as always we’d love to hear any thoughts and comments.  Go to www.tribeglobal.vc

Tribe Talkin’ Ep 3: Diversity in STEM- The Lifeblood of VC

Welcome to Tribe Talkin' Episode 3. 
This week we talk about Safety Culture raising $34 Million at a $2.7 Billion valuation, $600 Million higher than their last raise. This bucks the trend we’ve seen in valuations and we discuss some interesting aspects of the Safety Culture story. And spoiler alert! We have the Founder, Luke Anear on next week’s Founder Focus episode and we’re looking forward to a deep dive.
We see Safety Culture's raise as a signal that the markets are in a good place We also talk about Rokt moving towards its IPO. Their "party" culture is also under the microscope at the moment, and we talk about how such cultures are being currently viewed.
We discuss episode 2 of the series “The Founder”, featuring Canva and its founders Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrect and Cameron Adams. We unpack the parts of the story we found most interesting, and try and distil lessons for entrepreneurs to consider in their own journey.
Other news includes Airtree warning there will be more failures, and why we think it’s interesting they felt compelled to even do that, given the business we are all in.
We talk about the Openview Partners report into VC valuations, which provides some really interesting insights into the current valuation trajectory, as well as visually demonstrating which companies get the highest valuations and why.
https://openviewpartners.com/2022-saas-benchmarks-report/
This report provides an excellent dataset on the growth rates achieved with companies that have diversity in their management team.  This is an excellent segue way into our deep dive subject which is diversity in STEM, and the recent draft recommendations from the Diversity in STEM review which was published this week.
https://www.industry.gov.au/science-technology-and-innovation/diversity-stem-review
Whilst diversity and equality is a core value of Tribe, STEM industries are the lifeblood of the companies we invest in. As such, this is an extremely important topic for VC investors, and the founders we invest in.
As always we appreciate feedback, and don’t forget to leave a rating whilst you’re here.
www.tribeglobal.vc 
hello@tribeglobal.vc 
 
 

Founder Focus Ep 3: Adrian Di Marco of Technology One [ASX:TNE]

Our Founder Focus guest is Adrian Di Marco, founder of Technology One.
https://technologyonecorp.com/
We are excited to release this weeks Founder Focus episode with founder of Technology One, Adrian Di Marco.Technology One is listed on the ASX [ASX:TNE] with a market capitalisation of about $5Billion, which is a staggering number when you hear the story Adrian shares about almost selling Tech one for $20million in the late 90’s, and why he decided not to.Started in 1987, Technology One was one of the first tech start ups in Australia. On average Technology One has doubled in size every 5 years since then, which is an amazing statistic given how many other tech companies have come and gone over the years. Technology One has pivoted multiple times in response to many technology shifts, and has gone from strength to strength each time. Success leaves clues, and that’s why were excited to share this master class in the philosophy and thinking behind the powerhouse that built one of Australia’s most successful companies.In this episode, Adrian discusses the importance of leadership, and his focus on building teams that were better than him. This includes the importance of having a thick skin, and never shying away from doing what you felt was right for the company. It’s not always easy to take a long term view in a public company environment, and Adrian talks about making sure you set yourself up for a marathon and not a sprint, and the importance of setting expectations clearly with investors.Since retiring from Technology One, Adrian has focussed on investing in early stage companies, and he talks about some of the common traits he sees in successful founders, as well as his perspective on early stage investing.But it’s not all about business, Adrian is a proud father and grandfather, and we discuss balancing family with building a multi-billion dollar international business.We are grateful to have Adrian in our Tribe, as Adrian is a shareholder in Tribe Global Ventures and a Venture Partner.As always, we welcome any comments, and please remember to leave a rating be. We hope you enjoy the conversation with Adrian as much as we enjoyed making it.
hello@tribeglobal.vc 

Tribe Talkin’: Why now is a good time to invest in VC

Welcome to Tribe Talkin’ Episode two, by Tribe Global Ventures, the B2B VC.
In today’s episode we talk about Blackbird selling 3% of their stake in Canva, and what that means for the ecosystem in general. As part of this we talk about how important it is to have an interconnected ecosystem of founders and investors to help companies navigate big challenges.  
In this, we discuss how important the recycling of capital is to the ecosystem, and touch on Side Stage Ventures raising funds backed by other tech founders from companies such as Go1.
There were reports this week that some bank VCs were winding up, and how one founder with investment from one of these VC’s described it as a very good thing they were winding up. Ouch. We discuss the issues corporate VC’s face in general, and the disconnect that often occurs between the culture of the corporate and the culture of the start-up.
But it's not easy or black and white, and we discuss news that Bardee, a company that had raised $5million in late 2021, was laying off staff which follows the resignation of the investor director from Blackbird. We talk about the complexities of being a director appointed by a shareholder, and the conflicts appointed directors need to navigate in balancing their various obligations.
For our deep dive, we look why the recent “tech wreck” so to speak is not a total investment wreck, following an article Elaine has published on her view of the Australian venture capital market given her 17 years unbroken investment experience across multiple cycles. You can read this article here:
https://tribeglobal.vc/why-tech-wreck-not-investment-wreck/ 
We talk about how conditions in Australia, in many ways, are the healthiest and most robust they have been, and look at different factors emerging in terms of fund specialisation, valuations, and the changes founders need to make during times of abundance vs scarcity.
We hope you like todays episode, and welcome any comments, and appreciate if you could rate the podcast whilst you’re here.
hello@tribeglobal.vc 
For more information on the portfolio companies shared in this episode: 
https://www.aplyid.com/ 
https://www.kanopicover.com/ 
https://www.swarmfarm.com/

Tribe Talkin’: Sole Founders vs Co-Founders

Welcome to episode one of Tribe Talkin', a format where the Tribe team discusses issues hitting news rooms, as well as sharing a core concept relevant to venture capital and high growth businesses. 
In this episode we discuss "The Founder", a documentary brought to life by Luke Anear from SafetyCulture, documenting Luke's behind the scene journey alongside other founders like Canva’s Melanie Perkins,  Brighte’s Katherine McConnell and Finder’s Fred Schebesta
https://if.com.au/founder-trailer/ 
The series aims to capture the deep uncertainty, doubt, and struggle founders face in trying to create something from nothing. One journo describes it as one big circle jerk! Hhmm. It’s not every day we get to reference a circle jerk in a podcast, but here we are.
We talk about local VC news- that 9 VC funds are reported to be currently raising captive funds and what we think that means for the Australian VC industry. 
We look at the Blackbird manifesto focused on start-ups coming out of research institutions. It describes some structural barriers stopping effective knowledge transfer flowing out of universities.  https://www.blackbird.vc/foundry 
For our concept deep dive, we look at sole Founder’s vs Co-Founder teams, and the reason we prefer multi-founders from a personal and investment perspective. Whilst we talk about the reasons we prefer these Co-Founding teams, we also discuss the big issue that sometimes plagues them: conflict. Yet whilst conflict is inevitable, it is desirable in the right conditions, and we give a few simple ideas on how to manage it. The full blog article on the topic can be found here: https://tribeglobal.vc/why-co-founders-teams/   
As with all our content, we’ve love to hear from you, especially if you have a different view. If you like what you hear, we’d really appreciate if you can rate the podcast and any comments are always welcome.  
https://tribeglobal.vc/  
hello@tribeglobal.vc  

Founder Focus Ep 2: Kim Hansen of Cake Equity

Based in Queensland Australia, Cake Equity https://www.cakeequity.com/ supports entrepreneurs all over the world in using their  equity to attract and retain the best people, and make the capital raising and cap table management process, well, a piece of Cake!
Full disclosure- Tribe Global Ventures has an investment in Cake, and is excited to be on the journey with Kim, Jason and their team. You'll see from this episode just how passionate the team at Cake are in supporting entrepreneurs.
Kim shares the Cake the origin story and provides some inciteful ideas around:
The double-edged sword of founder led sales.
The importance of being in country when you scale.
The value of complementary Co-Founders.
How to navigate constructive conflict to catalyse growth.
The importance of diversity, and trust and respect in fostering constructive conflict.
The challenge of ego and loneliness in the entrepreneurial journey.
Habits and routines for personal success, and tools Kim finds helpful in creating the best version of that success.
Cake was also recently recognised in the 2023 Product Led Growth Rising 40 Awards, and Kim shares his thoughts on Product Lead Growth as a strategy, and how the team at Cake is approaching it.  
Here is the link to the Product Hunt campaign Kim mentions- we would love for you to sign up (if you haven't already) and rally anyone else that wants to support Cake to do the same 🙏  https://www.producthunt.com/products/cake-equity 
Kim on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimhansencake/ 
Jason on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasona-cake/ 
To get in contact with Tribe:
Web: https://tribeglobal.vc/ 
Email: hello@tribeglobal.vc 
Aaron: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronbirkby/ 
Elaine: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elainestead/
Don: https://www.linkedin.com/in/domckenzie/ 
Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackbutler4/
 
If you liked this episode, we would love it if you could leave a comment and a rating. 
 
 
 
 

Founder Focus Ep 1: Vu Tran of GO1

For our very first podcast, we are genuinely humbled to have been joined by Vu Tran, one of the co-founders of Australian unicorn Go1. For those who don’t know the Go1 story – Go1 is ‘the Spotify for learning content creators’. Started in (and still headquartered in) suburban Brisbane, Go1 now has a global presence, and still helmed by four friends who as a co-founding team have been together for over 16 years – quite a rarity in the world of start-ups.  And a fun fact, when he is not growing one of Australia’s most successful start-ups, Vu also has time to work as a GP one day a week in his local community. Impressive.
One of Tribe’s cofounders Elaine Stead invested in Go1 very early in their journey, and this podcast covers that period and much more including:
Founder origin storyThe importance of knowing your level, and aiming higher
Co-foundership
Navigating interpersonal conflict and ego
The benefit of hierarchy and explicit co-founder roles and accountability
Luck vs skill
Difficult and unpopular decisions
Risk taking vs gambling
Learning from mistakes as the real success coefficient
Scaling up mistakes
Fundraising and investor types
Elaine's rationale for investing early into Go1 around the time they were pivoting from a LMS to a market place
The importance of significant others
Conviction
We hope you enjoy this as much as we enjoyed making it and please drop any comments below.
Tribe Global Ventures